A History of Red Hook

Norman Brouwer, noted maritime historian - the man who basically wrote THE guides to historic ships and some of our national preservation standards for them - graciously wrote this maritime history of Red Hook for PortSide NewYork's Red Hook WaterStories in 2016. 

 DOCKS AND CARGO TRANSFER

            The first major man-made alteration to Red Hook was the construction of Atlantic Basin, a sheltered dock for ships discharging and loading cargo.  Rectangular docks for shipping were once a common feature of European ports, where ships usually entered and left through locks due to high tidal ranges.  The roughly six foot tidal range in New York Harbor made this un-necessary.  The 1836 map, with its projected streetscape, makes it clear that Atlantic Basin was not constructed by excavating into the shore of Red Hook, but rather by extending that shore outward into Buttermilk Channel two blocks and creating a new man-made shoreline. Daniel Richards proposed building the Basin in 1839, and incorporated the Atlantic Dock Company the following year.  He was joined in the project by James S. T. Stranahan.  Stranahan was a recent arrival in Brooklyn who would go on to become a major civic leader, eventually serving as director of the Brooklyn Bridge project, and as Chairman of the board of Prospect Park.

            Work on the basin was begun in 1841.  By 1844 it was far enough along to begin building warehouses along the wharves.  In 1846 Richards and Stranahan campaigned for the establishment of a ferry between the foot of Hamilton Avenue and lower Manhattan, to provide direct access between ships in the Basin and the Custom House, Merchants’ Exchange, and shipping company offices near the Battery.  Work on Atlantic Basin was completed around 1847.  The Basin enclosed forty acres of water, capable of accommodating 150 ships of the period.  Warehouses of two to four storeys, eighty feet from front to back, lined all the berths.  Since the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, New York had been a major port for the shipment of grain.  Eight towers were built into the warehouses, containing the machinery of grain elevators used to transfer grain from canal boats to temporary storage, and from storage to ships.

            The busy central waterfront around lower Manhattan had become too congested for further construction.  Warehouse space now became a major contribution of Brooklyn to the further success of the Port.  Four and five storey brick warehouse blocks were built adjacent to the Fulton Ferry.  They were then continued southward by a number of owners, past the foot of Brooklyn Heights to Atlantic Avenue, and from Atlantic Avenue to Atlantic Basin.  After the Civil War, warehouse construction would continue to the south end of Red Hook on Gowanus Bay.  Viewed from the harbor, this seemingly unbroken line of warehouses earned Brooklyn the title “The Walled City.”  These warehouses were also called “Brooklyn’s Great Wall of China.”

            In 1849 William Beard began acquiring land, largely beach or salt marsh, along the southern shore of Red Hook.  In 1851 he received the approval of the State legislature to make improvements to the shoreline facing Gowanus Bay. Beard formed a partnership with the brothers George C. and Jeremiah P. Robinson, which was able in 1859 to acquire the remaining land required.  The focus of the partnership was creating more port facilities by dredging out berths for ships and building more warehouses adjacent to the current south end of Van Brunt Street.  It was clear that ships berthing on the south shore of Red Hook would need some shelter from weather conditions in Upper New York Bay.  Initially, large breakwaters were proposed for both sides of Gowanus Bay.  If completed, they would have reduced that Bay to a narrow channel for shipping.  Only the breakwater on the Red Hook side was actually built, creating a large sheltered body of water known as Erie Basin.

The roughly 100 acre Basin was able to accommodate a variety of activities.  Ships discharged goods from around the world, and loaded cargoes at wharves lined with warehouses and five grain elevators.  Several shipyards were eventually located there.  In the late fall, as the canals began to freeze, from 500 to 700 canal boats assembled in Erie Basin for the winter with from 2000 to 3000 people living on board as families.  Many of the canal boats had holds full of their last cargoes of grain, in storage until needed.  The Erie Basin breakwater also provided shelter for New York’s fleet of floating swimming baths during the winter months.    

