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
Explore via menus, the search window, or interactive map. On the map, click the colored, numbered dots to expand multiple items in that location. Then, click on a pin to explore that item. Anchor icons mean sites of major importance.More about this site
Click empty spot on map to activate it
Featured Item
Winter Life on Canal Boats, 1915
Near Christmas time, 1915, a female reporter and an illustrator for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, visited a few of the many canal boats and barges moored for the winter in Erie Basin “in search of a story…Full article text:Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 26, 1915
WINTER LIFE ON CANAL BOATSResidents of Erie Basin Celebrate the Holidays in Much the Same Fashion as Folk Ashore.
GUESSING the right house…
The MARY A. WHALEN
The oil tanker MARY A. WHALEN was launched May 21, 1938. The ship is PortSide NewYork's ambassador to the BLUEspace and site of our offices and many programs.
Why she is significant?
She is the…
Ad For Atlantic Docks, 1847
Construction of The Atlantic Dock - a massive, man-made harbor for deep water ships, began on June 3, 1841. The erection of stout stone warehouses and towering grain elevators that could handle…●
Text from an Advetisement in Doggets New York City Directory for 1847
Storage for Grain, Flour, Sugar, Molasses, Cotton, ETC.,
AT THE
ATLANTIC DOCK, NEW-YORK.
FORTY ACRES WATER SURFACE WITHIN THE…
Random Items
Red Hook Building Company
In 1838, a proposal was printed and addressed to the newly formed board of the Red Hook Building Company. It was aimed at getting more support for the publicly owned real estate development concern…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…
Growing land, Squatter Sovereigns and Picking Profit: 1887
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…
Deck work doesn't wait for weather.
Photograph of an able-bodied seaman working in snow flurries at Ira S. Bushey and Sons' old shipyard. The end of the line he is working on has been folded back and braided into itself to form a loop.…
The MARY A. WHALEN
The oil tanker MARY A. WHALEN was launched May 21, 1938. The ship is PortSide NewYork's ambassador to the BLUEspace and site of our offices and many programs.
Why she is significant?
She is the…