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Recent Posts
- Red Hook’s Lidgerwood Complex and the Importance of Our Industrial History
- Red Hook’s Visitation Church — 165 Years of Neighborhood Service
- The Story of Revere Sugar in Red Hook and the Rise and Fall of Big Sugar in Brooklyn
- A Look Back at Tin City, Red Hook’s Homeless Settlement During the Great Depression
- The Red Hook Houses: Housing Brooklynites During the Great Depression
Category Archives: History
Red Hook’s Lidgerwood Complex and the Importance of Our Industrial History
Long before New York City’s groundbreaking Landmarks Law was passed in 1965, preservationists advocated all across the city for the protection of our historic structures. The passage of the law, which created the Landmarks Preservation Commission as a city department, made it possible to protect entire neighborhoods as well as individual buildings from the …
+ read moreRed Hook’s Visitation Church — 165 Years of Neighborhood Service
By Suzanne Spellen (aka Montrose Morris) Red Hook was a successful harbor town from its beginnings. By the 1850s, it had expanded greatly due to its proximity to Manhattan’s own shipping center as well as being the natural end of the Erie Canal. Boats and barges bringing goods and raw materials began docking in …
+ read moreThe Story of Revere Sugar in Red Hook and the Rise and Fall of Big Sugar in Brooklyn
By Suzanne Spellen (aka Montrose Morris) Sugar was once one of Brooklyn’s biggest industries, and the Revere Sugar plant dominated the Red Hook waterfront for almost 100 years. New York City was once the sugar capital of the world. The ports and piers of New York, specifically those in Brooklyn, made this kingdom of …
+ read moreA Look Back at Tin City, Red Hook’s Homeless Settlement During the Great Depression
By Suzanne Spellen (aka Montrose Morris) The Great Depression was one of the 20th century’s most defining periods. We tend to think it started with the international stock market crash on October 29, 1929, but the industrialized world’s economies were headed for trouble several years before that. By the early 1930s, the effects were …
+ read moreThe Red Hook Houses: Housing Brooklynites During the Great Depression
By Suzanne Spellen (aka Montrose Morris) Housing projects were originally built as a great experiment to house lower income people, one of many to come from the unprecedented poverty and needs of the Great Depression. The economic conditions that brought nationwide misery to this country beginning in 1929 and continuing throughout the 1930s were …
+ read moreRed Hook’s Early Years, Coffeyville, and Life on a Coffey Street Row
By Suzanne Spellen (aka Montrose Morris) Red Hook is one of Brooklyn’s oldest neighborhoods, with a history that is unique. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that Coffey Street, located between the Atlantic and Erie Basins should have a unique history as well. Here is the story of Red Hook’s …
+ read moreA Witness to the Evolution of Red Hook: 44-46 Beard Street
Sailors, food and art: All play a part in the story of 44-46 Beard Street, a utilitarian Italianate-style building overlooking the waterfront and Ikea. It was built as a storefront with residential space above sometime between 1880 and 1886. A lone survivor, and a witness to over 130 years of shipping and industrial history, …
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