By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Sunny Balzano was the beloved owner of a legendary bar, some 90 years old, which became known as Sunny’s. He died March 10, 2016 which prompted an outpouring of grief, tributes, obituaries and one parade. Born in 1935, Sunny grew up in Red Hook...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
" You Brooklynites who rush to Coney or Rockaway at the first blush of a hot day don't know your town so very well, " read an article in The Standard Union in 1929. " To be actually in the 'swim' you are just a nobody until you have visited...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
At the end of the 1800s, New York City docked floating pools, known as baths, along the Brooklyn water front to provide relief from the summer heat. They were protected spaces to swim in the river. Bath No. 4 was docked at the foot...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
"Taking a Dive: These Red Hook youngsters, hit by the summer heat go down for the count from the piers at Atlantic Basin" (Caption from the Brooklyn section of the New York World-Telegram and the Sun). Kids have been swimming off the piers of Red...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A former "Pointer" recalls his childhood growing up in the Erie Basin and the sometimes heated relationship between the "Pointers" and the "Creekers." A reference in the 1890s sugest that terms go back as far as the 1840s. Pointers lived in...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Remembrances of life on Coffey and other streets in Red Hook. "Hello all you Red Hookers!!! My good friend… still lives on Coffey St. I live at Dikeman St. Graduated Visitation school June of 1949. We done most of our dancing in Sam's Bar on Beard...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
From the 1830s to 1965 Castle Williams on Governors Island served as a military prison. Over the years prisoners have attempted to escape by swimming across the Buttermilk Channel to Red Hook. The New York Times Tuesday, AUGUST 29, 1901 ESCAPED BY...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Red Hookers' memories of swimming off the docks as kids. "I remember swimming at the pool and at the docks, and the row boat over to White Rock and sugar from Sucrest, hanging out in Coffey Park and Barshow's junk yard, Christ chapel had father Fox...
