A project by PortSide NewYork

Welcome to 400+ years of Red Hook!  Inclusion is a theme in this e-museum that memorializes forgotten, overlooked and erased histories. It’s a resource for locals, tourists, history buffs, urban-planners, educators, students, flaneurs.  It tells NYC’s maritime story in microcosm.  Explore:

  • our waterfront past & present
  • contemporary Red Hook retail, arts, non-profits, schools, recreation, transit

  • flood prep & resiliency info

Explore via menus...

Click empty spot on map to activate it

Random Items

Alf Dyrland was Captain of the MARY A. WHALEN from her rechristening in 1962 until 1978 when he retired. He was her first captain; she was his last boat. Alf loved the MARY deeply. As he lay dying in…Index of Items Telegram, February 12, 1946 to Alf Dyrland declaring the Government takeover of the marine transportation and towing companies in the New York Harbor area and directing strikers to…

“So little opportunity have women had hitherto for demonstrating their capability for business, that it can only be indicated by the success of some particular woman in some unusual and exceptional…

Month after month a three-mastered schooner was seen anchored off-shore in the Red Hook Flats.  On board was just one man who never went ashore.  How he got by was a mystery to the few folk who knew…Full transcript from the Brooklyn Eagle, May 29, 1931  Red Hook Flats has Hermit on Mystery Ship--Jack-of-All-Trades is Aboard Old Schooner Waits for It to Be Sold--By O. R. Pilat  She has been called…

The Red Hook Building Company was the brainchild of Col. Daniel Richards, a man who grew up in upstate New York. When the Erie Canal opened in 1825 and had a powerful economic effect, Richards was…Select text from the Proposal. (A pdf of the full original is linked below) "The advantages of Brooklyn as a place of residence, as well as for commercial purposes - in view of its proximity to the…