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…
RMC Canvas and Rope
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.
PS GENERAL SLOCUM - Disaster and Memory
The GENERAL SLOCUM ended service as a sinking fireball June 15, 1904, killing over 1,000, most of them women and children. 1,300 were aboard.
That made the SLOCUM famous. Her fame was then…
Random Items
Brooklyn Spar Company
In 1921, the Brooklyn Spar Company advertised in The Marine Journal that it sold wooden masts and posts for derricks and flag poles, which the company made at its waterfront facility at the foot of…
Colonies of Cozy Canal Boats Cluster for Winter In Quiet, Land-Locked Havens of Brooklyn Basins, 1911
This article from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sunday, March 12, 1911, recounts the winter-time lives of Erie Canal barge families who winter in Erie Basin.
Colonies of Cozy Canal Boats Cluster for Winter
City of Inland Navigators Prepares for Annual Exodus.
COMMUNITY BOASTS OF UNIQUE FEATURES
Children Enjoy Sports on Docks After School Hours.
With the…
Red Hook Flats has Hermit on Mystery Ship, 1931
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…
Cowhey Marine Hardware, c. 1862 - 2006
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.…