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

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Deck work doesn't wait for weather. By The Red Hook WaterStories team

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.…
Thomas tompson-BROOKLYN EAGLE, WED., JUNE 3, 1953.jpg

Tug boat recipes, 1953By The Red Hook WaterStories team

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…
Gowanus Canal Assessment of Eligibility: View north of the former Bowne Stores (Plate 3.24.)<br />

S. W. Bowne Grain Storehouse, 1866By The Red Hook WaterStories team

Late in the evening of June 14, 2018, a fire broke out in the warehouse.The morning after the fire, we were there when FDNY Fire Marshalls arrived and spoke to three. We learned that three fireboats…This imposing structure at the mouth of the Gowanus Canal is one of the few surviving traces of the brick warehouses that ringed the South Brooklyn shore for about a century starting in the late…

Random Items

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

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…

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…Decline in Buttermilk Channel Passenger Traffic by the numbers: 1934 – 594,6201935 – 576,4631936 – 515,0141937 – 420,9491938 – 431,4881939 – 368,6541940 – 447,7381941 – 482,0291942 – 261,2631943 – 675…

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