Gray's Ferry Tavern was a restaurant and inn that operated in the 18th and 19th centuries in present-day Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Set on the west bank of the Schuylkill River at the primary crossing for travel to and from points south of Philadelphia, the tavern hosted George Washington and many other famous people of its day.
"Schuylkill River at Gray’s Ferry", by P. Clark, ca. 1835. Shows the inn and garden on the west bank of the river.
The inn at Gray's Ferry, as painted by David J. Kennedy in August 1864. The piazza was added around 1795.
Gray's Ferry Bridge has been the formal or informal name of several floating bridges and four permanent ones that have carried highway and rail traffic over the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. The bridge today is a four-lane divided highway bridge, built in 1976, that carries Grays Ferry Avenue from the Grays Ferry neighborhood on the east bank, over the river and the Northeast Corridor railroad tracks, to the Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood of Kingsessing.
This 1999 photo looks northwest at the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad Bridge No. 1. and, behind it, the Grays Ferry Avenue Bridge.
From 1777 and through at least 1839, a series of floating bridges offered passage at Gray's, or Lower, Ferry. 1816 painting by Joshua Rowley Watson
1856 drawing of the floating bridges that were replaced in 1838.
The pontoon bridge at Gray's Ferry was decorated for the arrival of President-elect George Washington in Philadelphia on April 20, 1789. A rope line indicates the continuing use of a ferryboat alongside the bridge.