What's driving this project? Why does PortSide have this thing about the water? Here's an explanation of our motive in presenting history to learn about the past AND to aid planning in our neighborhood of Red Hook - and other NYC waterfronts. This...
Soccer off the boats in Redhook, ca. 1958
Soccer off the boats in Redhook... circa late '50s? See that orange arrow? See that field across the street from the pool? Anyone remember foreign crews coming off ships moored nearby (end of Columbia Street?) and them playing SOCCER in that field?...
SLAVE SHIP ERIE, Atlantic Basin, 1860
A pivotal event in the ending of slavery occurred on December 5, 1860, in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook when the slave ship ERIE was sold at government auction. Its captain and owner, Nathaniel Gordon, was then executed for engaging in the slave...
Daniel Lewis, Fisherman, Brooklyn Directory, 1842
Daniel Lewis was a fisherman in Red Hook in 1842. He is one of five people in The Brooklyn Directory for that year whose address is given as the area of Red Hook rather than a street name.. There were more people living in Red Hook. These five were...
Equitable Resilience Through Preservation - Columbia University
PortSide was engaged to work with the 2020 Spring semester of Columbia University's graduate Historic Preservation studio which used Red Hook as a study area. At the bottom of this page, is an audio tour PortSide gave along this...
Three views of Erie Basin, George Bradford Brainerd photos, ca 1870
Three photographs of Erie Basin by George Bradford Brainerd (1845-1887). Brainerd was a civil engineer who worked for the city of Brooklyn as Deputy Water Purveyor from 1869 to 1886. His book The Water Works of Brooklyn: A Historical and Descriptive...
Dock at the foot of Court Street, ca. 1870.
Photo by George Bradford Brainerd
Men sit along a wooden dock, at the foot of Court Street and a sailboat floats near the next pier in photograph by George Bradfor Brainerd taken sometime in the 1870s. The photograph is by George Bradford Brainerd , 1845-1887. He was a civil...
Strike Busting: Swedes and Norwegians willing to work for less at Finlay's Stores, Atlantic Dock, 1885.
On Saturday March 14, 1885, workers at Finlay's Stores were told that they hourly rate would be cut to 20 cents an hour, down from twenty-five. They refused to work for less pay and the company replaced them with about fifty Swedes and Norwegians....
Finlay Stores and two men in a dinghy, Atlantic Basin ca. 1870
Finlay's Stores were described in 1889 as consisting "of thirty-two lots of land and sixteen large double storehouses, eight of which lie on either side of the entrance to the basin... Four of the storehouses are five stories in height and the other...