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.

In 1832, Neziah Bliss (1790–1876) and Eliphalet Nott (1773–1866), business partners in steamship production, began purchasing acres of farmland in Greenpoint and laying out streets. Spurred by a period of economic growth and an influx of European immigrants during the 1850s, more than a dozen shipbuilding firms moved across the river from Manhattan and turned the neighborhood into a major shipbuilding center. Franklin Street, named after Benjamin Franklin, was established as its commercial strip with shops catering to local industries. During the Civil War, the United States Navy commissioned several major ironclad war ships from the Continental Iron Works, which occupied a seven-acre stretch of the Greenpoint waterfront and employed 1,400 men. The first of these, the Monitor, famously defeated the Merrimac, a Confederate ironclad ship, in a standoff in Virginia in 1862, just a month after its launch. The Monitor was a source of pride for the neighborhood and is commemorated to this day by a monument in Monsignor McGolrick Park. While shipbuilding declined after the Civil War, Greenpoint’s other industrial enterprises, which included porcelain making, glass making and oil refining, continued to thrive. The influential Union Porcelain Works on Eckford Street helped shape American porcelain design. Its owner, Thomas C. Smith, purchased a tract of land on Milton Street in the 1860s and constructed a number of homes there, decorating some of their hearths with blue and white porcelain tiles. It was claimed they were the only tiles manufactured in the United States that could withstand such heat. The Greenpoint Glass Works, another local company, gained such acclaim that Mary Todd Lincoln commissioned table settings for the White House. Greenpoint and Williamsburg also formed a hub for oil refineries. Greenpoint’s residential development was closely aligned with its industrial growth, as workers’ housing was built inland from the waterfront. Large, elaborate rowhouses were constructed for owners and managers, while modest rowhouses, tenements and apartment buildings were built for laborers. Much of this construction occurred during the second half of the 19th century, and the neighborhood still displays a variety of architectural styles popular at that time. Early rowhouses contain elements of the Italianate and Greek Revival styles, while later styles include French Second Empire, neo-Grec, Queen Anne and Romanesque Revival. Some of the neighborhood’s later institutional buildings, such as the Greenpoint Savings Bank and the Mechanics and Traders Bank, were designed in the Classical and Renaissance Revival styles. The neighborhood also boasts many fine churches, designed in the Gothic Revival, Victorian Gothic and Romanesque Revival styles, among others. There are two historic districts in Greenpoint: the Greenpoint Historic District, located in the neighborhood’s core, and the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District, which covers roughly one block. A section of the neighborhood is also a National Register of Historic Places District.