The warehouses along the shore of Brooklyn had been built by a number of independent firms.  In 1895 the Brooklyn Wharf and Warehouse Company was formed, also known as the “Warehouse Trust,” which eventually acquired almost three miles of warehouses, from north of the Brooklyn Bridge to, but not including, Erie Basin.  Red Hook had no rail freight connections with the rest of Brooklyn or Long Island.  The Warehouse Trust built three terminal railroads, near Fulton Street, at the foot of Baltic Street below Brooklyn Heights, and at Atlantic Basin.  The old warehouses at the south end of Atlantic Basin were demolished and Red Hook was given its only rail link with the outside world, a float bridge in the center of that wharf to handle railway car floats towed across the harbor to and from New Jersey.

A small freight yard was created on the shore between Pioneer and Wolcott Streets.  A spur on Wolcott Street would eventually serve the large printing plant of the New York Daily News on the shore at the foot of Dikeman Street.  Another spur extended down Pioneer Street to Conover, and north along Conover to Bowne Street, where it doubled back to serve industries in the block between Imlay and Van Brunt.  This rather limited Red Hook internal railroad was rebuilt in 1963, and survived until 1992 when the float bridge was retired.  In 1901 the holdings of the Warehouse Trust were purchased by the New York Dock Company for five million dollars.  In 1911 New York Dock built two fireproof reinforced concrete industrial loft buildings along Commercial Wharf, the east side of Atlantic Basin.  The buildings were an imposing six storeys tall, and on their shore side extended for 460 feet along Imlay Street.

In 1910 the American Molasses Company established a raw sugar processing plant in Erie Basin by adapting warehouses built in 1890 off the foot of Richards Street by William Beard.  A giant metal silo for storing sugar with a conical roof was later added, which became a prominent Red Hook landmark.  The last owners of the plant, Revere Sugar, shut it down in 1985.  The silo was demolished in 2007.

The grain trade, once so important to Red Hook, largely left as the railroads took the transport of grain away from the antiquated Erie Canal and built their own storage and transfer facilities on the New Jersey side of the harbor.  Between 1918 and 1921 the State of New York completely rebuilt the canal, upgrading it from a narrow horse and mule towpath canal to a barge canal capable of accommodating barges towed by tugboats, and specially built canal freighters.  Rather than depend on railroad-owned facilities in the harbor, the State built its own grain terminal in Red Hook at the foot of Columbia Street.

The Gowanus Grain Terminal was one of the largest ever built, with fifty-four ten storey tall concrete silos twenty feet in diameter in three rows of eighteen.  The silos were created in just thirteen days by three hundred men pouring the concrete.  On top of the silos was a gallery with conveyers to distribute the grain, and two towers containing machinery for drying grain and cleaning it.  An overhead conveyer took grain to a covered pier at the foot of Columbia Street for loading on ships.  Planning for a rail connection that was never built, the State also acquired a large piece of land inland from the terminal for storing grain in railway cars.

The grain terminal was busy from 1922 into the early 1930s, receiving grain from barges moored in a slip on its east side.  Business declined after the Hudson River was dredged for ship traffic, Albany became a seaport, and large grain handling facilities were built there.  In 1934 the State transferred part of its unused land to the City for the creation of the Red Hook Recreation Center and Pool.  The remainder of this land was given up in 1938 for the construction of Red Hook Houses, an apartment complex for workers and their families that opened the following year.  The grain terminal was eventually transferred to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which listed it as an available facility until 1969.  It was then abandoned and the conveyer to the Columbia Street Pier was scrapped.  The covered pier continued to be used for storage and berthing ships, but was demolished around the 1980s.  The silos remain as the most prominent landmark in eastern Red Hook.

