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Reclaiming the Red Hook Waterfront An Analysis of the Urban Maritime Architectural Tradition in South Brooklyn A Research-Based Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of Art History at New York University In Partial Fulfillment of the Urban Design and Architecture Studies Major and the Degree of Bachelor of Arts Emily Conklin May 2020

Contents Introduction

The Waterfront in Context Waterfront Regeneration Case Study: Wapping, London Site: Red Hook, Brooklyn Identity and Placemaking Genius Loci a nd Intangible Heritage Maritime Trade and the Architecture of Industry Maritime Trade and the Architecture of Industry The Beard and Robinson Stores The Lidgerwood Warehouse The Tangible Value of Old Buildings Contemporary Movements Conclusion Appendix Bibliography

Introduction L. S. Lowry grew up in the northern Midlands, in a suburb of Manchester amidst its industrial decline. Though his paintings proliferated most visibly in the 1950s, his working-class subjects nearly always wore the fashions of, and weaved through the buildings of, the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom. The artist was infamous for saying his paintings were spontaneous, even unplanned: art historian John Berger quotes him as saying “I started as I often do, with nothing particular in mind; things just 1

happen — they grow from nothing.” 2

Other artists, such as photographers Hilla and Bernd Becher have also found inspiration in the industrial landscape at roughly the same moment, roughly 100 years after the

1 2

Berger, John. “Lowry and the Industrial North.” About Looking, 1 980 Stimson, Blake. “The Photographic Comportment of Bernd and Hilla Becher.” Tate Papers, Spring 2004

boom of mass production, its infrastructure, and architecture changed cityscapes forever. The photographs of the Bechers focused not on the nostalgia of industry at its height, like Lowry’s painting, but on the abandoned forms dotting the slowly regenerating countryside — they were solidifying an iconography of what Industrial Archaeologists 3

now call brownfield sites. The Bechers found aesthetic gravitas in the ruins of complex yet outdated machines and labyrinthian architectural growths of industry. Today these are not only left behind, but they are actively endangered.

Figure 1

For the past several decades, heavy industry has been declining in major cities around the world, and industrial activity in the city has come to be regarded as dirty, polluting and unsavory. While today much of the United States’ heavy manufacturing has been exported overseas, our post-industrial landscape originated with the fundamental societal shift of the Industrial Revolution. This era — comprising roughly a century and a half (~1800-1950) of rapid development, innovation and urbanization — produced enormous amounts of infrastructure. These machines and canals are now largely

Deborah Gans, Claire Weizs. Extreme Sites The Greening of ‘Brownfield’, Architectural Design. Academy Press. London: 2004. 3

obsolete in terms of their original use, and the Industrial Age as a whole has been 4

academically dismissed; many do not see it as an era worthy of historical scholarship due to the vernacular, utilitarian, and working class nature of the works and architectures 5

it produced. For example, the Tate Modern labels Lowry a “Sunday painter,” presumably lacking seriousness in style and subject matter. Some have worked to legitimize the cultural contributions of this era, however, beginning with the groundbreaking grassroots movements of industrial archaeologists like Neil Cossons and Kenneth Hudson, in the 1960s and 70s. Michael Rix first coined the term “Industrial Archaeology” in an eponymous 1955 article in the Amateur Historian, published after universities and academic circles rejected serious study of the culture of working-class revolution. By relegating this field to the realm of “amateur” pastime, not unlike the category of Sunday Painters, scholars today still ignore 6

this period. The Industrial Revolution created a worldwide social and economic shift, and it took an intense toll on the physical environment in forms of earth moving and chemical 7

contaminants. However, this era also brought about a robust period of technological and architectural innovation from which cities can continue to learn: Cities today are filled with the remnants of the structures of industry, from factories and warehouses to the

Cossons, Neil, Industrial Archaeology. 2000 Tate Modern. “L.S Lowry 1887-1976” https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/l-s-lowry-1533 6 Cossons, Neil. Industrial Archaeology, 2000 7 EPA.gov “Cleanup Starting at Red Hook Ball Fields 5-8 Brooklyn, New York” January 2018. 4 5

canals and docks that serviced them. While many planners see the solution to the dereliction of these buildings as demolition, in order to recapture the valuable land beneath the structures, artists and industrial archaeologists champion these aged monuments as cultural artefacts. Buildings form an integral part of the fabric of urban communities, and their aesthetic and robust material makeup are not to be overlooked. Industrial buildings serve their communities in invaluable and economically viable ways that are impossible to replicate with newly built structures, for cultural, economic and psychological reasons: Their demolition results in a loss of local history and community identity. This thesis will examine the industrial architecture of Red Hook, Brooklyn and the potential of intangible heritage to preserve and repurpose its architectural character as a community asset for economic and cultural vitality in the immediate neighborhood, as well as for the greater New York City. This thesis is based heavily on site-specific research and tangible evidence gathered from visits to prominent sites on the peninsula, discussions with local residents and business owners, and physical interaction with the structures and streetscapes. I arrived at my conclusions for future growth and cultural preservation through a combination of this hands-on research initiative and contemporary waterfront regeneration projects, like that of the London Docklands and the town of Wapping, as well as from architectural and urban theorists like Jane Jacobs and Lebbeus Woods. On this peninsula characterized by an urban fabric from another

