3-021-218 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

London improvements: Hungerford Pier on the Thames Embankment, 1869. 'The passenger traffic of those convenient river-omnibuses...and other quick little steam-boats, which ply all day from London Bridge to Lambeth and Chelsea, will henceforth be much better accommodated with places for embarking and landing than it has been heretofore...Our Illustration shows one of the new landing-stages or piers erected along the Embankment; being the one immediately below the Charing-cross railway-bridge, with the Adelphi-terrace in the background...The floating wooden stage at each of these piers is approached from the Embankment above, with a variable declivity, by means of a double iron gangway, the upper end of which swings upon hinges, while the lower end, suspended in chains and governed by the movements of the landing-stage with the rising and falling tide, gives access to the level of the stage and of the steam-boats' deck. The deep recesses of the masonry, in which these shifting gangways are suspended...are indicated in our Engraving by the double rows of stone balustrades, on the top of the embankment, to the right and to the left hand of the steam-boat pier...[The] neat little wooden house, of hexagonal shape, [is] for the sale of tickets'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.