In 1980 the consulting firm Westgate & Associates presented the Port Authority with a glowing report on the possibilities of developing Erie Basin as a facility for landing and distribution of fish.  The Port Authority spent $25 million between 1983 and 1988 on the first phase of the project, centered around the foot of Columbia Street and the leg of the Erie Basin breakwater facing Gowanus Bay.  This included berthing for fishing boats, refrigeration, and an auction hall.  The project was expected to create up to 450 local jobs.  One year after “Fishport” opened, it was declared a failure and shut down.  It had only attracted three tenants, and five boats, and had handled in one year the same amount of fish the Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan handled in two days.  The location is now occupied by a car pound, and Erie Basin Barge Port jointly operated by Reinauer Transportation Corporation and Hughes Brothers Inc.

With the change to containerization in the 1960s and 1970s Red Hook saw the same dramatic decline in traditional cargo handling as other New York waterfronts.  But the containerization revolution did not completely bypass Red Hook.  Brooklyn’s only container port was built around the former location of the Hamilton Avenue Ferry in the 1980s, and then expanded south to include the north end of Atlantic Basin and the pier at the north side of the Basin entrance.  Ships now berth on the Buttermilk Channel side of that pier under tall container cranes, discharging goods from around the world,  where sailing ships discharged goods from around the world over 170 years ago. 

Pier 12 on the south side of the entrance to Atlantic Basin is now home to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.  The terminal, using the Buttermilk Channel side of the pier, which opened on April 15, 2006 with the arrival of the QUEEN MARY 2, is capable of handling the largest cruise ships using the port.

SHIPBUILDING AND SHIP REPAIR

 In May 1864, with the Civil War in progress, the William Beard and his partners sold a large section of the original shoreline to the Erie Basin Dock Company.  The Dock Company brought in engineer James T. Simpson from Boston to build a graving dock in the shoreline in which ships could be taken out of the water for repairs or alterations to their underwater hulls.  The graving dock was completed in 1866.  Construction was then begun on a second, larger graving dock, parallel to the first.  That graving dock would be completed in 1881.  The graving docks, which were large enough to dry dock the largest steamships using the Port, were a worthwhile addition to New York Harbor’s facilities, but a series of owners were unsuccessful in making them a going concern financially.  This would change in 1886 when the Erie Basin shipyard was acquired by the partners John W. Handren and John N. Robins, formerly associated with the Delameter Iron Works in Manhattan.

            Handren and Robins turned the graving docks into a successful ship repair yard by adding to the facilities.  In 1890 the large floating Balance Dock was purchased and towed from the east side of Manhattan below Corlear’s Hook to Erie Basin.  In 1892, after John Handren withdrew from the firm, it was renamed the John N. Robins Company.  Ten years later, two more large floating dry docks were acquired and moved from Manhattan to Erie Basin.  The area of the east shore of Manhattan along upper South Street, between Pike Slip and Corlears Hook, had been the center of ship repair in the Port.  It was now being forced out by changing real estate values.  The removal of floating dry docks speeded the process.  New locations for ship repair facilities were being developed in the Port, with Red Hook one of the most important.  More shipyards began moving into the Erie Basin area, and industries related to ship outfitting and repair, many formerly located near the dry docks in Manhattan, were also making the move to Red Hook.

            In 1882 the firm of C. & R. Poillon, which had been operating a shipyard at the foot of Bridge Street in Brooklyn, established a second yard at the foot of Clinton Street in Red Hook east of Erie Basin.  C. & R. Poillon were builders of wooden vessels, best known for pilot schooners and schooner yachts for racing and cruising.  By 1900 the Poillon yard had been joined at the foot of Clinton and Court Streets by the Downing & Lawrence Shipyard.  In 1905 Ira S. Bushey moved his boat repair business from Staten Island to the foot of Court Street, where he became a major builder of barges, and after World War I, tugboats and coastal tankers.

