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, the search window, or interactive map. On the map, click the colored, numbered dots to expand multiple items in that location. Then, click on a pin to explore that item. Anchor icons mean sites of major importance.More about this site
Click empty spot on map to activate it
Featured Item
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…Decline in Buttermilk Channel Passenger Traffic by the numbers:
1934 – 594,6201935 – 576,4631936 – 515,0141937 – 420,9491938 – 431,4881939 – 368,6541940 – 447,7381941 – 482,0291942 – 261,2631943 – 675…
Growing land, Squatter Sovereigns and Picking Profit: 1887
A fair portion of today’s Red Hook was once water. An 1887 article in the Brook 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…
Brooklyn Spar Company
In 1921, the Brooklyn Spar Company advertised in The Marine Journal that it sold wooden masts and posts for derricks and flag poles, which the company made at its waterfront facility at the foot of…
Random Items
Brooklyn Spar Company
In 1921, the Brooklyn Spar Company advertised in The Marine Journal that it sold wooden masts and posts for derricks and flag poles, which the company made at its waterfront facility at the foot of…
RMC Canvas and Rope
The staff of RMC Canvas and Rope, posing by their hand-made rope fender. The Red Hook company ended its long run serving the maritime businesses in 2005.
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…
Insurance maps of the Warehouses, &c. in Brooklyn, 1861
Insurance maps of the Warehouses, &c. in Brooklyn from the Navy Yard to Portition Street, By W M. Perris, C.E. and Surveyor. Perris & Browne, Publishers of Insurance Maps, Corrected to October 1861,…