A History of Brooklyn Bridge Park

by Nancy Webster

  “When it came to development as it was usually conducted, all of us knew our parts,” explains former City Council member Ken Fisher, who played an instrumental role in securing the initial city funding for the park. “A developer would come in and put a model on the table, and then the community would react. And everyone at the table knew what role they were supposed to play. But Brooklyn Bridge Park was different. This was a community initiative. Government and other stakeholders and opinion leaders didn’t know how to react to it, because it was a reversal of the ordinary roles. While a number of groups played an important role, the sustainment of the effort over time was a function of the Coalition. Had the Coalition not existed, inertia would have eventually claimed the piers.”2

  “This never would have happened without the involvement of the Brooklyn community,” agrees Adrian Benepe, the New York City parks commissioner during the early years of the park’s planning and construction, “both in the community’s willingness to fight against the commercial development of the piers and also in the very patient involvement of the community in the lengthy process that resulted in the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation [the public entity entrusted with the park’s construction] and the realization of the park. The history of the park demonstrates how effective the community can be both in staking out elected officials and in staking out the moral high ground to which the elected officials should respond.”3

  THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE BROOKLYN WATERFRONT

  Throughout its history, the west Brooklyn waterfront has been characterized by competition, controversy, and the need to adapt in the face of change. The area’s first settlers were the people of the Lenape Nation. The Lenape—who lived in small villages along the shorelines and riverbanks of western Long Island, the Delaware River watershed, and the lower Hudson Valley—were drawn to the East River’s eastern banks by both the beauty and the utility of the landscape. The steep bluff to the east sheltered the shore-level villages from the threat of outsiders, while the river’s smooth, deep waters provided a convenient source of transportation up and down the coastline and a rich supply of seafood (salmon, sturgeon, oysters, clams, scallops, and shad) and wildlife (turtles, frogs, deer, geese, herons, and cranes). An early European settler, inspired to hyperbole by the unprecedented abundance he encountered along the shore, described a paradise of “twelve-inch oysters” and “monster lobsters” (some up to six feet in length), with fish so plentiful that “they could be caught by hand.”4

  The Lenape practiced an early form of sustainable fishing, seasonally alternating the sections of water in which they speared their prey and periodically rotating the harvesting grounds for the rich supplies of oysters and freshwater mussels. The river was also the source of commerce, art, and religion for the community. The prized whelk and clamshells that were gathered from the riverbeds were converted into multicolored wampum beads, which were both admired for their beauty and used for currency. Stones and water from the river were also used in religious rituals, in which cold water sprinkled onto heated stones that had been gathered from the riverbed provided worshippers assembled in steam houses with a source of spiritual elation and release.5

  THE FIRST EUROPEANS entered the region in 1609, when Dutch explorer Henry Hudson navigated his ship, the Halve Maen (Half Moon), through the narrow tidal strait separating the Atlantic Ocean from what is now known as Upper New York Bay. Although Hudson failed to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean, which he was seeking, he did return to Holland with a bounty of lucrative beaver pelts that led to the issuance of a patent to the territory of New Netherland in 1614, the founding of the Dutch West India Company in 1621, and the construction of Fort Amsterdam (or New Amsterdam, as the surrounding settlement was known) at the mouth of the Hudson River in 1625.

  A decade later, in 1636, settlers from New Amsterdam gradually began to migrate across the East River to farm the western shore of what would later be called Long Island. The tiny settlement, which occupied approximately the same territory as the neighborhood now known as Brooklyn Heights, was called Breuckelen (or Brooklyn), after a prosperous riverside town in the Vechtstreek area of the Netherlands. In less than a decade, a ferry service had been established to promote regular commerce between the southern tip of New Amsterdam and a slightly upriver landing on the eastern shore owned by “the Ferryman,” Cornelis Dircksen Hooglandt.6

