By the 1830s, inspired by the Erie Canal, Alderman Daniel Richards built the Atlantic Basin at Red Hook, which was followed by the Erie Basin. This was a massive success in terms of industrial activity and the home to the first grain elevator in the burgeoning Port of New York. At the time, 80% of grain in the state traveled through Brooklyn. By 1869, the Gowanus Canal — a project through which the natural Gowanus Creek was widened and adjacent swampland was dredged for factories and warehouses — was complete, and 700 buildings were constructed here per year for the next decade. The current Hamilton Avenue Bridge, seen in the far distance in this image, was built in 1942 and, like the Union and 3rd Street bridge, is a vascular bridge (where two leaves lift up to allow marine traffic through). Today the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway also towers over the Hamilton Avenue Bridge.

In this image you can see four structures above the Canal: in the foreground, the Hamilton Avenue Bridge; the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway; the 9th Street Bridge; and the Culver Viaduct, which carries the F and G trains. Built in 1927, the Viaduct stands 90 feet above the canal to avoid the need for tunneling under the canal, the 4th Avenue line, and the bedrock of Park Slope heading east. The Smith-9th Streets station, pictured far left, is the highest subway station in the world at 87.5 feet above the canal.

Look at any view of New York’s waterfront before the mid-20th century and you’re likely to see a barge. Barges linked Manhattan and Long Island with the rest of the country’s rail network, which had no direct freight link across the lower Hudson or the harbor. Even today, freight trains must take a 300-mile detour across a bridge at Selkirk, near Albany, to get from Brooklyn to New Jersey. Instead, 2-3 times every weekday, freight cars roll-aboard barges called car floats (built for the Pennsylvania Railroad) to cross the harbor between Owls Head, Brooklyn, and Greenville, Jersey City, just as they have for more than 150 years. In addition to barges carrying entire train cars, this lighterage system had a whole set of barge cognates for rail cars. Every railroad that served New York had its own fleet. Written by Stefan D-W, Associate Archivist, the Seamen’s Church Institute & Museum Assistant, the Waterfront Museum.