  The Devine Burtis Shipyard moved from Manhattan to the foot of Conover Street in the mid-1800s.  They engaged in repairs and alterations to vessels, employing in 1900 one floating dry dock and two marine railways.  Devine Burtis also built vessels, primarily New York ferryboats.  On April 18, 1891, eight years after their last launching, they sent down the ways the wooden hull of the steamboat GENERAL SLOCUM.  The SLOCUM operated as a popular excursion vessel in New York Harbor for over a decade.  Then, in 1904, carrying a full load of passengers, she caught fire in the East River in the worst marine disaster in the history of New York City.  Devine Burtis built their last ferryboat, the PORT MORRIS, in 1901, and shut down operations in 1905.

  The John N. Robins Company was the largest repair yard in Erie Basin, with two large graving docks and three floating dry docks.  Over the years, the Basin also accommodated a number of smaller yards.  Theodore A. Crane, superintendent of the Devine Burtis Shipyard during the Civil War, left to establish his own yard in 1867, purchasing an existing shipyard in Erie basin owned by G. H. Ferris.  He eventually chose a location in Erie Basin adjacent to the breakwater gap.  In addition to performing repairs to ships, the yard built tugboats, barges, and railway car floats.   The yard remained active through the 1920s as Theodore A. Crane’s Sons.

  The Townsend & Edgett Shipyard was located at Pier 2, Erie Basin. Former Nova Scotian Wallace Downey began as an apprentice at the yard and rose to manager and finally partner.  He reorganized the yard as Townsend & Downey in 1898, and moved it to Shooter’s Island off Mariners’ Harbor, Staten Island.  In 1906 the William J. Gokey Shipyard was located at Pier 1, Erie Basin.  In 1903 the ship repair yard of Schuyler, Payne & Caddell was established off Van Dyke Street, with two marine railways and a 130 foot floating dry dock.  This operation was moved into Erie Basin in 1912, but was forced to move again in 1916 when the City wanted to build piers in the Basin.  The president of the company, John B. Caddell (I) found a site at the foot of Broadway on the north shore of Staten Island.  Still at that location today, the Caddell Dry Dock Company is now the most active repair yard in the Port.

World War I broke out in Europe in 1914.  The British, looking for more ship repair facilities, offered to buy the Robins Dry Dock Company yard in Erie Basin.  The yard’s general manager William H. Todd wanted the shipyard to stay in American ownership, and raised enough support to buy it, along with the Tietgen & Lang Shipyard in Weehawken Cove, New Jersey, and the Moran Brothers Shipyard in Seattle.  This was the beginning of Todd Shipyards Corporation, which would eventually operate shipyards across the Country.  After the United States entered the War in 1917, the Erie Basin yard operated at full capacity, repairing ships and converting peacetime passenger liners to wartime use as troopships.  To expand its facilities in Red Hook, Todd Shipyards bought and rehabilitated the former C. & R. Poillon Shipyard at the foot of Clinton Street.  The yards remained active after the War converting ships back to peacetime use.  In 1929 Todd Shipyards rebuilt Graving Dock No. 1 in Erie Basin with concrete walls, extending its length to 731 feet.  The Todd Clinton Street yard was sold to Ira S. Bushey & Sons in 1938.

During World War II the Todd shipyard in Erie Basin again operated to capacity, repairing ships and converting them to wartime uses.  From a peacetime average of around 2,000, employment in the yard rose in October 1943 to a peak of 19,616.  During the War years, 3,000 ships passed through the yard.  The Ira S. Bushey Shipyard also operated to capacity, building harbor tugboats for the Navy and Coast Guard on every square foot of available space.  Both shipyards remained active after the War.  The Bushey yard built tugboats and tank barges for non-military clients until 1966, and then did repair work until 1977, when the property was sold to Amerada Hess for expansion of an oil tank farm.  Recently that facility has been operated by Buckeye Energy Services.

Todd Shipyards filled in Erie Basin Graving Dock No. 2 in 1976 after not using it for a number of years.  It had not undergone the same 1929 modernization as Graving Dock No. 1.  The Erie Basin shipyard closed in 1983.  Graving Dock No. 1 was still useful in repairing large hulls, and was kept active by the New York Shipyard Corporation until 1993, and after that by Stevens Technical Services.  This ended in February 2006 when Ikea acquired the property to build a large furniture store.  The remaining shipyard buildings were demolished, and the graving dock was filled in to provide parking space.  Three tall shipyard cranes still tower over the site, in tribute to its past, for as long as Ikea is willing to maintain them.