era, local residents have begun to enact “scabs,” to use Lebbeus Woods’ metaphor. These interventions unto the largely 19th century landscape bring together new and old in ways that align symbiotically with preservation principles. Red Hook has the potential to realize radical grassroots transformations for and by i ts residents, who have been long overlooked at the periphery of a city that in many ways is a pinnacle of capitalist thought and development. The mostly low-lying brick structures on this west Brooklyn peninsula are rare examples of well-preserved heavy timber and iron framing technologies in architecture, and of the working-class experience itself. These buildings and places suggest an intangible heritage and a distinct genius loci, o r psychological “spirit of place,” in a historically blue collar, immigrant community. In examining Red Hook’s architectural legacy, this thesis argues that intangible heritage can be a benchmark indicating the immediate and future success of an urban regeneration project, because this concept embodies architectural preservation ideals of inclusivity, community, visual representation, and the intersection 9

of traditional and contemporary approaches to life. The warehouses and docklands of Red Hook are at risk of erasure, which would eliminate not only its historic and exceptional built forms, but also the stories of the industrial working class culture itself: the ability to preserve these stories, and to bridge between new development and

Woods, Lebbeus. “Radical Reconstruction.” New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997 pp 16-17.

Agency for Cultural Affairs (Japan). “International Conference on the Safeguarding of Tangible and Intangible Cultural heritage: Towards an Integrated Approach: proceedings” UNESCO, 2006.

preservation of methods traditionally successful and inclusive in the area, is key to a successful intervention in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Red Hook presents an excellent case study for a regeneration that can present the concepts of intangible heritage. Its warehouses and docks have been preserved in greater numbers and with more authenticity than those in other historic New York ports, like the city-run slips of Lower Manhattan and the upper reaches of the Hudson River, largely due to the neighborhood’s relative isolation and history of private ownership.10 A lack of public transit and decades of economic depression and crime — from the heights 11

of mafia regimes to the crack cocaine crisis of the late 20th century — caused the eyes of planners and developers to pass over the peninsula in search of more lucrative markets. Yet, the community on this peninsula is notoriously tight knit, an oasis of “small town” feeling amongst an ever-denser New York City, and more specifically, in the borough of Brooklyn. The warehouses lining the three lengths of coastline in this neighborhood tell the nearly forgotten story of maritime New York, which was once a sea trading power that ushered in the modern era to America. This legacy has been erased not by physical destruction but by migrations of capital, and therefore of workers. These structures tell a rarely illuminated story about the working class and the immigrant backbone of the “melting pot” city — a story that is at risk of being forgotten in favor of developer-backed skyscrapers and the supertalls of the 1%. Simon, Malks. 2010. ""The Walled City": Industrial Flux in Red Hook, Brooklyn, 1840—1920." Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 17 (2): 53-72. 11 TIME Magazine. “Red Hook, the ‘crack capital of America’” TIME Archive, May 1988. 10

The Waterfront in Context Urban dwellers have been using the natural border of the city’s waterfront as a place of dynamic change, exchange and creation for millenia. However, starting with the Industrial Revolution, to be on the water meant more than just the ancient need for access to goods and ideas: it led to elevated status as a political power in a globalizing world, and to increased amounts of wealth under capitalist systems. Inland rural communities, isolated except by horse or foot traffic, were inevitably slower to incorporate new ideas and innovations. Yet as increasingly connected cities grew and investors created opportunities for efficiency through mass-production industry, the waterfront rapidly evolved from a natural coastline where water meets land to a point of tension, an in-flux meeting point between nature and the man-made, artificially engineered waterfront metropolis. The concept of the modern port city and its great global power was born. The waterfront was most acutely realized and exercised for profit during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. The cradle of this revolution, London, was a city uniquely positioned to take advantage of its seaborne prowess by becoming a center for import, manufacture, and eventual export around the world, from its waterfront on the Thames River and connections to the greater Atlantic. The Thames and its watery border between nature and the populous city is a key factor in London’s success, and this water element can be identified in other industrial success stories, including the East and Hudson Rivers surrounding New York, that also lead to the Atlantic.

This thesis takes London, the first industrialized city, and its waterway as a starting point to understand the unique interaction between metropolis and water that facilitates trade and culture. Unlike the East and Hudson Rivers, the Thames is recognized as being an exceptionally dynamic river, a brackish waterway with a tidal elevation difference ranging 12

between 15 and 21 feet, daily. However, British innovation harnessed the challenges of this river with a complex system of locks and protected docklands on both the north and south sides of the “Pool of London,” that dominated sea trade in the 17th and 18th centuries, extending further east towards the Isle of Dogs as shipping volume increased into the 19th century. Due to this chronology and the wealth engineered through the value of colonial imports like sugar, cotton and tea, the greatest technological complexity, and also the greatest security, lies in the East End dredged and lock-protected docklands from Wapping to Canary Wharf, as seen in figures 2 and 3.

