View of the Gowanus Canal from the Manhattan and Queens-bound platform of the elevated Smith—Ninth Streets Station, December 15, 1958. The station, completed in 1933, is the highest subway station above ground level, worldwide.

The 9th Street Bridge, located just north of the Hamilton Avenue Bridge and under the Culver Viaduct, is a lift bridge. Formerly a bascule bridge, the current bridge underwent renovation and reopened in 1999; it has a lift span of 82 feet and a vertical clearance, when lifted, of 60 feet above the canal.

Frame house on the north side of 9th Street, between Second and Third Avenues, 1933.

Duro Instrument Co, 451 Third Avenue; June 15, 1959.

The Central Power Station of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) was built in 1901 to replace a powerhouse that had burned down in Ridgewood, Queens the year before. This facility was to take over the functions of the burnt-out powerhouse and provide energy to a new sprawling set of BRT lines. Brooklyn Rapid Transit selected the Gowanus Canal location to provide the station with easy access to coal, water, and other necessary resources. According to the building's 2019 Landmark Designation report, it is considered "of the most prominent buildings constructed along the Gowanus Canal in the first half of the 20th century." Engineer Thomas E. Murray is credited as the designer of this Classical and Romanesque Revival Style masonry structure. As technology progressed, the building's massive boiler house eventually became obsolete and was demolished in the 1950s. Nevertheless, the power station would go on to supply energy to the BMT Fifth Avenue line even after the BRT dissolved. It ended its career serving New York's consolidated transit system as part of MTA's Fourth Avenue Line. In 1975, the city sold the building and it was briefly found use as a paper recycling plant. Beginning in the late 1990s, the building stood abandoned as a lot of light industry left Gowanus. The power station's vacant interior became the perfect canvas for graffiti artists, and its cornice served as a billboard for political messages, like "End stop & frisk. Hands off the kids!" and "Open your eye girl," that survive to this day. By 2001, runaways and homeless teenagers converted the building's cavities into a community, christening it the "Batcave," an allusion to the animals who lived in the beams of the massive structure. The "cave" was furnished with street-scavenged mattresses, outfitted with rainwater supplied toilets, a fridge, and a TV that was powered (by means of 400-feet of extension chord) by the Carroll Street Bridge. According to Zachary Edminster, a previous tenant of the "Batcave," the community who settled there had a strict no hard drugs policy. Eventually, a 2006 New York Daily News article exposed the community of homeless residents. Following the article, the power station was then partially sealed off to discourage trespassers. The squatters of the building trickled out, though the "Batcave" was still utilized as a destination for underground parties and events. The graffiti-covered walls and jagged ceiling often enticing urban explorers and artists. In 2012, a philanthropist bought the building with plans to turn it into Powerhouse Arts, a fabrication and education space for artists. The reincarnation of the "Batcave" is slated to open in 2021, with an addition where the boilerhouse stood designed by starchitects Herzog & de Meuron.

Our Saviour’s Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1941. By the late 19th century, Scandinavian immigrants had arrived in South Brooklyn, finding work in local factories and along the Red Hook waterfront. In 1886, the Danish community was able to purchase two adjoining townhouses on 9th Street, which they then converted into a church and attached rectory. Our Saviour’s congregation moved to Brooklyn Heights in 1957 (it was thereafter known as the Danish Seamen’s Church). The Church sold the 9th Street sanctuary to the American Legion in 1962.

Worker posing with a siphon form during construction on the BMT Fourth Avenue line, near 13th Street, July 2, 1915. The 8'5" wooden scaffold was used for pouring concrete.