  The Dutch rule of Brooklyn and New Amsterdam ended suddenly in August 1664, when a small fleet of English frigates surprised the undermanned Dutch forces on the islands, resulting in an unconditional surrender. With Director-General Peter Stuyvesant sailing back to the Netherlands in disgrace, the colony, which would be reincorporated as New York City the following year, was ceded to the English. Under English rule, the farms that had been cultivated beside the old Lenape trails along the East River grew into great plantations, eventually forcing the original inhabitants, who had managed to remain on the land under Dutch rule, from the region. The plantation owners erected enormous mansions along the heights above the riverbank, providing their owners with magnificent views of the East River and the island of New York City beyond it.

  WHILE THE ORIGINAL VILLAGE at the southern tip of New York City grew into a thriving center of trade and commerce, the economy and social life of Brooklyn continued to be dominated by agriculture throughout the American Revolution and the early years of U.S. governance (figure 1). The great change came in 1814, when steamboat inventor Robert Fulton leased the ferry landing just north of the farmland from wealthy Brooklyn merchant and real-estate developer Hezekiah Beers Pierrepont and began taxiing passengers across the East River in his steam-driven ferry, the Nassau, in twelve minutes flat.

  Credited with the creation of the nation’s first “suburban community,” Pierrepont divided the vast estate that he owned at the top of the bluff into street-lined lots for residential development, which he sold to prosperous bankers, merchants, and shippers who made their fortunes in the city on the western shore but longed for a peaceful home life away from the hustle and bustle of the waterfront. Thanks to Pierrepont and the surveyor he hired to design the layout for the property, the neighborhood’s streets bore (and still bear) the names of the wealthy merchants and plantation owners (Pierrepont, Montague, Joralemon, Clark, Clinton, Henry, Hicks, Remsen, and Middagh) whose huge estates had earlier dominated the bluff.

  FIGURE 1

  Bernard Ratzer, “Plan of the City of New York in North America,” ca. 1770.

  COURTESY OF BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

  With the opposite banks of the East River now quickly and cheaply accessible (with early fares ranging from 1 cent to 4 cents), thousands of prosperous residents of New York City migrated across the river to build stately homes along the heights of Brooklyn. By 1820, just six years after the introduction of Fulton’s steam-driven ferry, the population of Brooklyn was 5,210, more than three times what it had been just two decades earlier, and in 1854, more than 186,000 of Brooklyn’s 300,000 residents were commuting back and forth to Manhattan by ferry each day.7

  In 1856, former Brooklyn Heights resident Walt Whitman captured the visceral thrill experienced by mid-century passengers during the ferry ride across the East River in the poem “Crossing Fulton Ferry,” included in his great poetic collection, Leaves of Grass. The following lines from the poem are inscribed on one of the rails that guard the foot of Fulton Ferry Landing:

  Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,

  Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,

  Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,

  Others will see the islands large and small;

  Fifty years hence, other will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,

  A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,

  Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea o
f the ebb-tide.8

  While Brooklyn Heights was becoming a popular residential destination, the lowlands sprawling north along the East River gradually developed into a thriving commercial center, the waterfront lined with loading docks and ferry landings. By 1880, Brooklyn had become the fourth largest manufacturing center in the nation, with the Fulton Ferry district serving as a bustling center of commerce, storage, and shipping for both the borough and the city at large. While the affluent residents of the Heights strolled the neighborhood’s tranquil, tree-lined streets with their top hats and parasols, the landing just below them to the north was teeming with traders, stevedores, and Long Island farmers, who used the connecting railroad lines to transport their livestock and crops to the docks, warehouses, and trade markets of the landing.

  FIGURE 2

  Empire Stores, ca. 1880.

