By The Red Hook WaterStories team
[Links to the video below] Ørkenen Sur. A Norwegian documentary made in 2015 about the shanty town that existed int Red Hook from the early 1920s to the mid 1930s. Known by names including Ørkenen Sur (the bitter desert), and Tin City. It was home...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
This colorful tower was a crankshaft from a ship's engine. Specifically it is from a Baldwin Hamilton Engine. It was out of a ship that was broken up in a ship demolition yard Kearney NJ. Zach Stakis of Aeromotive Engineering bought a...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Bird's eye view of Red hook showing the Red Hook Houses and Erie Basin View the image here
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Soon after this photo is taken, the area at the left of the composite photo with just a few scattered houses in an uneven field will become the Red Hook Ball Fields and recreational area. Part of this area had been home to a shanty town, which went...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In the early 1920s, the international freight trade collapsed leaving as many as 1,000 Norwegian seamen unemployed and unable to get back home. With little to no income many of them made shelters on a large area of landfill and rubble just north of...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The “Brooklyn Basin” is another one of those big plans for Red Hook that did not happen . The plan appeared on maps as if it was built - with no indication of its aspirational status - leading people in the 21 st century to think...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A list of the piers in Brooklyn, their location, length and occupants publishished in the Port of New York Annual Report of 1920. In the Red Hook area were: Ferry Slips , located at Hamilton Avenue, run by the Union Ferry Company, owned by New York...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Frank Schmidt, known to the police as "Dutch Frank," a junk dealer operating in and around Red Hook Point faced trial for dealing in stolen goods, October 1855. Junk dealers made their living buying spare sails, ropes and old iron from...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Starting out as a caulker of wooden ships, Ira S. Bushey, by dint of hard work, was the owner of the biggest shipyard constructing wooden ships in the country in 1920 - located in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Ira S. Bushey was the first builder and operator...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A huge fire destroyed Beard's Wharf in Erie Basin. The steamship Idlewild was destroyed, but luckily drifted away and prevented further damage to other ships.
