Along the Hudson: Luxury Liner Row in the 1950s and 60s

On both sides of the Hudson River, along the Manhattan and Hoboken waterfronts, for the best part of a century, millions of people teemed out of ocean liners, bound for a new life in North America. Lines such as North German Lloyd, Cunard, White Star, Holland America, Swedish America and the Hamburg Amerika Line all disgorged their human cargo into the USA. By the 1920s, mass emigration to America had all but finished. But there was a new breed of traveler, the tourist, the businessman and the cruiser. The largest ships had always been seen as Ships of State, certainly since the German fliers of the early twentieth century, and the new breed of ocean liner was glamorous beyond compare. Designed to capture the cream of the passenger trade, they were luxurious and fast, with world-class restaurants. Ships such as the Andrea Doria, the Stockholm, Cunard’s Queens, Mary and Elizabeth, the SS United States, the SS Rotterdam and the Independence and Constitution all vied for the public’s affection. These ships and many others sailed into what became known as Luxury Liner Row, that short strip of real estate sandwiched between the Lincoln Highway and the Hudson. William H Miller tells the story of the ships on Luxury Liner Row, with many photographs illustrating the glamour, the luxury and the sheer buzz of New York’s waterfront in the 1950s and 60s.