By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Frank Schmidt, known to the police as "Dutch Frank," a junk dealer operating in and around Red Hook Point faced trial for dealing in stolen goods, October 1855. Junk dealers made their living buying spare sails, ropes and old iron from...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A small blurb in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle , July 1852 paints an image of scrappy Red Hook. A man named Hayes, who keeps a junk store in Red Hook Point, was taken before Justice King this morning, on a charge preferred against him by David W. Sweet,...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Rum-Runners smuggling liquor on motor boat. The boat's development was an economic one, the rum runners needed faster boats! During the Prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. (1920-1933) rum and other hard liqueurs were frequently smuggled in by boat....
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
During Prohibition (1920 -1933), the many, bustling working piers of Red Hook made this neighborhood a good place for smugglers to move large quantities of alcohol, often using innovative speed boats to evade federal agents. On June 3, 1922, at the...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
September 1873. Sailors between stints on ships frequently stayed in boarding houses near the waterfront. The writer of an 1873 article in the Brooklyn Eagle describes how the manager of certain boarding houses, for a fee, provisioned sailors for...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
US customs found $10,000 worth of liquor on steamship docked in Erie Basin. New York Times , January 21, 1926, excerpt: Bullets and Fists Foil Rum Runners --- Custom Men Seize $10,000 Worth of Liquor after a Battle on the Pier -- Contraband on 10...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Born in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, Al Capone was a crime boss during the Prohibition Era.
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
John M. Wright, a sailor, was charged with the killing of Bernard Ferron, a river speculator on March 16, 1878. Ferron, a Red Hook resident, made his living buying and selling scrap iron from ships. When his body was found weighed down with iron,...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Four Red Hook residents died from poisoned whisky and three were arrested for selling bad liquor. Michael Keenan, 41, a truckman living at 135 Dykeman Street, became blind and is at the Long Island College Hospital. Last night the police arrested...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
From the 1830s to 1965 Castle Williams on Governors Island served as a military prison. Over the years prisoners have attempted to escape by swimming across the Buttermilk Channel to Red Hook. Text from two Articles Click on the images at bottom for...
