Church of the Ascension, 1935. Designed in Early English Gothic style by noted church architect Henry Dudley, the Church of the Ascension hosted its first mass in 1866. Funding for the church was donated by two notable parishioners: J.W. Valentine and Thomas Fitch Rowland, the owner of Greenpoint’s Continental Iron Works. Following the devastation of 2012's Hurricane Sandy, the church became the logistical base in North Brooklyn for the 'Occupy Sandy' relief efforts.

The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company's Clubhouse was located on Manhattan Avenue in Clay Street. The Electric Railway Review of 1903 reported of its opening on Tuesday, July 7th. The building cost a sum of $40,000 and included the headquarters for the BRT's Benefit Association, who at the time had over three thousand members. The clubhouse portion of the facility provided access for any employee of the train company to 200 lockers, four pool tables, four bowling lanes, and a sizeable library. For the two dollars a year, employees could also be instructed on a variety of subjects. Evening courses ranged from foundational classes such as penmanship, literature, music, and arithmetic, or on topics closely related to their trade like electricity and mechanical drawing. Students of these classes had additional admission to the clubhouse gym and bathing facilities. Companies at the turn of the century would provide amenities of this sort to keep their workforces happy.

Pottery Beach, located where West Street met the East River, was named for a pottery factory that once stood on its site. A reporter from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle set out to meet the man who gave the beach its name on Christmas Eve of 1883. The account reads more like a fable than an actual news report, though it provides an account of life in Greenpoint before the waterfront was lined with heavy industry. Of the name "Pottery Beach," the man claimed: "there used to be an old pottery here, but it went to ruin after the owners had died and gone, and year after year...there was nothing left but a few old sticks and bricks which told the tale. Well, when I found out that the beach used to be used as a pottery, I concluded at once to call it pottery beach, an' by that name it has gone ever since." The so-called "owner" of the beach, as the newspaper christened him, decided to live on the beach after finding himself homeless. The man, who referred to himself in the third person only as "Jack," was in his past life a captain "of as pretty a ship as did ever sail the ocean," so it was fitting that the residence he built was a haphazardly fashioned cabin on top of a boat. In fact, the journalist for the Eagle was forced to take a row-boat out for an interview because the evening tides were high enough to partially submerge the sunken ship. Jack claimed that Greenpoint's sandy shore was a popular fishing spot, swimming hole, and place to watch yacht races. The former captain had lived on the beach for fifteen years, making a living selling provisions like ginger-snaps, lemonade, soda water, ginger beer, and cigarettes to young beach-goes "their mothers don't know it...they will not git a licking because Jack will not say anything about it." After bidding the man farewell, the reporter reflected on the fate of the area. He wrote: "\[it] will in a very short time be a thing of the past. Large manufactories are constantly springing up in Greenpoint, and all available waterfront will be needed...The property is convenient to all Greenpoint ferries and is within a few minutes of New York, and will doubtless in a short time be built upon by one of the large oil companies now located in Hunter's Point and Greenpoint."

Shadowed by a wastewater treatment plant, this corner of Greenpoint was once a bronze foundry so famous it is rumored to have been visited by President Theodore Roosevelt. The Roman Bronze Works specialized in the lost-wax casting technique, which allowed artists to produce masterfully detailed sculptures.

Great Lakes Coal and Coke Corporation coal yard and shipping dock at Newtown Creek, 1934.

Vernon Avenue Bridge, 1930. While many of the other Newtown Creek crossings have been replaced over the years with new infrastructure in the same location, there is no longer a bridge where the Vernon Avenue Bridge once stood. The bridge opened in October 1905 and was used for trolley, automobile, and pedestrian traffic. It replaced an 1882 swing bridge. The bridge connected the main thoroughfares of two communities: Manhattan Avenue in Brooklyn and Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City. While early on the bridge saw heavy use (in 1918 it had 2,241,465 vehicular crossings and 168,630 trolley trips), eventually it became inadequate for the city's needs. It often broke down, was up for the passage of ships, and the constant traffic was hard on the roadways. In addition, it was rammed by a 10,000-ton ship carrying coal in 1949. In the mid-1950s the bridge was razed and replaced with the nearby Pulaski Bridge.