INDUSTRIES

Industries moved into Red Hook to take advantage of the space that allowed them to expand and diversify their activities.  The Pioneer Iron Works began building its plant in 1866 in the block between William (now Pioneer) Street and King Street, west of Van Brunt Street.  Pioneer specialized in building steam-powered machinery for sugar refineries in the West Indies.  The company operated until around the end of World War II.  Its main building, rebuilt after a major fire in 1881, now houses the Pioneer Works Center for Art and Innovation, a complex of art galleries, spaces for events, classrooms, and artists’ studios and workshops.  One of the most interesting industrial buildings in Red Hook is 76 Van Dyke Street, a single storey monitor roof building built of rough cut stone rather than the usual brick.  76 Van Dyke was built in 1855 for the Brooklyn Fire Brick Works, which made heat resistant brick from clay brought by boat from Sayreville, New Jersey.  Restored in 1995, the building is now home to the Calvart Glass Company, makers of architectural glass.

Apparently nothing survives of the South Brooklyn Steam Engine Works, which was located at the corner of Summit and Imlay Streets.  South Brooklyn built engines, boilers, and condensers for steam vessels.  During the Civil War, they built the machinery for four northern warships, the sidewheel gunboats U.S.S. MENDOTA and METACOMET, the screw gunboat U.S.S. NYACK, and the screw sloop U.S.S. MOSHOLU.  The last was not completed until after the War.  The company was having financial difficulties by the 1870s, and around the turn of the century was reorganized as the Atlantic Basin Iron Works.  In 1941-1942 Atlantic Basin converted the merchant ship RIO PARANA into an escort aircraft carrier for the British Royal Navy.  After World War II they refitted the Moore-McCormack Lines passenger liner BRAZIL, which had been serving as a troopship.

The Lidgerwood Manufacturing Company, founded in 1873, established its plant in the block between Coffee and Dikeman Streets, east of Ferris.  During the 1880s they expanded to take over the entire block.  By 1898 they had further expanded into the block to the north, between Dikeman and Wolcott Streets.  Lidgerwood specialized in steam hoisting machinery, including hoists for mine shafts, donkey engines and boilers for multiple uses, and cargo winches and windlasses for steamships. The company produced earth moving machinery, hoists, and cable ways for the construction of the Panama Canal. Lidgerwood moved its works to Elizabeth, New Jersey, and its Red Hook plant was sold to Brooklyn Edison in 1926-28.  The company survives in Superior, Wisconsin as Superior Lidgerwood Mundy, which among other products manufactures motorized capstans, winches, and other deck equipment for vessels.  Brooklyn Edison retained most of the Red Hook buildings, converted to their uses.  In 2014 many of the Lidgerwood 19^th century industrial buildings were still standing.

Philip H. Gill & Company were active in Red Hook from the 1880s to around 1930.  They were builders of grain elevators, both those on shore and the floating grain elevators seen around the port; tall towers on scow hulls containing the machinery to transfer grain directly from canal boats to oceangoing cargo ships.

The firm of Worthington & Baker, founded in 1845 as builders of steam water pumps, moved from near the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Van Brunt Street in north Red Hook in 1854.  During the Civil War, they built bilge pumps for Northern warships, including the U.S.S. MONITOR.  In 1899 the Worthington Steam Pump Company was acquired by the International Steam Pump Company founded by Benjamin Guggenheim.  By this time, the Worthington works had taken over most of two blocks east of Van Brunt, between Rapelyea Street (now Hamilton Ave.) and Bowne Street, and between Bowne Street and Seabring Street.  Worthington moved to Harrison, New Jersey in 1904, and the buildings were acquired by the Kent Mill Company, manufacturers of grinding machinery.  Half of the former Worthington site was removed to relocate Hamilton Avenue around the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, but at least two remnants of the 19^th century plant survive, including an intact building on the corner of Hamilton and Van Brunt.

