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
What is Affordable Anyhow, May 2025
The issue of affordable housing is always an issue in the greater Red Hook, Brooklyn area, as it is elsewhere, but it is particularly relevant at the time of this writing (Spring 2025) when the NYC…
There are plans (as of this writing in 2025) to rebuild the current federally-subsidized Red Hook Gardens; 31 two-family townhouses, on and around Visitation Place. The new buildings promise that…
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…
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…
Random Items
The MARY A. WHALEN
A PDF guide to MARY A. WHALEN inEnglish,French,German,Spanish,Italian
The oil tankerMARY A. WHALENwas launched May 21, 1938.The ship is PortSide NewYork's ambassador to theBLUEspaceand site of our…
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…
Growing land, Squatter Sovereigns and Picking Profit: 1887
A fair portion of today’s Red Hook was once water. An 1887 article in the Brookyn Eagle marvels that Henry and neighboring streets have been extended nearly half a mile in ten years. Marshes with…Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sunday July 3 1887Transcription.
HENRY STREET’S CHANGES--A Walk at the Lower End Well Worth Taking.--The Growth of a Year and a Half – Squatter Sovereigns – Side Thoroughfares…
Captain Maude Jensen, first female licensed pilot of steam vessels in New York Harbor, 1905
"You don't know what I mean about that job out there do you? I thought not. Well, it's this way. Down here in the towing, and ice and water supply business we have a great deal of competition. No, it…The Sun, May 28, 1905THE GIRL WHO RUNS A TUGBOAT: A Day's Cruise with Capt. Maude Jensen who has Just Received a Pilot License.
Maude Jensen is the only woman who is a skipper of a tugboat in this…