Note – Celebrating Red Hook 2015 will take place on Saturday, July 25th behind IKEA in Red Hook. All are invited – Free Admission! Like many communities, Red Hook is defined by the people who have invested themselves and planted roots. In the case of Red Hook, which has faced threatened eminent domain in the 1960’s, a crack epidemic in […]
Month: July 2015
Celebrating Red Hook Preview
Here’s the site map, with the list of participants. Coming up this Saturday at IKEA!
Opinion: Trains and boats and Nursing Homes, by George Fiala
Our Councilmember Carlos Menchaca made the news today as his office plans to draft a bill banning all tourist helicopter flights from NYC. This is an issue that has a small but noisy constituency, mainly the people in Battery Park City, Brooklyn Heights and Red Hook that are directly affected by the noise of the helicopters. The copters offer a birds-eye view […]
Op Ed: Watching neighborhoods transform, by George Fiala
Last month I had a chance to see the corporate mind working. I was invited to take part in a weeklong public relations event held by BASF, the world’s largest chemical company. At their NYC event held as part of their 150th birthday celebration, they decided to focus on Red Hook as a city of tomorrow. BASF is very excited […]
City makes case for retention tank location at EPA meeting, by George Fiala
A major part of the EPA’s plan to clean up the Gowanus Canal is the prevention of future contamination. In addition to chemical toxins that have leached into the canal as a byproduct of the 19th century gas plants that abutted the canal, organic poisons from sewage overflows continue to contaminate. Overflows happen during rain events when the sewers become […]
Red Hook History: When the Pointers & the Creekers divided Red Hook, by Connor Eugene Gaudet
During much of the 19th century, most of Red Hook east of Dwight Street was basically underwater. Even while they built up the criss-crossing grid of streets, the lots between graded roads were dominated by marshes and tidal pools. To fill it in, the owner, William Beard, leased it out to “carters,” who would pick up people’s garbage and the […]