By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The New York and Puerto Rico steamship company's ships traveled between San Juan, Puerto Rico and Pier 35, Atlantic Basin in Red Hook. [ The Brooklyn Daily Eagle , March 27, 1917] The SS COAMO, SS BRAZOS, and SS CAROLINA were all ships that took...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Photo of Barber Lines & Co at Pier 36, Atlantic Basin. Herbert and James Barber started their company in 1886, incorporating as Barber & Company in 1902. The company had several subsidiaries and off-shoots including the Barber Steamship...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
An aerial view of the Atlantic Basin, looking north-northeast, taken on July 24, 1951. Atlantic Basin had been roughly this shape and configuation for a little over 100 years when this photo was taken. There was a lot more parking lot...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
According to the The New York Press in 1899, the Atlantic Docks made the surrounding area of Columbia Heights less desirable for the well-to-do. They left for more "artistic" places, leaving in their wake lower rents for "a cheaper class of...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In November of 1872, a tall wooden grain elevator and several warehouse buildings of the Atlantic Docks burnt to the ground in a great fire which was seen for miles. Six hundred thousand bushels of wheat, oats and barley burned. New York Herald,...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In 1881, the Excelsior Stores grain warehouse and grain elevator in Atlantic Basin burned in a massive fire. Here is an article from The New York Herald , Monday, June 13, 1881, describing the conflagration: THE EXCELSIOR STORES BURNED. -- A...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
September 1873. Sailors between stints on ships frequently stayed in boarding houses near the waterfront. The writer of an 1873 article in the Brooklyn Eagle describes how the manager of certain boarding houses, for a fee, provisioned sailors for...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
"It is almost like Sunday." In 1873 a financial crisis caused the first modern "Great Depression" in America and Europe which lasted until 1879 and in some places much longer. With money in short supply very few goods were shipped to and from the...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
September, 1873 - Three sailors aboard the Schooner Julius Walsh sick with Yellow Fever. Two of the men were quarantined before the ship docked at Red Hook's Union Stores but a third man did not show symptoms until after the ship arrived in port....
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
US customs found $10,000 worth of liquor on steamship docked in Erie Basin. New York Times , January 21, 1926, excerpt: Bullets and Fists Foil Rum Runners --- Custom Men Seize $10,000 Worth of Liquor after a Battle on the Pier -- Contraband on 10...