Figure 2

Figure 3

UK Hydrgraphics Office. “The River Thames - The Effect of Weather and Tides.”

While industrialization spread around the world, it was this unique relationship of London to its waterfront that made the architecture and infrastructure there so successful for the city. The labor that both accommodated and controlled the river created coexistence rather than suppression of the natural environment. A renowned sea power both economically and politically, London is now recognized as the pilot city for global industrialization, and attempts to replicate its success are visible in almost every contemporary port city, including the Port of New York. Nineteenth century London was the largest city in the world, and it ebbed and flowed with the needs and ideas of its residents, their Parliament, and their trading lifeline, the river Thames. Urban centers around the world made decisions that mirrored London’s, but with local and cultural variation. As the modern industrial city came to be shaped by and for its people, the built environment became a foil for the conditions of the humanity living and working there. Figure 4

Waterfront Regeneration Case Study: Wapping, London

Sensitive redevelopment and revitalization of the urban industrial past begins with architectural preservation, and there are many successful urban waterfront regeneration projects that this thesis looks to for models of what Red Hook and other post-industrial waterfront sites could be. Principally, I will examine London’s Dockland regeneration by the LDDC in the 1980s, and specifically, the region of this project that encompassed the East End neighborhood of Wapping. Wapping is a traditionally working-class neighborhood on the northern banks of the river Thames, a mixed-use industrial zone with worker residences interspersed amongst the industrial warehouses, high London Stock brick security walls, factories, and other shipping infrastructure. The neighborhood is marked by its historic system of canals, which originally formed the different paths that guided ships inland from the banks of the Thames, whose tides rise and fall dramatically over the course of a day. The canal inlets were controlled by locks, keeping elevations stable so boats could moor just outside their assigned warehouse or factory, and unload goods directly rather than have them transported overground from the banks to inland warehousing.

Figure 5

Figure 6

Wapping in the 19th century was not a pleasant place to be. Horse manure, debris and trash, coupled with general pollution from smog, industrial dump, and household waste all settled into the streets, canals and quays, as was common practice in most dense, poor neighborhoods of European cities at the time. Newspapers and contemporary literature depicted the area’s working-class population as unhygenic and uneducated,, descriptions that matched popular opinion of these urban communities at the time. The sanitation of the area was extremely poor, cut off from West End municipal city services. Virginia Woolf in her novel Orlando p ortrays her main character, a nobleman, escaping to the Wapping docks as a youth for rebellion and revel, writing:

At this season of his life, when his head brimmed with rhymes and he never went to bed without striking off some conceit, the cheek of an innkeeper’s daughter seemed fresher and the wit of a gamekeeper’s niece seemed quicker than those of the ladies at Court. Hence, he began going frequently to Wapping Old Stairs and the beer gardens at night, wrapped in a grey cloak… There, with a mug before him, among the sanded alleys and bowling greens and all the simple architecture of such places, he listened to sailors’ stories of hardship and horror and cruelty on the Spanish main; how some had lost their toes, others their noses (Woolf, 33). When shipping declined throughout London in the mid- to late-20th century, Wapping was one of the first neighborhoods to see its docks diminished. While the docklands as a whole were not officially closed to trade by the City until 1969, Wapping’s narrow and

relatively shallow canal systems were not fit for modern ships, which required increasingly larger and deeper slips. Most inland wharfs and warehouses quickly became obsolete, and the first of the major infill projects — closing up the chutes that led to Wapping’s Main Basin — occurred as early as 1956, and are depicted in figures 7 and 8. The working population lost their jobs in the wake of these closures, and despite the work of unions, including attempts at protections from organizations like the National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL), the steep layoffs and the isolation of the neighborhood from central London meant that residents could not easily seek employment in other areas of the city. Few had the means to pick up and move. Against maritime trader’s best efforts, even deep port operations soon became obsolete as well, as the Thames itself went out of favor due to the containerization of shipping: mammoth modern vessels could only be moored on Atlantic ports like Liverpool further to the north. Figure 7

Figure 8

Throughout the latter half of the 20th century Wapping languished, becoming a collection of abandoned, deteriorated buildings. The area was consistently overlooked by planners and developers. It suffered from disinvestment as well as poor transitional urban renewal choices that left nearly all docks and canals infilled rather than cleaned and maintained. Leaving vast swaths of dirt and void in the spaces where ships used to glide, this ultimately stripped the neighborhood of its maritime identity and its most distinct features. As in many other historic, mixed use working-class neighborhoods around the world, no one wanted to move in after the workers were displaced due to lack of jobs and amenities. The abandoned, empty spaces left between buildings in the windy plazas and unused greenspaces in the area also failed to welcome new populations. Infill paved over what was once an intimate and fragile matrix of urban life, built up in layers over years and years of human adjustments. These initiatives failed to preserve either physical or intangible heritage like local culture, industry and design vernaculars, or even to operate on a human scale. Instead of embracing the centuries of maritime life and the people who made it possible, London turned its back on this district. In these years, the City of London listed large monuments like the Southbank Centre and the Brunswick as national landmarks, representative of high culture and architectural experiments in housing, but the unique canal system and uniform, London Stock brick row houses in Wapping were forgotten. Because the original workers and residents of that place were of low class, the governmental bodies tasked with identifying areas worthy of recognition

on a national scale overlooked this area, despite the backbreaking work that occurred there to industrialize, infuse wealth, and to to fuel the cultural legacies of London and the world. In 1981, the city implemented the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC), and until 1998 this government body coordinated redevelopment among private and public ownerships in the degenerating East London Dockland neighborhoods from Limehouse, just north of Wapping, to the Isle of Dogs, home of the massive East and 13

