Bonded warehouse are places were foreign imports can be stored or manipulated without the payment of duty or taxes. The government only gets a piece of the action (duty) if and when the goods are sold domestically.  Under the watchful eyes of...

In the 1870s grain made up a bulk of the imports to Red Hook's piers but a wide variety of other goods from around the world were arriving and being stored at its ports. Major's Storage Guide   (1873) published "Rates of Storage and Labor on...

Lithograph of Bartlet & Greene's warehouses and grain elevators by Endicott & Co ca. 1880.  The area depicted is around the foot of Furman Street, slightly outside Red Hook's current boundaries. In the late 1800s Brooklyn was described...

"It is almost like Sunday." In 1873 a financial crisis caused the first modern "Great Depression" in America and Europe which lasted until 1879 and in some places much longer. With money in short supply very few goods were shipped to and from the...