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

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…
One Share of One Dollar of the Red Hook Building Company

Red Hook Building CompanyBy The Red Hook WaterStories team

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…

Random Items

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…

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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