West India docks. The LDDC financed improvements to infrastructure, housing stock, public amenities like parks and roads as well as educational and healthcare facilities for new and existing residents. While the large corporate center project of Canary Wharf enjoys only limited success in the realms of democratic development, preservation and social equity, the locality-focused projects of Wapping and Limehouse have successfully reconnected their respective neighborhoods to central London, and they have facilitated the refilling of canals and waterways. Reconnecting the neighborhood and its buildings with the water that shaped them, coupled with landmarking efforts and warehouse preservation throughout the district, has proven to be a slow, yet continuously steady success. While the success of the LDDC efforts in the Docklands as a whole remains up for debate, there was a quiet victory won in Wapping’s locality, as principles of intangible

What was the LDDC? History Pages. http://www.lddc-history.org.uk/

heritage were respected and upheld: The architectural language remains consistent and preserved, and new developments respect the scale and low-density massing of the area, where buildings reach only three to four stories, as seen below in figure 9. Figure 9

The canals were restored and refilled, so the nautical infrastructure of the sea was 14

reintroduced, initiating projects like the Tobacco Dock renovation as well as improvements to existing housing stock — projects that reintegrated buildings through restoration and repair, rather than demolition and eviction. Figure 10

Figure 11

Place 54 Architects. “Tobacco Dock, Wapping UK.”

These projects also included benefits for long-term success and support of existing residents, that in turn attract new residents, guaranteeing the long term health of the area as a connected yet self-sufficient neighborhood: a mix of new and old, traditional and contemporary, and minimally invasive renovations facilitate a variety of lifestyles and diverse mixes of people. This diversity and historic preservation adds to the modern history of London, rather than isolating or predetermining a new sector with a lack of collective historic memory. While Canary Wharf was blown up to corporate skyscraping proportions, as seen in figure 12, that invited only new, upper class residents at the expense of integrating or supporting existing and lower- and middle-class newcomers, its long-term health and viability as a neighborhood and even as a business center is 15

tenuous. F igure 12

Despite the Dockland’s problems, most of the world’s successful waterfront regeneration master plans have followed close behind this project of the 80s and 90s, from South Boston’s waterfront regeneration of 2000 to Liverpool’s currently unfolding dockland 15

Cara, Andréa. “Heritage and the London Docklands.” M.A. Thesis, NYU. 2019

project, connecting the city grid with the historic coastline and a new maritime history museum. New ideas about sustainability and diversity in the 21st century have led to projects that share certain facets in common: they incorporate principles targeting environmental sustainability, specifically the health of coastlines and water quality. They also aim to facilitate the development of economically varied and vibrant urban cores, learning from the mistakes of Canary Wharf’s bank-dominated landscapes. Finally, the most successful and forward-thinking projects emphasize cultural and educational value. In this way, the city’s heritage, and that of the people, is celebrated, not merely erased for a new amenity for investment or the 1%. In the case of Wapping, and the potential of Red Hook, this cultural and educational value lies in its intangible heritage, in reviving the maritime industrial spirit that stubbornly lingers amongst the 19th century landscape. These revitalization schemes use their gritty history and separation from the rest of their 21st century cityscapes to their advantage, taking these aspects as integral to the design and experience of the places. This is what makes certain inevitably large-scale, public projects, even those with more commercial value or international acclaim like Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon River park or Manhattan’s High Line, different from development schemes like New York’s Hudson Yards: Hudson Yard just happens to site new construction on former industrial landscapes. No history or people are reflected in its shiny grey/blue skyscrapers. Insensitive, blank-slate development like Hudson Yards or Canary Wharf has become an international emblem that fails to recognize the layering of history or the lives of previous residents in the

architecture or neighborhood. All that has been buried along with the trainyards, negating any spirit of place, or of daesin, in Heideggerian terms, as explored below. Successful municipal development requires lengthy timelines, taxpayer dollars, and conversations among hundreds of disparate interests. The results are often unattractive at the onset.16 However, when well done, as Red Hook’s ‘regeneration’ has potential to be, these projects serve the people of their respective cities, and they can honor the industrial workers of their past, whose efforts remain as uncelebrated as the vernacular architecture they worked in. Top-down capital investment approaches like those that shaped Canary Wharf and Hudson Yards represent the antithesis of this approach in cities today. Today’s Wapping is an example of success, financially and socially, as well as through the lens of architectural conservation, because the LDDC worked with residents, allowing for the preservation of identity in the historic neighborhood. Much of that identity is expressed through the historic architectural remnants and their interactions and relationships to the water. The warehouses, wharves, bridges and locks that connect the canals with the greater Thames are integral to the genius loci, o r “spirit of place” w hich is discussed below as an element of intangible heritage contributing to a historic district’s success and relevance. In Red Hook, this place-making through architectural identity represents both the contemporary and historic engagement with the water to facilitate

