How high the hydrant Caption: "How high the hydrant--Either they're building fire plugs higher these days, or ... well, at any rate, 18-month-old Anthony Castaldo of 272 3d Ave. isn't worrying about much of anything except how to beat the heat. Scene at President Street and 3d Avenue shows he found the answer. Forecast for today is fair with the high near 80 degrees--Eagle photo by Senko"; he holds a small can in front of the water gushing from the fire hydrant, two girls look on, behind him on left, and a black car is parked in right background.

The Brooklyn community of Gowanus, centered around the Gowanus Canal, is largely made up of historic architecture directly related to the water route. Located between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, it is considered part of Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront. The canal itself is 2.5 miles long, 100 feet wide, and stretches from Gowanus Bay in New York Harbor to Douglass Street. Unlike other industrial areas of the city, Gowanus was never densely built up, and much open space remains today. The structures that surround the canal are generally six stories or fewer, lending a low-scale, 19th-century character. This area continues to be mixed-use manufacturing with peripheral residential enclaves. Before the Gowanus Canal, there was Gowanus Creek. By 1840, industry was growing in Brooklyn, and the creek was enlarged and straightened for barge access to New York Harbor. New York State officially approved plans for the completion of the Gowanus Canal in 1866. The canal became the center of industrial growth in Brooklyn, and by 1880 there were 31 firms operating in different industries such as lumber, coal, hay, grain, oil and building materials along the canal. A decade later these industries expanded to include gas and electric utilities, which required coal and coke. Industrial development spurred residential housing surrounding the canal basin for canal workers. The Gowanus Canal was most heavily used between 1900 and 1930. As industry and traffic increased, so did pollution. A flush tunnel was incorporated into the canal in 1911 in efforts to mitigate the heavy pollution caused by industry. Regardless, after World War I the Gowanus was the busiest—and most polluted—canal in the United States. The canal’s peak was in the 1920s, with an annual rate of 25,000 vessels per year serving more than 50 different manufacturers. After World War II, use of the Gowanus Canal significantly declined. A drop-off in housing development after the war decreased the demand for building materials, a major industry of the canal, and the declining use of coal as an energy source also adversely affected business. Further, the completion of the Gowanus Expressway in 1964 replaced water transportation. As a result, active waterway sites at Gowanus decreased by 50% during this time period. In its day, the Gowanus Canal was the center of industrial growth in Brooklyn and remains a spectacular piece of commercial infrastructure. It was the main reason that Brooklyn transformed from farmland to an industrial giant in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Today the main canal remains completely intact, and over two-thirds of its walls are timber, dating to its initial construction. The design and materials of this waterway are remarkable, surviving examples of 19th-century engineering and construction. Additionally, remnants of industry dot the banks of the water, with much vernacular workers’ housing surviving as well. Historically one of New York’s most contaminated waterways, the Gowanus Canal area was designated as a Superfund Site in 2010. To protect the historic character of the neighborhood, the local community is currently working to place the Gowanus Canal Corridor on the National Register of Historic Places so that its urban industrial character is preserved.

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.

Carroll Street Bridge, 1960. Opened in 1889, the Carroll Street Bridge is a rare retractable crossing, one of two in New York City and three (as of 2013) still in service in the United States. It opens diagonally, with its span slowly pulled into a reserved pocket on the Gowanus Canal’s western bank. Bridge openings are now a rare event, but were once quite common. According to the New York Times: “As recently as the 1990s, the canal was a major waterway for paint factories, oil depots, sand and gravel suppliers, and warehouses alongside it, and the Carroll Street Bridge had to be opened 500 to 700 times a year.”

In 2013 the Brooklyn Collection acquired several boxes of Brooklyn Dodgers memorabilia from Al Todres, a lifelong collector. Todres certainly wasn’t the only one actively collecting Brooklyn Dodgers material nearly 60 years after the team was transferred to Los Angeles. Why does a baseball team that left Brooklyn in the middle of the last century still inspire so much loyalty and curiosity? Every collector has a different answer, and it certainly goes beyond statistics and player performance. The team that would become the Dodgers played in Eastern Park when Brooklyn was still an independent city, through a depression and two world wars. The story of the Dodgers runs parallel to the development of modern Brooklyn, but it wasn’t always an easy story.

