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."