By The Red Hook WaterStories team
This is an advertisement for Todd Ship Yard in the 1920 Port of New York Annual report, a few years before the establishment of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In 1920, Todd had facilities on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts; one of...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
John F. McKenna was a wholesaler and retailer of lumber for shipyards, industry, and heavy construction. His office was at 74 Beard Street and his depot in the Erie Basin. Lumber was a major Red Hook business, ships filled with it, and large...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A 1918 photograph of the SS Kralingen. The ship was camouflaged in whites, blues, greys and black, making it a dazzel ship. The aim of the zebra stripe camouflage was not to make the ship hard to find, but to make it harder for enemies to accurately...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Literary Reference 1908 detective novel with a setting in Erie Basin “Alice gazed about and presently recognized her surroundings. "Why, this is the Erie Basin!" she murmured. "How in the world did I ever come here?" Now, the Erie Basin has...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Todd Shipyards started life in Brooklyn, in 1869, as Handren and Robins. After Handren's death in 1892, it became the J. N. Robins Co. and then, after merging with the Erie Basin Dry Dock Company, which had been established by Delamater Iron Works,...
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
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...