Gordon, David Laird Ashton. "Implementing Urban Waterfront Redevelopment." Harvard University. 1994.

progress. The previously existing conditions of Wapping are today present in Red Hook, where the spirit of place and embodied histories are still strong, and where there are opportunities for the community to embrace its architectural legacy without first suffering the damages of insensitive institutional development. Figure 13

Site: Red Hook, Brooklyn The warehouses and history of Red Hook, Brooklyn, embody this dynamic relationship between history, structural expression and the natural as well as industrial element of water. The brick-clad, heavy timber structures of the warehouses on Red Hook’s manmade basins are some of the most powerfully evocative structures left in New York, standing as testaments to the dynamic era of industry that made New York the city of international attraction as we know today, just as Wapping represents for London. New York is a natural deep port harbor at the threshold of the Atlantic Ocean. However, industrializing after London, New York took many cues for its own development and success from those docklands across the Atlantic.

Identity and Placemaking Philosopher Martin Heiddeger first explored the identity of a place with palpable character, like Wapping or Red Hook, and how these places can build concepts of identity for residents and visitors. His seminal publication Being and Time explored ideas of “dwelling” and introduced the vocabulary defined by the philosopher himself, daesin, as a mode of experience that is unique to human beings as those who have the ability to truly dwell. While Heiddger does not explicitly cite architecture or urbanism in his writings, he does evoke the image of a home, a vernacular architecture, in a close reading and analysis of a poem: A Winter Evening By Georg Trakl Window with falling snow is arrayed, London tolls the vesper bell, The house is provided well, The table is for many laid. Wandering ones, more than a few, Come to the door on darksome courses, Golden blooms the tree of graces Drawing up the earth’s cool dew.

Wanderer quietly steps within; Pain has turned the threshold to stone. There lie, in limpid brightness shown, Upon the table bread and wine. This analysis and the poem itself is also included in and discussed by Christian Norberg-Schultz in his book Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. He writes, “The house and the table receive and gather, and bring the world ‘close.’ To dwell in a house therefore means to inhabit the world.” These dwellings and their cumulative effect on place lends itself to the creation of intangible heritage: A home is only made a home with the application of human spirit within it, creating a social, vernacular history inherent in the building itself, only manifested with lived experience. There is no value to an architecture, no reason for landmarking or preservation, without the application of energy in its habitation or creation. The greatest buildings preserved in New York City are often those of monumental status — neoclassical facades of Italian marble or temples to art and high culture. However, while buildings like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Grand Central Station are jewels of the canon and the preservation movement, the canon has often overlooked more vernacular stories, structures where the public can truly dwell in the Heideggerian sense: there is no sense of individual identity for a colloquial New Yorker within the Met or the World Trade Center, but one can feel a genius loci of a neighborhood or human scaled life within many aged buildings that evoke an identifiable

past, as many writers and historians, like Zachary J. Violette in his published dissertation, The Decorated Tenement, h ave explored. Heidegger most acutely felt daesin in his hometown in the German region of the Black Forest, a rural and remote region in the southwest of the country. Filtered light and dense trees created the landscape and dictated how the working-class populations lived and worked, in addition to informing many of Heiddeger’s ideas about home and the value of placemaking. While Red Hook is urban, and not forested, the trees and density here are represented by industrial buildings, the major component of the fabric and daily lives of the fiercely independent area of historic “South Brooklyn,'' and its immigrant and blue-collar histories. Built with sturdy and strong materials to accommodate people, their work and creations, these buildings create the evocation of home that Heidgger drew from Trakl’s poem, and of humanity, without the fanfare of elitism. They contain stories that deserve to be preserved, and they offer a future for landmark commissions to embrace structures that contribute to a spirit of place, rather than a trophy case-style demarcation. Genius Loci and Intangible Heritage Because of its layers of history, relatively undisturbed by the 20th and 21st century influences of development, we can see that Red Hook has an intense and describable spirit of place — a sense of maritime industrial scale, where the human worker acts as liaison between the unpredictable waters of the Atlantic and the relative safety of the

land on the peninsula. There is a grit to the neighborhood visible in the low-lit bars and restaurants housed in heavy timber structures that did not allow for modern outfits like floor to ceiling windows, where faded white paint, still readable on structures like figure 14, from pedestrian and bicycle byways, advertises the vibrant industries, companies and stores that sprinkled the neighborhood in years gone by.

