Benjamin Ratzer surveyed Brooklyn for the British in 1766-7. Cartographer Eymund Diegel has overlaid the modern street grid onto Ratzer's map Colors have been added to the map to indicate features such as beaches, wetlands, forests and shorelines....
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
2016 draft map created by Eymund Diegel, based on his research describing Red Hook streams, ponds, tide mills up to around 1850. The base map is the Bernard Ratzer's 1766 survey. Captions are derived from Stile's comprehensive...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The landscape of Red Hook has been dramatically changed by people at least twice in its history. Starting in a major way around 1830, marshland was filled in to make solid land, and the coast line was modified to better suit boats. Nearly...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Sometime before 1689, Stephanus Van Cortlandt (d. 1700) erected a water-powered mill on his property, roughly at the corner of present day Dikeman and Van Brunt Streets. "The mill-pond, which was formed by damming off the creeks and natural ponds in...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A map of the tip of Manhattan and southwest Brooklyn between the years of 1766-1767. Bernard Ratzer surveyed Brooklyn for the British Government just before the outbreak of the American Revolution. Over the years several versions of his map have...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A version of Bernard Ratzer’s map made by him for the British Government in 1767. A copy of this map appears in Henry R. Stiles’, 1867 book A History of Brooklyn . According to www.geographicus.com, the map was drawn by Henry’s brother Edward...