The Chelsea Fiber Mills at 1155 Manhattan Avenue was a part of North Brooklyn's rope industry, which grew due to its proximity to Newtown Creek, then an industrial waterway. The rope industry began supplying nearby shipyards but outlived the shipbuilding industry and survived well into the 20th century. The complex is now the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Corporation (GMDC). What started as a few low brick buildings on the waterfront in the late 19th century soon grew to an eight-building complex by 1903. The facilities housed 366,000 square feet of manufacturing space. The president of the company, George Pratt lead the company through this time of growth. Pratt was also the son of Charles Pratt, the president of Astral Oil which was located just blocks away. The Chelsea Fiber Mill manufactured marine rope from sisal, manila, jute, and hemp. This mill and another North Brooklyn rope producer, the American Manufacturing Company, employed around 4,000 people according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Many of the employees lived in the neighborhood of Greenpoint or across the creek in Queens. Employees of the Fiber Mill would walk across the Vernon Avenue bridge whose landing was adjacent to the complex. Also nearby, the Manhattan Avenue Trolley line carried employees right to the mill. In fact, the turnaround barn was located just across Manhattan Avenue from the Mill. Builder's drawings of the site indicate that materials and fuel were received via loading bays right on the waterfront. From there, coal was carted on tracks that covered the roofs of the lower buildings, feeding the gargantuan two-story-tall boilers from rooftop chutes. These boilers, which held quantities massive enough to cover an entire baseball diamond, dated 1880 from and remain inside the facility today. Though the Mills flourished during the World Wars, it was not able to survive past the 1950s. The mill closed up shop, and the complex was adapted for use by textile manufacturers and fabric dyers. In 1974, the City of New York seized the property from then-owner Grossen Dye Works for failure to pay taxes. Once seized, the city lacked proper funding to update or even maintain the complex. Commercial tenants rented spaces for low rates and set up studios and workshops, though occupants were expected to perform their own maintenance. By the 1980s, private developers were invited to gauge the marketability of the complex, though no potential buyers stepped forward. Growing tired of the lack of structure the city provided for the former mill, a group of tenants, community members, local businesses, and elected officials devised their own plan to convert the property into art and industrial center. The tenants formed the Woodworking Center Equity Corporation to manage the facilities and handle leases in the building. In 1992, the head of the tenant group and David Sweeny, the director of economic development at the North Brooklyn Development Corporation, worked together to incorporate the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center (GMDC). The non-profit GMDC was able to purchase the building from the city for $1 with an additional pledge of one million dollars from the city for renovations. The corporation kept rents low and encouraged light industry by accepting small and medium-sized manufacturing businesses in the building. Currently, 76 artists and small businesses work out of the space. Additionally, GMDC employs around 360 people from adjacent communities, rooting the liveliness of the building in the neighborhood, keeping with the spirit of the original Chelsea Fiber Mill.

What happens when two Urban Archive staff members are practically neighbors? They go on a walk capturing as many then-and-now pictures as they can! If you’re in North Brooklyn sometime soon, see if you can take some of your own!

St. Elias Catholic Church 149 Kent Street Church: William B. Ditmars, 1869–70 School: W. Wheeler Smith, 1879 St. Elias Greek Rite Catholic Church, formerly the Reformed Dutch Church of Greenpoint (bottom), combines elements of the Romanesque Revival and Victorian Gothic styles, both popular in the post-Civil War period. Its brick and stone façades have round-arch openings, polychromatic ornament and a columned portico entrance. Its polygonal Sunday school building mimics a medieval Italian baptistery, but another Victorian touch can be found in the handsome wooden porch on its east end.

BRT Depot/ Clubhouse, 1906.

The Roman Catholic Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius, October 19, 1958. This Roman Catholic parish was founded by members of Greenpoint's Polish Community in 1916, with the church itself completed the following year. In the 1958 photo, black bunting appears over the entrance, commemorating the mourning of Pope Pius XII, who had died 10 days earlier.

St. Elias Catholic Church, October 29, 1958. Built in “Ruskinian Gothic” style with alternating white and brownstone arches, the Reformed Dutch Church of Greenpoint was completed in 1870. A Sunday School building was added in 1879. The church was sold St. Elias, a Greek Catholic congregation, in 1943, when the Reformed Dutch Church moved to a smaller building on nearby Milton Street. The Kent Street church has been abandoned since 2007.

Roman Bronze Works foundry, Green Street, ca. 1910. The Roman foundry, established in 1897, specialized in lost-wax casting and worked with prominent clients, including Tiffany Studios and the sculptor Frederic Remington. In 1927, operations were shifted to the Tiffany factory on 43rd Avenue in Corona, Queens. Today, the former foundry site is occupied by the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant (which includes the large silver onion-shaped Digester Eggs, also known as the Sh\*t Tits).

179 Freeman Street, October 19, 1958.