A project by PortSide NewYork

Welcome to 400+ years of Red Hook!  Inclusion is a theme in this e-museum that memorializes forgotten, overlooked and erased histories. It’s a resource for locals, tourists, history buffs, urban-planners, educators, students, flaneurs.  It tells NYC’s maritime story in microcosm.  Explore:

  • our waterfront past & present
  • contemporary Red Hook retail, arts, non-profits, schools, recreation, transit

  • flood prep & resiliency info

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Random Items

In 1846 when Hamilton Avenue Ferry service to Manhattan started it was the only mass transit option to and from Red Hook, Brooklyn. This was no longer the case in 1914, street cars and elevated subway…Decline in Buttermilk ChannelPassenger Traffic by the numbers: 1934 – 594,6201935 – 576,4631936 – 515,0141937 – 420,9491938 – 431,4881939 – 368,6541940 – 447,7381941 – 482,0291942 – 261,2631943 – 675…

In 1953, Thomas Thompson, cook aboard Dalzell Towing's tugboat Datzellera, wrote a guest column for the Brooklyn Eagle's feature Harbor Lights. “I am allocated $10.05 per day to feed six men, three…● Text of Article: BROOKLYN EAGLE, WED JUNE 3, 1953 Harbor Lights By JEANNE TOOMEY (Miss Toomey is on vacation. Her guest columnist today is Thomas Thompson, cook aboard the Datzellera, sensational…

Month after month a three-mastered schooner was seen anchored off-shore in the Red Hook Flats.  On board was just one man who never went ashore.  How he got by was a mystery to the few folk who knew…Full transcript from the Brooklyn Eagle, May 29, 1931  Red Hook Flats has Hermit on Mystery Ship--Jack-of-All-Trades is Aboard Old Schooner Waits for It to Be Sold--By O. R. Pilat  She has been called…

A fair portion of today’s Red Hook was once water. An 1887 article in the Brookyn Eagle marvels that Henry and neighboring streets have been extended nearly half a mile in ten years. Marshes with…Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sunday July 3 1887Transcription. HENRY STREET’S CHANGES--A Walk at the Lower End Well Worth Taking.--The Growth of a Year and a Half – Squatter Sovereigns – Side Thoroughfares…