During Spring semester 2024, PortSide is working with a Pratt Institute graduate student class on "participatory plannning" taught by Beth Bingham. We recommended Wally Bazemore as a resource for the class, and he came to speak during a session...
Oral History: Oscar Pagan Reflects on Red Hook at start of NYC ferry service celebration, 2017
In 2017, the inauguration of the NYC Ferry service was a big deal in the mind of Oscar Pagan , enough so that he drove from Staten Island back to Red Hook where he grew up to experience this big change for the neighborhood. He came to PortSide...
SLAVER CAPTAIN ARRESTED - SHIP SOLD AT AUCTION IN RED HOOK - 1860
December 5, 1860, the slave ship ERIE was sold at government auction in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook, Brooklyn. One month prior, the ship had been condemned and ordered to be sold by the United States District Court. This was news of national note...
Fugitive Slave Case – Red Hook Point, December 4, 1857
Four years before the American Civil War, a legal battle emerged from a situation that occurred aboard a steamship from Savannah to New York. One of the passengers, Thomas Steele, a light skinned man, was accused of being a fugitive slave by another...
SLAVE SHIP ERIE, Atlantic Basin, 1860
A pivotal event in the ending of slavery occurred on December 5, 1860, in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook when the slave ship ERIE was sold at government auction. Its captain and owner, Nathaniel Gordon, was then executed for engaging in the slave...
Brooklyn Wire Mill - The scandalous story of the making of the cables for the Bridge Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge is a suspended by four main steel wire cables. It became the first major bridge of its kind when it opened for service in May 1883 and it's unique design remains essentially the same today. The concept of suspending a bridge with...
Defalcation! Atlantic Docks, 1848
D efalcation. John Wright, a storage keeper at Atlantic Docks, N.Y. and a defaulter to a considerable amount, left for France in the steamer United States, on her last passage. One house in New York, it is said, will be a loser by him to the...
The Chinese Exclusion Act & the Docks of Red Hook, ca. 1920
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States. Until it was repealed in 1943, Chinese sailors were not allowed ashore. Ships that let the sailors leave could be fined $500 per person....
Canal Boat: Assault! 1859
Charles Debois was charged, in 1859, with attacking Mary Ann Baker while she was sleeping in her winter home, a canal boat docked in Atlantic Basin. The greater charge of rape was dropped. Complete text of article: New York NY Evening Express...
Outrageous: A narrow escape from slavery at Red Hook Point, 1850
In the summer of 1850, an African-American woman was abducted and brought to Red Hook Point - just below the Atlantic Dock - to be put on a schooner and brought to a Southern slave state. The captors told suspicious workers in the area that the...