By Benjamin Serby The leafy Brooklyn neighborhood of Carroll Gardens is nestled between Degraw Street (or Sackett, depending on your source) to the north and Hamilton Avenue to the south, bounded to the east by either Hoyt or Bond Street (again, answers may vary) and Hicks Street to the west. It’s just a small slice of the borough’s “brownstone belt,” but it packs a wallop, as any pizza enthusiast will tell you. With its deep front lawns, stoop-sitters, and tiny pasticcerias, Carroll Gardens is a unique corner of the city, to be sure — but, in many respects, its past and present tell us much about New York City as a whole. Read the Gotham Center blog post that inspired the walk here.

The Carroll Street Bridge crosses over the Gowanus Canal between Bond and Nevins Street and resides near the border between the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Gowanus and Carroll Gardens. Of the 794 bridges and tunnels currently operating under the purview of the New York City Department of Transportation, it is the least-used bridge in the city. Despite this, the Carroll Street Bridge is actually a New York City historic landmark. It is one of only three remaining retractable bridges operating in the United States! It is also the only wooden bridge in NYC used for cars! (More bridge fun facts: one of the other two retractable bridges also resides in NYC, the Borden Avenue Bridge in Hunters Point, Queens). By the 1860s, the Gowanus Canal was becoming a central hub of modern-day industrial activity for the city of Brooklyn. To advance this industrialization, the city built six bridges to cross the canal. One of them was the original and non-retractable Carroll Street Bridge, an old wooden swing bridge, which closed in 1887 due to fears of its imminent collapse. In 1888, Brooklyn Mayor Alfred Chapin and the Brooklyn Common Council announced their plans for a replacement bridge. One request by local landowners for the new design was a retractable span that could slide into the shore to allow an easier passage for boats (the canal was narrower at Carroll Street). The city approved this design and construction began that same year. The new Carroll Street Bridge opened in 1889 at the cost of $29,600 to build and was designed by the Department of City Works engineers Robert Van Buren and George Ingram. Since then, there have been only slight alterations to the structure. One necessary modification came in 1908 when the bridge’s steam motors were replaced by electric motors. Despite being closed twice in the 1970s, as well as an incident in the mid-1980s that resulted in the bridge being stuck in the open position for several years, the Carroll Street Bridge is a resilient little piece of architecture. In 1987, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the bridge an official city landmark.

Monte’s Venetian Room, Carroll Street, 1960. Monte’s, the storied mob and Rat Pack hangout near the banks of the Gowanus Canal, opened in 1906 as Angelo’s Tavern, after owner Angelo Montemarano. During prohibition, Angelo’s operated as a speakeasy, establishing its ties to Brooklyn’s extra-legal communities. In 1938, Nick Monte, Angelo’s son, undertook an extensive renovation — including the addition of signature red booths — and reopened as Monte’s. Though impossible to corroborate, legend has it that Monte’s became a regular meeting place for Frank Sinatra (said to love the cheesecake) and Sammy Davis Jr. (who allegedly delivered an impromptu after-hours performance). When Monte’s reopened in 2011, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz described its 1970s scene to the New York Post, “\[Monte’s] was a power restaurant for people in public life and not-so-public life. The food was very good, but you went for the ambiance.”

National Packing Box Factory, Union Street, 1960. James Dyckman, a carpenter by training, lost his Front Street box factory to an 1880 fire. He chose to rebuild on Union Street, east of the Gowanus Canal on the site of a former “lime, brick and lath yard.” Dyckman hired architect Robert Dixon to design his new complex, which eventually included five buildings. No. 543 opened in 1889.

