Atlantic Basin

Theme curated by: The Red Hook WaterStories Team
In 1834, Brooklyn is incorporated as a city, but most of Brooklyn is still farmland and woods, except for a suburb that is now Brooklyn Heights. At that time, Red Hook is a watery place, with tide mills ponds, corn fields, orchards, the Bull Creek canal and middens (large piles of oyster shells, the remains of a long history of Lenape meals). Almost no one lives here.

That changes abruptly in the late 1840s when the canal is filled, and the Atlantic Dock Company builds a man-made harbor with granite warehouses. The Atlantic Dock (also called the Atlantic Basin) was envisioned by Col. Daniel Richards, a developer who set Red Hook on the path to becoming one of the world's major commercial ports. While living in upstate New York, Richards saw the powerful economic effects resulting from the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825. Looking to capitalize on it, he moved to Brooklyn to build a terminus that could handle all the boats and products coming down the Canal.

The main impetus for building Atlantic Basin was to improve the efficiency of unloading ships and storing cargo compared to the chaos in the Manhattan area now called the South Street Seaport where a street ran between piers and warehouses, and warehouses were inadequate to service the needs – and to create a large consolidated, vertically integrated facility. In modern terms, Atlantic Basin was planned as a de-mapped industrial park. It was designed so ships could dock parallel to the pier/wharf upon which the warehouse sat and cargo could be lifted right up into that warehouse without street traffic being in the way. It was also a vertically integrated facility in that it had places to sell the cargo (showrooms) and supply the ships themselves in areas that did not impede the ship unloading. We recently found evidence that the vertical integration even included plans for ship maintenance in the form of a hydraulic dock but did not find evidence that the dock was built.

Then as now, change triggers NIMBY complaints. The lament is that the maritime action ruins the pastoral view, so “nice” people are moving away from Columbia Street.

During the next century, Atlantic Basin is always packed. Freighters, tugs, barges, grain elevators, and passenger ships cram the place. A major step in the abolition of slavery takes place here when the slave ship ERIE is sold at government auction, impounded for breaking laws against shipping humans for the slave trade. President Abraham Lincoln is involved in the matter and uses it as a national example. The Captain of the ERIE Nathaniel Gordon is executed for his crime, the only American to receive this punishment. Later in the 1800s and 1900s, refugees and waves of immigrants arrive by ship including the first Puerto Rican community in the city.

Several modernizations erase the Victorian cobblestones and looming brick and granite warehouses. Today’s Atlantic Basin of sprawling asphalt and flimsy metal sheds arrives in the late 1950s and early 1960s when about half the waterspace is filled (the water used to reach almost to Imlay Street) and the last historic buildings are leveled. This modernization is promptly out-of-date because the introduction of containerization means that piers designed to handle break-bulk cargo (stuff in barrels and sacks and on pallets) have less and less use. The waterside freight railroad chugs along until the late 1980s.

Freight activity picks up again in the early 2000's filling the Pier 11 shed with cacao beans under management by ASI (American Stevedoring Inc), but real estate speculation and plans for the cruise terminal soon flatten the freight story.

WHO OWNS AND RUNS THIS NOW?

Atlantic Basin was part of the Red Hook Container Terminal (RHCT) until 2005, when the City said they needed it to support the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal that was being planned for Pier 12, the pier along the Buttermilk Channel.

The current “Atlantic Basin” has more asphalt than water and runs south from RHCT to Wolcott Street, and east to Imlay Street and includes Pier 11 (our home) and its warehouse, along with Pier 12 and its warehouse (converted into to the cruise terminal). Most of the site (minus a chunk along Imlay Street that the City owns) is owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a bi-state agency, and rented to the Economic Development Corporation of New York City (NYC EDC), a non-profit that does major economic planning and real estate management for the city. The EDC rented the Pier 11 shed to Phoenix Beverage who, a few years later, sold their beverage distribution business and became the stevedoring company that now runs RHCT.

Recently, Atlantic Basin has been home to a quirky-as-Red-Hook combination of users.

Tenants in the three sheds bracketing the waterspace have included the Secret Service, the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, and businesses renting party supplies, a fruit and vegetable distributor, a recycler of glass and plastic bottles, a firm installing internet cables, a restorer of vintage cars and others. Around late spring 2018, Phoenix Beverage pulled out of their lease, and the EDC began to directly manage the Pier 11 shed. Businesses that had been tenants of Phoenix in the Pier 11 shed began leaving, Some of these left due to the disruptions of the Formula E car race that takes over the place for about a month. During 2019, Pier 11 shed spaces were not re-rented.

During the first years of the DockNYC program running the Pier 11 berth spaces, the boat tenants were the most diverse array of boats on a NYC pier: a tall ship, replica paddle wheeler, tour boats and dinner boats, a repurposed historic tug and two repurposed oil tankers, one in commercial use as a dockbuilders platform; and PortSide NewYork is located on the historic tanker MARY A. WHALEN at the south end of Pier 11.

In early 2019, the EDC announced plans to convert the Pier 11 berth space north of our ship to NYC Ferry Homeport 2. This work was delayed during the pandemic and the homeport footprint changed; and the work commenced on 9/26/22 after the abrupt eviction of all the boat tenants the preceding week except for Manhattan by Sail and PortSide. That same week, PortSide's pandemic pop up park was also evicted by the EDC.


The historic name for the south end of the basin is “Clinton Wharf,” and on June 1, 2017, service started on the NYC Ferry that has a dock on Clinton Wharf. That ferry is likely to transform Red Hook, just as Atlantic Basin transformed Red Hook in the 1850s. The presence of the ferry and the cruise terminal here make Atlantic Basin "the maritime gateway to Red Hook" as PortSide explained to the EDC, a gateway that would benefit from PortSide's proposed services in the form of wayfinding, interpretation, activations of the exterior space, and building space in the Pier 11 shed to handle more visitors.

