From the 1920s there existed a shanty town in Red Hook, largely populated by underemployed sailors and dockworkers.  With little money or hope some took to drinking a poisonous homemade brew called smoke .   In 1932, a number of smokies ,  those...

In the early 1920s, the international freight trade collapsed leaving as many as 1,000 Norwegian seamen unemployed and unable to get back home. With little to no income many of them made shelters on a large area of landfill and rubble just north of...