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

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

hermit of mystery ship - red hook flats - Brooklyn Daily Eagle - May 29 1931a-cropped.jpg

Red Hook Flats has Hermit on Mystery Ship, 1931By The Red Hook WaterStories team

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…
Louis Heineman - Photo_Brooklyn Daily Eagle April 2 1904_ Crop.jpg

Title Fight: Louis Heineman vs. William BeardBy The Red Hook WaterStories team

"No man ever, perhaps, got so much the best of old Beard as did Louis Heineman, the housemover of the Twelfth ward.” (The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 19, 1891)  When Louis Heineman died in 1904, he was…
1861-Insurance Maps of the Warehouses-Brooklyn_Title page.jpg

Insurance maps of the Warehouses, &c. in Brooklyn, 1861 By The Red Hook WaterStories team

Insurance maps of the Warehouses, &c. in Brooklyn from the Navy Yard to Portition Street, By W M. Perris, C.E. and Surveyor. Perris & Browne, Publishers of Insurance Maps, Corrected to October 1861,…

Random Items

PortSide NewYork created this Red Hook WaterStories product. PortSide is a maritime non-profit founded in Red Hook in 2005. Our goal is to create a waterfront center with a landing for boats, a home…

Cowhey Marine Hardware operated in Red Hook for about 150 years. The rump remains of the business was at 440 Van Brunt Street, the northwest corner of Van Brunt and Beard Street, and closed in 2005.…

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…

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