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
Resiliency: Detailed Flood Prep Info for Red Hook
Google Translation: Chinese(中文), Spanish(Español)
For our larger collection of resiliency info go here.For Jim McMahon's Red Hook Sandy flood map go here.
Please take our short survey about…
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…
Hospital Ship Solace Placed In Commission, 1941
World War II had started but the United States had not yet entered the fight when it launched the hospital ship SOLACE in August 1941. The ship, formerly the liner IRIQUOIS, was converted to a…●
Text of Article: "Hospital Ship Solace Placed in Commission," Brooklyn Eagle, August 10, 1941
With a grim warning that the enemy in the past has fired on ships flying the Red Cross, the Navy's new…
Random Items
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…
A Quarantine War
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…
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…
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…