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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Updates on the building and the efforts to save it or raze it: June 14, 2018, a fire occurred in historic S. W. Bowne warehouse.FDNY concluded that the fire was arson and "the investigation is…Report on the History of the S. W. Bowne Grain Storehouse for the Army Corp of Engineers, 2004 This imposing structure at the mouth of the Gowanus Canal was, until 2019, one of the few surviving…

The staff of RMC Canvas and Rope, posing by their hand-made rope fender. This Red Hook company ended its long run serving the maritime industry in 2005.

A fair portion of today’s Red Hook was once water. An 1887 article in the Brook 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…

The Red Hook Building Company was the brainchild of Col. Daniel Richards, a man who grew up in upstate New York. When the Erie Canal opened in 1825 and had a powerful economic effect, Richards was…Select text from the Proposal. (A pdf of the full original is linked below) "The advantages of Brooklyn as a place of residence, as well as for commercial purposes - in view of its proximity to the…