Woodcarvers had set up workshops around James Slip in Manhattan near the shipyard district.  Originally specializing in figureheads and other decoration for sailing vessels, they had diversified into producing cigar store figures, carousel rides and decoration, and ornate circus wagons.  Around 1890 Charles Brown moved his workshop from 20 James Slip to 4 North Pier Atlantic Dock.  By 1900 Brown had moved again to nearby 11 Summit Street.  Two eagles now in the collection of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont are signed “C. Brown, 11 Summit.”  In 1908 Brown was joined at 11 Summit by Samuel Anderson Robb, one of America’s most prolific woodcarvers.  Robb left after two years, and Brown shut down the workshop in 1914.

RECENT HISTORY

Red Hook reached a low point in the 1970s and 1980s.  Industries and maritime activities were leaving.  The district was developing an image of neglect and decay, and a reputation for  drugs and crime.  A few “urban homesteaders” began to arrive, taking on the renovation of neglected single-family homes purchased at bargain prices unknown elsewhere in the City.  Some were painters and sculptors taking advantage of a city program subsidizing housing for artists.  Greg O’Connell was a Brooklyn born New York police detective who decided to invest in city real estate, making his first purchase around 1967.  After years of acquiring and restoring buildings in nearby Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, he turned his attention to Red Hook.

O’Connell bought the former German-American Stores warehouse at 106 Ferris Street in 1982, the Merchant Stores Building at 175 Van Dyke Street in 1984, and soon after that the Beard’s and Red Hook Stores warehouses at the foot of Van Brunt Street.  The buildings have been renovated to house a variety of activities, from artist studios to light industries.  The former Red Hook Stores building now houses on its lower floors a very popular Fairway Super Market that opened in 2006.  The Merchant Stores building has housed the Red Hook Winery, Horus Bronze, Pickett Furniture, Flickinger Glassworks, and the Liberty Warehouse event space.  By 2016 the southern New York Dock industrial loft building, designated 160 Imlay Street, was being converted to luxury condominiums by a Los Angeles based developer.

Red Hook has also attracted groups preserving historic vessels.  David Sharps moved his Waterfront Museum from New Jersey to the foot of Conover Street in 1994.  The Museum, housed on board the wooden covered lighter barge L. V. R. R. NO. 79, built for the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1914, offers a full summer schedule of events, promoting understanding of the history of the harbor, and providing a variety of entertainment.  PortSide NewYork recently moved from a temporary berth near the foot of Atlantic Avenue to Commercial Wharf, Atlantic Basin.  PortSide, founded by Carolina Salguero, is located on board the former coastal tanker MARY A. WHALEN built in 1938.  Both vessels represent types once seen on the Red Hook waterfront.  Tankers virtually identical to the WHALEN were built by the Ira S. Bushey & Sons Shipyard from the 1930s to the 1950s, and were used to deliver fuels to depots in Gowanus Creek.  Barges like L. V. R. R. NO. 79 were built by the Bushey Yard in its early years, and by the Theodore Crane Shipyard in Erie Basin.  They were used to transport goods across the harbor from railroad freight terminals in New Jersey to Red Hook piers.

The later arrivals in Red Hook have not turned their backs on the existing population, its needs and its problems.  They have joined forces with long time residents to form organizations such as Red Hook Initiative, Dance Theatre Etcetera, and Restore Red Hook to promote programs that benefit the community.  Other organizations mentioned above; the Pioneer Works, the Waterfront Museum, and Portside NewYork are similarly involved with the community.  Greg O’Connell has sponsored the establishment in Red Hook of a branch of his upstate alma mater Geneseo University, where students can become familiar at first hand with urban problems and their possible solutions.