  GEORGE J. BISCHOF PAPERS AND PHOTOGRAPHS, BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

  During the late nineteenth century, the district’s cobblestone streets became crowded with commercial warehouses, as Brooklyn’s newly established merchants and manufacturers constructed massive brick structures to store the raw materials and finished goods that would eventually be shipped across the nation and around the world. Among the most durable and impressive of these structures were the five-story Tobacco Warehouse at 26 Dock Street, erected as a tobacco-inspection center by the Lorillard Tobacco Company in the 1860s on the upland section just above the original ferry landing, and the nearby Empire Stores at 53–55 Water Street, constructed in an impressive Romanesque Revival style in 1869, with additional structures added in 1885 (figure 2).9 A century and a half later, these two impressive structures would play a pivotal role in the formation of a waterfront park in the landing area.

  THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE

  With the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge on May 24, 1883, the dominance of the ferry in the lives of the people of Brooklyn began to decline. The bridge was designed by celebrated German American architect John Augustus Roebling (who died as a result of an accident shortly after construction began), with construction supervised by his son, Washington Roebling. After he was also immobilized by an accident, the younger Roebling continued to supervise construction for a time from an apartment at 110 Columbia Heights, the windows of which provided a panoramic view of the East River, the Manhattan skyline, and the massive construction site. When the younger Roebling’s injuries and illnesses eventually prevented him from continuing with the supervision, his wife, Emily Warren Roebling, took charge of the construction of the bridge. At the time of its completion, the neo-Gothic masterpiece was one of the world’s largest, most innovative, and most visually compelling engineering achievements.

  With the Brooklyn Bridge spanning the shores of Brooklyn and Manhattan, bankers and merchants from the Heights could now ride to work by horse-drawn carriage or, if time allowed, take a leisurely stroll along the wide, boarded promenade at the center of the bridge (with more than 150,000 pedestrians and 1,800 vehicles crossing the bridge on its opening day alone), enjoying an elevated perspective of the river and the shoreline that surpassed the sea-level views from the weathered bows of a steamboat. While the Union Ferry would continue operation until 1924, the bridge, with its bustling traffic and lofty vistas, had become a center for the economic, social, and imaginative life of Brooklyn.

  In addition to its role in the decline of the ferry business, the Brooklyn Bridge took a punishing toll on the economy and population of Brooklyn Heights. With more and more people commuting back and forth across the East River each day, the once-tranquil neighborhood became increasingly accessible to new businesses and industrial development, and many of the wealthy bankers and merchants who had been lured by the promise of serenity and solitude migrated back across the river to Greenwich Village and the other fashionable neighborhoods that were thriving throughout lower Manhattan, with property values in the Heights plummeting on their departure. By the early decades of the twentieth century, many of the once-fashionable residences of Brooklyn Heights had been abandoned and boarded up by their owners, with other buildings divided into rooming houses for the poor.

  WHILE THE EAST RIVER FERRIES were slowly grinding to a halt, the commercial-shipping industry was booming, with tall ships and steamboats continually loading and unloading cargo all along Brooklyn’s western and southern waterfronts. In 1902, the newly formed New York Dock Company, which already owned forty piers; miles of railroad tracks; and hundreds of stores, warehouses, and loft buildings along the city’s shorelines, announced its plans to extend its piers southward along the two-mile stretch of Brooklyn waterfront from Fulton Ferry Landing, near the Brooklyn Bridge, to the Hamilton Avenue Ferry House in Red Hook.

  The New York State Legislature had authorized the commercial appropriation of the Brooklyn shoreline the previous year, over the objections of Governor Theodore Roosevelt, who claimed that the action violated the city’s founding document, the Dongan Charter. Granted by colonial governor Thomas Dongan on April 27, 1686, the Dongan Charter provided for public ownership of “waste, vacant, unpatented and other un-appropriated lands,” which were to be maintained under the jurisdiction of a “Common Council.”10 The lands protected by the charter included the outdoor marketplaces, public commons, and other open spaces that would later become the first urban parks.11 Although the Dongan Charter itself would not continue to play a role in future conflicts between local residents and commercial developers, the principle of “public ownership” that it introduced would be critical in the formation of the demands and expectations of local community leaders in the movement for a park on the waterfront later in the century.

