Buttermilk Channel is the tidal strait between Brooklyn and Governors Island. The origin of its name is widely disputed, though each story gives us a sense of the historical use of this channel.

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.