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

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Random Items

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 GENERAL SLOCUM ended service as a sinking fireball June 15, 1904, killing over 1,000, most of them women and children. 1,300 were aboard. That made the SLOCUM famous. Her fame was then forgotten…

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…

The concept of quarantine has been around for a long time. As early as A.D. 549, the Byzantine emperor Justinian ordered the isolation of people traveling from places ridden with the bubonic plague.…Full text of the article from theNew York Herald, June 12, 1870 QUARANTINE WARDr. Cochrane Defending the Brooklyn Merchants --- Who Rules the Roost? --- Exciting Scenes Along the…