Figure 14

These byproducts of a place with centuries of people-centric history have the characteristics of daesin. T his concept is an original argument, derived from Norberg-Schultz’s explorations of dasein a nd placemaking, a bridge between his view of Heideggerian philosophy and its applications towards architecture. Norberg-Shultz’s theory takes precedent from the ancient Roman etymology of the phrase genius loci: “a protective spirit of place.” While a shorter definition is often used today, just a “spirit of place,” the idea of intangible yet palpable spirit remains. The built environment revolves around the aforementioned concept of “dwelling,” humanity's level of greatest comfort in a space, which is inexplicably tied to a sense of identity within it. This spirit is often derived from the experience of an environment, and the life that has erupted there over

time. It is impossible to fake a history and its layers, to create it artificially or in an expedited amount of time.17 However, it is extremely easy to destroy. Red Hook’s history informs its current context as a neighborhood in New York City, and its uniquely strong sense of place in contrast to the urban trends of homogenization, 18

sometimes referred to as the “Williamsburg Effect ,” present in the western reaches of the rapidly gentrifying borough. The spirit of place in Red Hook is evident as soon as one crosses beneath the divisive border of the Gowanus Expressway: the low-lying and horizontal buildings, and the prevalence of mixed-use and light industrial zoning on the streets tells a story of a working community, and the architecture of industry built from 1830 to today. In fact, Red Hook has historically occupied a border condition by virtue of its architecture: a visually acute class difference is palpable there between intact post-industrial area and the brownstone-style homes that were renovated by anti-suburban, culture-seeking young urban professionals (“yuppies”) during the latter half of the 20th century, as documented by Suleiman Osman in The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn. The northern reaches of the original Red Hook neighborhood included Carroll Gardens as recently as the 1960s — the grand stoops, front yards and masonry decorations and material richness were marks of opportunity for a higher class, white collar Brooklyn society to reclaim, and new

17 18

Wu, Tim. “David Karp Is Tumblr’s Reluctant Technologist,” The New York Times Magazine, 2 013. Coleman, Candance (2012, April 18) “Gentrification in the Wake of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis”

residents contributed to waves of gentrification, demonstrably with the formation of the Carroll Gardens Association (CGA) in 1964.

Figure 15

An “advocate organization” for neighborhood improvements, the CGA incited action with the drawing of borders. This organization carved out an autonomous neighborhood, distinguishing itself from Red Hook based on class and image-conscious differences, as Brooklyn sought to upgrade its image and attract new business and residents. Not coincidentally, this neighborhood re-branding occurred just after the completion of Robert Moses’ Gowanus Expressway, a concrete border between the isolated peninsula and the interior of the borough in the minds of many Brooklynites. Since the 1830s, the longshoremen of Red Hook lived in speculatively built brick facade rowhouses still remaining largely intact with the original Italianate details like eyebrow window treatments, colorfully painted wooden shutters and crowning sculptural cornices

seen in figure 16. These structures originally lined nearly all the Western-most streets, but are most notably preserved on the non-uniformly gridded Coffey and Dikeman Streets. The streets and docks of this lower

Figure 16

peninsula, south of what is now autonomously known as Carroll Gardens, align not with the byways of Columbia Street and Hamilton Avenue, but with the coastline. Streets run at a diagonal, and many have sudden dead ends where warehousing complexes begin, or when roads bend around the hump of the Buttermilk Channel. There is also a great irregularity due to the later construction of the Red Hook Houses, the largest and earliest NYCHA project in New York City, organized as a series of “towers in the park” along Corbusian principles that further disrupt the flow of the grid and the feel of being a pedestrian or driver in the neighborhood. This peninsula is informed not only by the residential architecture lining its streets, but by its watery environs, a raw elemental spirit that orients the streets, the built structures, and even the earth itself. No amount of damming or engineering could stop the waters from encroaching during storms like Superstorm Sandy in 2012, and intermittent floods have been common throughout its history. The water and its fundamental power cannot be

erased or blurred by neighborhood borders. Bounded on three sides by water — the Buttermilk Channel to the west, the Gowanus Canal to the east, and the greater Atlantic Basin to the south — the neighborhood was given life and economic sustenance by the water, giving Red Hook a unique character within the story of New York City’s maritime tradition, preserved in contrast to its former reaches of Carroll Gardens. Figure 17

Maritime Trade and the Architecture of Industry Originally, this outcrop of land was complete marsh, with navigable rivers and inlets running deep onto the mainland, creating an uneven and ever-changing coastline, receding and breathing with the tides. Geologically, it mirrored the land to which its first European settlers, the Dutch of the 17th century, were accustomed, and it was one of the earliest towns mapped in the New Amsterdam plan of the Brooklyn landmass in 1636. Originally dubbed Roode Hoek by the Dutch due to the red mineral tint of the soil and the hooked shape of the land, it was not long before the Dutch were damming and

infilling the marshland to accommodate stable water levels, new roads and residential construction — and eventually, transatlantic shipping. This formed the second “hook” reference the area’s name immortalizes — the bale hook,19 a longtime symbol of the longshoreman’s profession of unpacking cargo on the docks.

