Historic nautical charts provide interesting details on the evolution of Red Hook. From NOAA Office of Coast Survey: Today's Office of Coast Survey traces its charting efforts back to 1807, when President Thomas Jefferson founded the Survey of the...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The Brooklyn Basin was part of Beard estate, south of his Erie Basin on the other side of Columbia Street, also known as the "Long Dock." Unlike Erie Basin, the Beard Estate never developed Brooklyn Basin and for that reason and others there was...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
2016 draft map created by Eymund Diegel, based on his research describing Red Hook streams, ponds, tide mills up to around 1850.
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Cargo ships are designed to carry heavy weights, and without it they ride to high in the water and are unstable. Ships not laden with enough goods would take on ballast, often in the form of sand or gravel to allow them to safely...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In 1868, engineer G. B. Brainerd, reported in The American Naturalist on the sedimentary layers under the Erie Basin. He found beneath 10 feet of water at low tide: 1. Two feet of mud, the ordinary sediment of the bay 2. One foot of yellow sand 3....
Bernard Ratzer was a military surveyor who mapped the Gowanus marshes and farms in 1766. The map was calibrated to 2004 New York City digital base map data by Eymund Diegel, urban planner, using surviving common remnant street intersections (Red...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
1844 Coastal Survey. Red Hook's watery past has a bearing on how this place floods in current times. This map shows the topography at the end of Red Hook's tide mill pond era, meaning that much of what is today called Red Hook is still...
Sandy essentially flooded anyone who built on the former tidal marshes. Map Explanation by mapmaker Eymund Diegel: Red lines are the upland Sandy flood lines (minus part the Fort Defiance Island area which is missing dry non flood area during...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In the 1850s, David P. Wild was the proprietor of the Bay House. He advertised that the bar was well supplied with wines, brandies, ales and cigars of the very best brands. He also outfitted fishermen with sail and row boats, tackle and bait. The...