Below are some Atlantic Basin WaterStories. Many more can be found by browsing the "subject" Atlantic Basin in the top menu, or by following tags.

More content coming over time! Check back for updates!



Col. Daniel Richards was a visionary developer who set Red Hook on the path to becoming one of the world's major commercial ports. Inspired by the powerful economic effects resulting from the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, Richards moved from…

Ichaboe, a small island off the coast of Nambia, once towered high with mounds of seabird guano - an excellent fertilizer. Large scale exporting of the “white gold” began in 1843 and for a few years 450 ships were streaming to and from the island,…

An artist's rendering of a possible future Red Hook that never was. The birds-eye view of the Atlantic Dock was possibly done for the Atlantic Dock Company to promote their vision of what Red Hook could be. The two statements printed on the map…

The Atlantic Dock Company brought over workers from Germany to build the Atlantic Basin after the Irish workers who had begun the job demanded better pay. On April 15, 1846 newspapers reported on a riot betweenangry Irish and the newly arrived…

Construction of The Atlantic Dock - a massive, man-made harbor for deep water ships, began on June 3, 1841. The erection of stout stone warehouses and towering grain elevators that could handle products coming down the Erie Canal began in 1844; and…

Grain was king in Red Hook, Brooklyn, in the latter half of the 1800s, . Boats loaded with grain would float down the Erie Canal, then down the Hudson River to the grain storehouses of Atlantic Basin, and later, in an even bigger way, Erie Basin.…

The sweet story from the Atlantic Docks, reprinted in full below, ran in the Towanda, Pennsylvania's Bradford Reporter, on December 22, 1864. This good natured human interest story, with little doubt copied from another newspaper, is notable in part,…

Atlantic Basin around the end of the Civil War. The sidewheel steamer is the TEAZER, formerly the Confederate blockade runner BAT. The propeller steamer FAH KEE is beyond her. The warehouses, with grain elevators, are lining Commercial Wharf.  The…

Grain elevators once towered in Atlantic Basin, as can be seen in the etching published in Harper's Magazine in 1871. They were used to transfer grain from ship to warehouse or ship to ship. They frequently unloaded the canal boats that…

The Atlantic Basin was the home to hundreds of Erie Canal boats during the winter months. Families, including children, lived on the the boats, tending their floating homes, until the ice melted and they could begin shipping produce again.

The India Wharf Brewing Company was formed in 1880 to brew beer, ale, and porter. Their initial capitalization was $1,000,000. According to Wine and Spirit Gazette of that year, the company was formed with a plan to share profits with liquor dealers…

Clinton Wharf is on the southwest side of Atlantic Basin. It was probably named in honor of DeWitt Clinton, governor of New York and father of the Erie Canal. The three piers shown [indicated in yellow] were all covered.Funk-Edye & Co.,…

The Atlantic Dock etched by Charles Adams Platt (1861-1933) in 1888. A three-masted schooner tied up to a pier dominates the left side of the image

Mr. Stewart is one of the largest produce merchants at the Atlantic Basin. He was also predominant at the Washington Market in Manhattan. His produce boats provided seed potatoes to the farmers of Long Island, from the India Wharf and Central…

In 1890, Mrs. A. M. Hamilton, a widow, was interviewed in Atlantic Basin, and celebrated by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as being equal to any man running a canal boat. Beginning in the mid-1820s, canal boats brought produce from the nation's interior…

Select passages from The Citizen guide to Brooklyn and Long Island, 1893 [Page 103] A comparison between the commerce of New York and Brooklyn will serve to show the relative importance of the two cities as regards shipping and allied industries.…

Around 1895, the several and various Brooklyn dock and warehouse companies, including the Atlantic Dock Company, merged into a trust called the Brooklyn Wharf and Warehouse Company. Old monied names such as Pierrepont - there is a street named after…

Red Hook was feasting on mackerel, late October of 1901. A school of the fish reportedly chased by bluefish and porpoises had found their way into Atlantic Basin. Fishermen lined the piers, catching the mackerel with makeshift poles and any kind of…

Photo of Barber Lines & Co at Pier 36, Atlantic Basin.Herbert and James Barber started their company in 1886, incorporating as Barber & Company in 1902.  The company had several subsidiaries and off-shoots including the Barber Steamship Lines…

An aerial view of the Atlantic Basin,looking north-northeast, taken on July 24, 1951. Atlantic Basin had been roughly this shape and configuation for a little over 100 years when this photo was taken. There was a lot more parking lot and a lot…

Construction on Pier 11 began in 1956. According to this newspaper article the three berth pier was estimated to cost nearly 7 million dollars. The project resulted in the demolition of thirteen Civil War era warehouses in the area. Text of…

In the late 1950s the Atlantic Basin was altered to make it more suited for cargo trucks. To do this roughly the back half of the basin was filled in and a new long metal warehouse shed, with raised loading docks, was built. This is what stands…

Kids have been swimming off the piers of Red Hook probably ever since the piers existed. It is not common today in part because of the increasing awareness that the polluted water, particularly after a rain fall, is a health hazard."Taking a Dive:…

An aerial view of Atlantic Basin, ca. 1965. In the foreground is the rail car float; several cargo ships are in the background. Neither the buildings nor the car float exists today.

Joe Ruggiero, aka “Joey Chips” since he always shows up at a party with a bag of chips, is a WWII vet who is still driving in 2016. He served as a Bosun Mate on the Navy vessel THURSTON and participated in 6 D-Days in 4 years including Normandy,…

Atlantic Basin is Port Authority property. It is leased to the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). Two of the piers are operated under and NYCEDC program called DockNYC. DockNYC is operated by BillyBey, part of the NY Waterway…