From the mid-1800s, lots of kinds of cargo were carried by canal boats from the U.S. inland to Red Hook to be shipped out around the world or to be used in local manufacturing. Grain was one of the largest imports, but some canal boats regularly...
Decoration Day, the unofficial start of the boating season, 1900s
May 30 1868, was the first Decoration Day, a day to remember the many soldiers who died in the American Civil War by decorating their graves with flowers. It officially became a national holiday called Memorial Day in 1971. Particularly, in periods...
Winter storm batters, buries and freezes ships and shore, February 1895
Huge waves crashing down on the deck as hail, steamers burning through their coal just to stay in place against the wind, ships being thrashed by the storm and everything, and everyone, frozen and encrusted in ice. These are the stories that the...
Books for Brooklyn Boats: Captain Benn's Library Service for Sailors, 1900s
All day and into the night Captain Benn made his rounds of Brooklyn's piers supplying newly arrived vessels with something that he said could keep sailors sane and captains ethical: reading material. Benn had been spreading words for 11 years by...
"The Bridge, Erie Basin, N.Y." Etching by Henry B. Shope, ca. 1880
"The Bridge, Erie Basin, N.Y.," is an etching Henry B. Shope (1862 - 1929). Tall masted ships, barges, horses and telegraph poles would have been a common site in Broolyn's Erie Basin from its construction in 1864 through the begining of...
William Yorke - the Erie Basin Artist
William Yorke was an artist who lived on a boat in the Erie Basin with his wife, son, and two dogs in 1882. After his boat was destroyed in a steamboat accident and Yorke was found living in a hut by the waterfront with his family, his story was...
A Cruise in the Erie Basin, by Don C. Seitz, 1892
A Cruise in the Erie Basin , an article by Don C. Seitz, and published in Frank Leslie's magazines in 1892, relates the story of Red Hook's Erie Basin. It grew from a scene with “hardly a building to be seen south of Atlantic Street, and not...
No More “Red Hook Point”
The discovery of germ theory at the second end of the 19th century, following the close of the industrial revolution, brought hygiene to the front of people’s minds. As a result, when they organized committees and groups to keep their communities...
Fight to Save Todd Graving Dock, 2006
Carolina Salguero was Associate Curator of the exhibit. Mary Habstritt, President of the Roebling Chapter of the Society of Industrial Archeology (now heading the LILAC Preservation Project) was the curator. Salguero was the mole for the Save the...
The Great Dry Docks at Erie Basin
Red Hook once had two graving docks and many floating dry docks. This wonderfully illustrated article from the January 13, 1883 edition of Scientific American explains how graving docks at what became Todd Shipyard work. The shipyard site is now...