Figure 18

Figure 19

Red Hook has long been a neighborhood of immigrants and the working-class backbone of New York and Brooklyn. The story of the peninsula’s industrial dominance begins in the 1830s, just after the opening of the Erie Canal — the invaluable connection for seafaring vessels transporting goods from the Midwest hubs like Chicago to the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Great Lakes and the Hudson River.20 New York’s harbor was a fulcrum for goods, the agricultural bounty of the Midwest and the South being integral to The New York Times, “ Bale Hook, Symbol of Dockhand, Fading From Waterfront Scene; Rising Use of Containers and Pallets Bringing About Oblivion for 'Badge.'” January 24, 1965. 20 “The Grain Markets: Wheat, Corn and Oats on the New York and Chicago Exchanges,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. J uly 12, 1895. 19

the transactions of Triangle Trade in the earlier decades of the Industrial Revolution. Yet this transatlantic trade nevertheless shaped the peninsula’s architectural character, which stems from the practical need for the coastlines to host and store cargo from both directions, the necessity of becoming a middle place of exchange for American imports and exports. The two defining basins of the Red Hook coastline — both manmade in the mid 19th century — are the Erie and Atlantic basins, (as recorded by the Sanborn Map Company below) dredged areas of coast meant to accommodate deep transatlantic ships, and protect their moorings from the tides and storms of the open sea.

Figure 20

Figure 21

These basins required monumental amounts of earthmoving and dredging to achieve unnaturally deep coastline depths, as modern shipbuilding continuously allowed for the manufacture of larger, deeper-reaching ship hulls. Displaced earth infill surrounds these

dockland areas like a protective arm, visible on any map of the borough, breaking incoming waves and currents so ships could dock with greater security against both nature and thieves, and be unpacked by the infamous longshoremen of the piers. The most lucrative and important warehouses stood closest to these man-made docks, so the day workers could quickly and efficiently load imports or exports into the safety of the structure, securing the investment and guaranteeing another shipment out of the warehouse across the ocean,

Figure 22

up the Erie Canal, or inland via the railways to the northeast corridor. This individual pier system also gave rise to the dock worker labor system — unions of workers that were loyal to specific piers for somewhat steady, daily work unloading the cargo ships that came to dock. Eventually, unions began to take the form of mafia strongholds;21 and thus begins the story of the docklands incubating a thriving organized crime culture, a dramatic inspiration for writers and filmmakers like Elia Kazan, director of the film On the Waterfront starring Marlon Brando, but a crippling system for the working class living within it. 21

NPR. “Tom Folsom And The Great Red Hook Mafia Wars” July 21, 2009.

Figure 23

Beard and Robinson Stores: Erie Basin The typical 19th-century warehouse frequented by longshoremen like Brando’s character are exemplified by the Beard and Robinson Stores located at the end of Van Brunt Street, completed in 1872 and stretching far out into the Erie Basin. Huge timber beams span the ceilings, joined together by iron “shoes” and supported by wooden columns — structural elements which are still intact today. The iron elements were an example of early innovation in hybrid wood and metal work, a conflation that created the trademark industrial aesthetic of dark wood and black ironwork. Iron shutters and doors were inset also into apertures on the brick facade to suppress fire and keep weather out, while the span and supporting strength of iron opened up floorplans much wider that had been possible before, allowing for multi-story buildings that held substantial loads on sites that previously only accommodated single-floor warehouses.

Figure 24, 25

These innovations in hybrid timber structures were common until the use of iron columns mostly after the turn of the 20th century. The distinct materiality of these natural timber elements contributed to the creation of the industrial aesthetic of these Red Hook stores, as well as to other iconic early industrial structures like the textile mills of the United Kingdom and New England. These linear elements were readily available in the surrounding environment, and they allowed for the largest expanse possible of floor plan and large windows, facilitating compliance with fire codes. As zoning laws and environmental regulations may shape the form of a building against the wishes of an architect today, fire codes like decentralized stairwells, operable fire doors and the use of fire brick influenced the forms of warehouses built by Brooklyn’s entrepreneurial class

and the workers that serviced them. As these warehouses often contained flammable materials and were located in the chaotic dockland waterfront context, they were considered especially risk-prone by insurance companies, and landlords were offered lucrative incentives to install the best in fireproofing technologies in these buildings, adding to their technical importance as well as the thought and investment put into the structures: Glazed bricks were fired at high temperatures to withstand great amounts of heat before crumbling, performing especially well when used in combination with the previous fireproof standard of heavy timber. It was also tested that with each inch in thickness of a timber beam, it was estimated the floor had one more hour to burn before its collapse, as timber insulates its material strength with a “char layer,” the layer of wood 22

that burns first in a fire, leaving the interior layers intact. Because locally made brick was recognized for its fire-resistant qualities, it became the dominant facade material of many warehouses like the Beard and Robinson Stores, the rich red coloration derived from the soil that gives the peninsula its name.23 The warm facade is punctuated with many windows, evoking a Palladian

