Named for its ruddy colored soil, Red Hook was once a verdant wetlands etched by a branching network of tidal creeks. The Dutch who settled in Red Hook in the 17th century applied their knowledge of aquatic technology to the marshy landscape and...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Blacks were one of the first groups to arrive in Brooklyn during the Dutch colonial period, usually as slaves, though there were also freemen. To provide an overview of some early Black history, PortSide commissioned this article by Charles Foy...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
This is an intro to the people story of Red Hook, to the parade of ethnic groups that lived and/or worked here roughly in the order of their arrival. Native American Lenape people enjoy Red Hook as a summer place from the 16th century. Dutch...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Near Christmas time, 1915, a female reporter and an illustrator for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, visited a few of the many canal boats and barges moored for the winter in Erie Basin “in search of a story about holiday preparations and winter life.”...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
An account of the establishment of a mission chapel in Red Hook on Nov 8, 1867 by the general synod of The First Reformed Dutch Church in Brooklyn Heights.
The best tobacco shipped from the American colonies to Europe was grown on the Dutch tobacco plantations around the Wallabout, what is today known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The Yard is also known to have been the site of the last public sale of...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Joris Remsen, the second son of Rem Jansen, was the ancestor of the Remsen family in the US. He built a mansion near the brow of the Heights, which was used for hospital purposes by the British during their occupation of the town in the Revolution....
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The landscape of Red Hook has been dramatically changed by people at least twice in its history. Starting in a major way around 1830, marshland was filled in to make solid land, and the coast line was modified to better suit boats. Nearly...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Sometime before 1689, Stephanus Van Cortlandt (d. 1700) erected a water-powered mill on his property, roughly at the corner of present day Dikeman and Van Brunt Streets. "The mill-pond, which was formed by damming off the creeks and natural ponds in...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The Van Brunt family was a well-established early Dutch family who settled in New Utrecht. This street may be named for Rutgert Van Brunt who was a member of the NYS Assembly from Kings County from 1783-1784.
