What it was like taking a steamboat to Coney Island on a sweltering Sunday in 1895

Getting to Coney Island from Manhattan could take a long time in the 1890s. Depending on where you were coming from, you’d likely have to board a streetcar or elevated train, or more than one, and then catch one of the Brooklyn railroads that then delivered you to a beachfront terminal. The shorter way to get to Coney? By steamboat, which cut your travel time by picking you up at a Manhattan pier and taking a smooth water route down New York Bay. The Iron Steamboat Company, seen above in this 1910 postcard, ran several iron-hulled paddle steamers (each named after a celestial body) that departed a pier at West 23rd Street and another at Pier 1 at the Battery, depositing passengers at iron piers off Coney. But on a scorching summer day, the steamboats were chaotic ovens. That’s how a New York Sun reporter described the scene at Pier 1 on a boiling day in July 1895. “Pier 1, at one o’clock, held more than 2,000 people. . . there were men, women, and babies, especially babies. Everyone…