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
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contemporary Red Hook retail, arts, non-profits, schools, recreation, transit
- flood prep & resiliency info
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Featured Item
Alf Dyrland, Captain of the MARY A. WHALEN, 1962-1978
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…
Colonies of Cozy Canal Boats Cluster for Winter In Quiet, Land-Locked Havens of Brooklyn Basins, 1911
This article from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sunday, March 12, 1911, recounts the winter-time lives of Erie Canal barge families who winter in Erie Basin.
Colonies of Cozy Canal Boats Cluster for Winter
City of Inland Navigators Prepares for Annual Exodus.
COMMUNITY BOASTS OF UNIQUE FEATURES
Children Enjoy Sports on Docks After School Hours.
With…
Red Hook Flats has Hermit on Mystery Ship, 1931
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…
Random Items
How the Hamilton Avenue Ferry ended, 1942
In 1846 when Hamilton Avenue Ferry service to Manhattan started it was the only mass transit option to and from Red Hook, Brooklyn. This was no longer the case in 1914, street cars and elevated subway…Decline in Buttermilk ChannelPassenger Traffic by the numbers:
1934 – 594,6201935 – 576,4631936 – 515,0141937 – 420,9491938 – 431,4881939 – 368,6541940 – 447,7381941 – 482,0291942 – 261,2631943 – 675…
A Cruise in the Erie Basin, by Don C. Seitz, 1892
A Cruise in the Erie Basin, an article by Don C. Seitz, and published in Frank Leslie's magazinesin 1892, relates the story of Red Hook's Erie Basin.
It grew from a scene with “hardly a building to…
Title Fight: Louis Heineman vs. William Beard
No man ever, perhaps, got so much the best of old Beard as did Louis Heineman, the housemover of the Twelfth ward”
(The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 19, 1891)When Louis Heineman died in 1904, he was reportedly 104 years old, and likely the oldest man in Red Hook if not all of Brooklyn. According to accounts written around the time of his death he came to…
War Materials about to be shipped out From Erie Basin, 1941
"An aerial view made from an American Airlines plane of Erie Basin where 15 ships are shown ready to load crated war material crammed on piers. Vividly reflected in the photo is the manner in which…