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11 Most Endangered
Brooklyn's Industrial Waterfront
Year Listed: 2007
Location: Brooklyn , New York
Current Status: Endangered
Threat: Development, Poor Public Policy
Brooklyn's Industrial Waterfront was on the 2007 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
Credit: National Trust for Historic Preservation
Significance
Once a booming 19th-century industrial waterfront supported by generation of immigrants, Brooklyn's heritage is at risk as historic dockyards and factories are being demolished by developers anxious to cash in on the area's newly hip status. For more than a century, the New York City region was one of this country’s dominant manufacturing hubs. Due to its location on the East River and the New York Harbor, Brooklyn was the city’s industrial center with scores of maritime operations, factories, warehouses and sugar refineries. In the second half of the twentieth century, industry declined, and what’s left of that striking architectural and historical legacy is now at risk. Also at risk are the places that make Brooklyn work, the buildings and sites that house manufacturing and industrial jobs.
Updates
There is real progress in the effort to preserve Brooklyn's Industrial Waterfront, but there are also continued threats. The DUMBO neighborhood and most of the buildings at the Domino Sugar complex received protection as local landmarks following the 2007 listing.
Today, though, local preservationists and the National Trust for Historic Preservation are actively engaged in two major struggles related to Brooklyn's extraordinary waterfront.
Residents and others have long peeked through the high fences at the once-grand abandoned buildings that make up Admirals' Row in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, watching with mounting dismay as they decayed over decades. The property includes a collection of 19th century houses and a long shed that was used for storage of wood masts – a particularly rare and historic survival. Now the Department of Defense has given the Army National Guard control of the site and an order to sell it to New York City, which plans to transfer the property to the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation. The BNYDC plans to develop a supermarket on the site, a use that does not require demolition of the historic buildings, and yet BNYDC has not been open to considering plans that would allow for their redevelopment and reuse. The federal regulatory review of the project is ongoing, and we are participating actively to advocate for preservation of the historic buildings. So many similar complexes, in similar condition, have been given new life elsewhere. Preservationists are calling on BNYDC to make the opportunity to redevelop these special buildings available to New York City's creative and entrepreneurial development community, to properly explore preservation solutions.
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the country's hallowed places. It rises over New York City as a testament to America's ingenuity and vision and as a vital transportation link, but most obviously, it is a thing of breathtaking beauty. A developer is currently proposing a mixed use building that would rise right next to the bridge on the Brooklyn side, damaging the signature views of the bridge. David McCullough, renowned historian and author of The Great Bridge: the Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, responded to the threat posed by the Dock Street proposal, "Dignity and grandeur are rare in the modern cityscape. And rare, too, is the prestige of history. And when all of that is present in one majestic, emblematic work, as it is so supremely in the Brooklyn Bridge, nothing should be permitted to diminish and compromise the effect." In addition to impacting the bridge, the proposed building would also have visual impacts on the new DUMBO local district and National Register District and the Fulton Ferry local and National Register District. The National Trust, our local partners, and neighborhood groups are reaching out to city leaders and working through the city's land use review process to oppose the Dock Street proposal.
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