Workers fixing a ship propeller at Todd's Shipyard, Erie Basin, Brooklyn ca. 1950

" All day naked youngsters are perched on these logs, watching their bait, chasing each other over the slippery lumber or diving and paddling in the water." A story about naked boys in the late 1800s who fish for crabs among the millions of...

The Three Star Line - Société Les Affréteurs Réunis - was a French charter shipping line. In 1920, they advertised regular sailings to Spain, North Africa and Marseilles from the Erie Basin, Red Hook Brooklyn.

This is an advertisement for Todd Ship Yard in the 1920 Port of New York Annual report, a few years before the establishment of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In 1920, Todd had facilities on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts; one of...

John F. McKenna was a wholesaler and retailer of lumber for shipyards, industry, and heavy construction. His office was at 74 Beard Street and his depot in the Erie Basin.  Lumber was a major Red Hook business, ships filled with it, and large...

A 1918 photograph of the SS Kralingen. The ship was camouflaged in whites, blues, greys and black, making it a dazzel ship. The aim of the zebra stripe camouflage was not to make the ship hard to find, but to make it harder for enemies to accurately...

Literary Reference 1908 detective novel with a setting in Erie Basin “Alice gazed about and presently recognized her surroundings. "Why, this is the Erie Basin!" she murmured. "How in the world did I ever come here?" Now, the Erie Basin has...

Todd Shipyards started life in Brooklyn, in 1869, as Handren and Robins. After Handren's death in 1892, it became the J. N. Robins Co. and then, after merging with the Erie Basin Dry Dock Company, which had been established by Delamater Iron Works,...

According to the The New York Press in 1899, the Atlantic Docks made the surrounding area of Columbia Heights less desirable for the well-to-do.  They left for more "artistic" places, leaving in their wake lower rents for "a cheaper class of...

US customs found $10,000 worth of liquor on steamship docked in Erie Basin. New York Times , January 21, 1926, excerpt: Bullets and Fists Foil Rum Runners --- Custom Men Seize $10,000 Worth of Liquor after a Battle on the Pier -- Contraband on 10...