Construction of the BMT Fourth Avenue line at Carroll Street, February 20, 1912. At far left is the D'Ambrosio Italian American Restaurant at No. 262 Fourth Avenue. At far right, with the American Flag flying, is Public Bath No. 7 at President Street. The neo-Renaissance baths, completed in 1910, are the oldest surviving public bathing facility in Brooklyn; the building was converted to a gymnasium, the Brooklyn Lyceum, in 1937. A multi-year restoration project was recently completed ahead of further conversion.

Industrial building at the corner of Butler and Nevins Streets, February 28, 1960. The mansard-roofed corner building appears to have been incorporated into a later industrial building — termed a "strange marriage" in a 1977 Archaeological Report prepared ahead of the construction of a new sewage pipe. The report further ventures that the structure "appears to be the oldest building along the length of the proposed sewer construction." The 1977 report also included the following remark from John H. Lindenbush of the Long Island Historical Society: "Men fought and died here as part of our American Revolution. To date, we have honored them with our sewage. We can as a nation do better than that and I sincerely hope that this subcommittee will give serious consideration to including at least a few hundred acres of land around the former creek bed in the Gateway National Recreational Area." (His proposal did not come to pass.) The building, later the site of a Consolidated Edison sub-station, was demolished prior to 2009.

End of the Gowanus Canal, from Douglass Street, west of the canal, 1960.

View of termination of Gowanus Canal taken from Degraw Street, west of the canal, 1960. The light-colored building beyond the canal’s end is the 1914 R.G. Dun & Co. building, a commercial reporting publisher. Further in the distance at right is the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower at 1 Hanson Place. Completed around 1869, the Gowanus Canal was an important transportation link for Brooklyn’s booming industrial economy — and a catch point for the sewage overflow and toxic runoff produced in its watershed. After decades of unsuccessful remediation projects, the Environmental Protection Agency added the Gowanus to its list of Superfund sites in 2010, making cleanup efforts eligible for federal funding.

“View from behind home plate of a pitch thrown during a Brooklyn Dodgers versus Chicago Cubs game. Pitcher is Lefty Liefield of the Chicago Cubs from 1912-1913.” - Ralph Irving Lloyd This is the second Washington Park, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers (previously the Brooklyn Superbas, Bridegrooms, Trolley Dodgers, National Leaguers) from 1898 to 1913. In 1913 they decamped to Ebbets Field on the east side of Prospect Park. The apartment buildings visible over the right field fence were on the north side of 1st Street, between Whitwell and Denton Places.

The Carroll Street Bridge crosses over the Gowanus Canal between Bond and Nevins Street and resides near the border between the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Gowanus and Carroll Gardens. Of the 794 bridges and tunnels currently operating under the purview of the New York City Department of Transportation, it is the least-used bridge in the city.

Who said it's hot? Caption: "Who said it's hot?--The \[eleven] kids in front of 575 Carroll St., between 4th Avenue and 5th Avenue, give a demonstration on how to beat the heat as they frolic in spray from a fire hydrant. Vincent Vollaro (left), 620 Carroll St. and Dominick Montemarano, 579 Carroll St., hold their dog, Rusty, who doesn't seem to enjoy it as much as they youngsters."

Seaway Export Packing Co., 1960. Located just west of the Gowanus Canal, the Seaway company dissolved in 1982. Today, the warehouse space has been converted to a bar and restaurant.

Old-law tenements at 154 Fourth Avenue between Butler and Douglass Streets, October 29, 1936. A few blocks from the busy intersection depicted in Billboards and Signs, Abbott found this boarded-up row of old-law tenements. Rather than conform to the new fire and sanitation regulations, the Fulton Savings Bank, which owned the buildings, abandoned them. The geometric pattern formed by the blocked windows attracted Abbott’s eye, as did the profusion of posters for movies, sports, and cabaret on the first floor. Taken one week before election day, the photograph shows a Democratic Party campaign poster for Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert K. Lehman. The tenements were torn down in late 2007. Today, a twelve-story luxury development (No. 150) stands in their place.