  Brooklyn’s status as a leading industrial center was paralleled by the continuing growth and dominance of its shipping trade. During the early decades of the twentieth century, the borough established itself as one of the world’s busiest commercial harbors, handling one-quarter of the United States’ foreign trade (figures 3 and 4). The city’s terminals and warehouses were packed with cocoa, paint, paper bags, preserves, varnish, drugs, coffee, chemicals, lamps, wire, molasses, bed springs, hair-waving equipment, straw hats, glucose, and soda fountain supplies, either arriving from distant ports or waiting to be shipped around the world. “It can be said without fear of reprisal,” boasted the Brooklyn Eagle in 1936, “that no industry or product exists in the country that does not touch, at some time, on one of Brooklyn’s piers or rest, at some point along its way, in one of the terminals.”12

  THE INCREASED ACCESSIBILITY and decline in property values that had driven wealthy professionals across the East River from Brooklyn Heights to Manhattan precipitated a reverse migration of the city’s young writers, composers, and visual artists. During the early decades of the twentieth century, a steady stream of young bohemians abandoned the brownstones of Greenwich Village for the cheaper and less distracting accommodations on the highlands across the river. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, an impressive collection of gifted artists and entertainers that included the poet W. H. Auden, the composer Benjamin Britten, the novelist Carson McCullers, the burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee, and the literary couple Paul and Jane Bowles crowded into a single building on 7 Middagh Street in the Heights, known as the February House, with writer and friend Truman Capote living in a nearby basement apartment on 70 Willow Street.13 Brooklyn Heights, wrote Capote at the time, “stands atop a cliff that secures a sea-gull’s view of the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges, of lower Manhattan’s tall dazzle and the ship-lane waters, breeding river to bay to ocean, that encircle and seethe past posturing Miss Liberty.”14

  FIGURE 3

  Dock workers near Fulton Landing, 1924.

  COURTESY OF BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

  FIGURE 4

  Brooklyn piers, 1934.

  PHOTO BY SAMUEL H. GOTTSCHO. COURTESY OF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

  Earlier, in the 1920s, a brilliant young poet named Hart Crane was living in an apartment belonging to the father of a friend at 110 Columbia Heights
in Brooklyn Heights (the same apartment from the windows of which Washington Roebling supervised the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge) while working on a long narrative poem about the bridge. In a letter written to his mother and grandmother in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1928, Crane described the spectacular view from the window of his apartment on the bluff above the shoreline: “Just imagine looking out your window directly on the East River with nothing intervening between your view of the Statue of Liberty, way down the harbour, and the marvelous beauty of the Brooklyn Bridge close above on your right! All of the great new skyscrapers of lower Manhattan are marshaled directly across from you, and there is a constant stream of tugs, liners, sail boats, etc. in procession before you on the river! It’s really a magnificent place to live!”15

  In the “Proem” to his great epic poem The Bridge, Crane converted his passion for the river, the bridge and the shorelines that it connected into myth:

  O sleepless as the river under thee,

  Vaulting the sea, the prairies dreaming sod,

  Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend

  And of thy curveship lend a myth to God.16

  ROBERT MOSES

  In 1941, New York City’s powerful parks commissioner, Robert Moses, announced his plans to construct a four-lane highway (to be known as the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway) right through the middle of Brooklyn Heights along Hicks Street. The proposed construction was part of Moses’s ambitious plans to rezone and rebuild extensive sections of the city’s infrastructure. Moses’s proposal, if enacted as planned, would have transformed Hezekiah’s Pierrepont’s tranquil, suburban neighborhood into a busy, modern commercial thoroughfare. The planned construction was vigorously opposed by local residents, however, many of them young professionals who had recently followed the first wave of bohemians into Brooklyn Heights and were now busy renovating the neighborhood’s affordable brownstones.