By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Red Hook once had two graving docks and many floating dry docks. This wonderfully illustrated article from the January 13, 1883 edition of Scientific American explains how graving docks at what became Todd Shipyard work. The shipyard site is now...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Don Horton worked with his family on barges from the age of 10 to 18. This meant that during WWII, his family was part of the merchant marines, doing dangerous work since German U-boats were attacking American commercial vessels trading along our...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The tanker MARY A. Whalen, homeship of PortSide NewYork was built for Ira S. Bushey. Ira S. Bushey started his work life driving mules on the Erie Canal in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. After trying various jobs he returned to the...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Norwegians, being master mariners, arrived in New Amsterdam on ships in the early 1600s. In the 1820s and 30s, they began emigrating in groups and rapidly established a "Koloni" in Red Hook. They were ministered by a floating church, then a church...
Named for its ruddy colored soil, Red Hook was once a verdant wetlands etched by a branching network of tidal creeks. The Dutch who settled in Red Hook in the 17th century applied their knowledge of aquatic technology to the marshy landscape and...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Blacks were one of the first groups to arrive in Brooklyn during the Dutch colonial period, usually as slaves, though there were also freemen. To provide an overview of some early Black history, PortSide commissioned this article by Charles Foy...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Shantytowns are a feature of 19th century Brooklyn and New York City. They were the low-income housing of the day, often for newly arrived immigrants. In Red Hook, the presence of shantytowns is directly related to the waterfront (eg, low-lying,...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
PortSide NewYork acknowledges that we are on land and waterways that is Lenape territory, Lenapehoking. This is an intro to the people story of Red Hook, to the changing ethnic groups that lived and/or worked here roughly in the order of their...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
How Red Hook's topography evolves from Native American summer camp to Dutch mill ponds with oyster beds, then ports, warehouses and finally a street grid. Did you know that the 1840s development of Atlantic Dock jumpstarts a 100-year development...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Whoa! Some historic maps and illustrations show aspirations not reality; media then and now can make mistakes, planners and real estate developers can misrepresent Red Hook. This is the start of a feature article. To see the full essay click here:...
