By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Month after month a three-mastered schooner was seen anchored off-shore in the Red Hook Flats. On board was just one man who never went ashore. How he got by was a mystery to the few folk who knew of his existence. He was not hiding; he had...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A giant timber raft, 595 feet long and 55 feet wide, containing 22,000 ‘sticks’ (logs) was floated from the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia to the Erie Basin, Brooklyn, in 1888. An experiment in cost savings, it was calculated that if the wood was...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Photograph of finished lumber being loaded off the the S.S. YORKAMAR docked at the Columbia Street Pier, April 21, 1949. Wood, from logs to finished planks, has long been an important commodity in Red Hook. The Columbia Street Pier in also...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Red Hook Point in the mid-1800s was just beginning to be developed. In an irregular way, shanties dotted the shoreline. Some of the residents of these homes, would sit under their awnings scanning the waters for loose timbers and...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In 1921, the Brooklyn Spar Company advertised in The Marine Journal that it sold wooden masts and posts for derricks and flag poles, which the company made at its waterfront facility at the foot of Columbia Street. In O.R. Pilat's 1929 article, John...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
" All day naked youngsters are perched on these logs, watching their bait, chasing each other over the slippery lumber or diving and paddling in the water." A story about naked boys in the late 1800s who fish for crabs among the millions of...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In 1910-1920, Coastwise Lumber & Supply Company was a wholesaler and retailer of lumber, including cordwood, dunnage boards and dunnage mats, advertising "steamship trade a specialty." They had two yards in Brooklyn: one at the foot of Clinton...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In 1922, New York City Mayor John F. Hylan, a strong advocate for expanding the subways, held public hearings on the topic. George T. McQuade of Coastwise Lumber & Supply Co. supported a line that would run down Hicks and Lorraine Streets in Red...
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
Lumber was one of the major commodities shipped to the Atlantic Docks. In the 1860s Adam R. W. and Co. operated from the Docks and sold long lumber for shipping, building and other businesses, according to the 1867 New York State Business Directory...