Figure 26

Heitz, Jesse A. “Heavy Timber 101,” International Fire Fighter. November 12, 2015. Landmarks Preservation Commision. “Brooklyn Clay Retort and Fire Brick Works Storehouse,” December 18, 2001. 22 23

symmetry and rhythm in the 19th century design. While brick was a common construction material at the time, fitting for a practical and industrial purpose of warehouse building, brick construction was also one of the most fireproof techniques, as it could withstand great heat. Newspaper ads from the time advertised the newly-opened Erie Basin as a perfect place for industrial storage in large part due to these fire safety measures inherent in the shutters, but also their inverse — the access to sea breezes for the goods inside when the shutters were opened. Grain was an especially difficult product to store, as it was prone to rotting with the slightest buildup of moisture, yet the breezes would be able to aerate the grain bags and ensure a higher quality product when delivered to its final destination. Figure 27 This location-based advantage for warehouses on the water offers yet another glimpse into the connections between the built environment of Red Hook and its ties to the waterfront and basins. While the connection was financially viable at the time due to its breezes and fire code compliance, the warehouses are attractive to modern-day citizens and corporate interests alike due to their proximity to the water as well; now, after

decades of deindustrialization and clearing, they have become far more desirable than they were during High Industry periods (~1850-1950). The warehouses that are the dominant building form of the old working-class neighborhoods near the waterfront are made of simple, yet extremely durable materials, and were treated with sensitivity to design — some of the warehouses on Atlantic Basin were designed by Samuel Ruggles, 24

the same renowned builder who designed the park and estates of Gramercy Park,

among others. These warehouses are marked by their wide expanses lending to an open floor plan, and bounteous access to natural light — two facets required for industry, as the buildings needed to support heavy loads and large machines, as well as be well-lit enough that workers could see their tasks often as late into the evening as possible. Nowadays, though, in a post-labor world, those two design facets are desirable because they are identified as making a good, breathable living space that appeals to contemporary lifestyles of free flow in a space, access to light and air, and maneuverable floor plans. They are flexible spaces that can accommodate new uses in ways that traditional apartments and storefronts could never dream to do, without extensive and invasive renovation. This makes them not only attractive for educational and cultural value, but for contemporary development and housing as well, as the population of the area has been increasing. 24

Burrows, Edwin G. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. 1998.

Figure 28

The Lidgerwood Warehouse: Atlantic Basin The aesthetic value of the detailing and construction and a practical approach to design for daily use are particularly visible in the fine example of the Lidgerwood Warehouse on Ferris Street. Another 19th century example, built only a few years after the Beard and Robinson Stores in 1882, this warehouse is a distinct and independent structure, differing from the previous building in that its mass terminates the end of a pier, rather than extending along the length of a pier itself. It shares the same structural characteristics of the Beard and Robinson Stores, but has richer detailing and a higher ceiling height within to accommodate a loft space — Lidgerwood was not only a warehouse, but a manufacturer requiring space for machinery as well, so goods were stored in the loft and the heavy machines were supported on the ground level. The facade is long and linear, punctuated by two rows of windows, but it also includes vertical bricked protrusions: The

bricklaying itself added to the style of these structures, richly detailed in the modern imagination, but still stripped back in a precursor to the Modernist manifesto — at the time, only grand buildings of “importance” like royal and governmental spaces or churches carried rich detailing and materiality. Warehouses, on the other hand, took from neoclassical styling and order. Lidgerwood features brickwork imitating the Roman pilaster, inset in the walls themselves, as well as horizontal protrusions near the roofline imitating a gradient cornice, but flattened, the bricked ridges drawing the eye towards a common central feature of South Brooklyn warehouses, a triangular pediment, demarcating the front entrance. This prominent pediment, often sharply angled to evoke not only a pediment, but possibly a church steeple, is a unique stylistic feature to Brooklyn, seen also on Pioneer Street in figure 29, and absent in the same severity in other industrialized cities like London or Chicago. It creates a sense of continuity through the waterfront neighborhood, and an architectural identity for Red Hook.

Figure 29

This continuity, from the symmetry to the pediments to the homogenous heights and brick materiality all combine to give Red Hook residents and workers a place where they can easily dwell in a Heideggerian sense, but through a combination of the architectural and landscape elements of the site: The rhythm of the streets and of the landscape is egalitarian in ways that differ even from more southern reaches of the peninsula, surrounding the later Erie basin. Here, the Lidgerwood Warehouse is perpendicular to the coastline, allowing the streets to extend out to the water rather than terminating blocks before it. This invites people towards the coast, offering views and complete appreciation of the buildings, like Lidgerwood and the neighboring Liberty Warehouses complex, that line this western reach. Nowadays, there is a much-loved park adjacent to the warehouse: Valentino Pier. An old industrial pier has been renovated with concrete supports and stainless steel railings, dotted with benches and even sightseeing telescopes oriented towards Liberty Island and the tip of Lower Manhattan’s skyscrapers, both palpably close. This pier is grassy and open, surrounded by warehouse structures that are not overly encroaching and retaining their original facades, though the spaces have since been occupied by people-oriented proprietors, from art studios to Steve’s Key Lime Pie, popular amongst park visitors. The small strip of natural coastline adjacent to the Valentino Pier is also one of the only public, natural sand-and-rock coastlines left in New York City, let alone accessible to the public: the surf rolls in and out with the tides, and a small amphitheatre-like bank allows for interaction with the water directly. In the summer, kayakers and scavengers mingle with dog walkers and children eating deli sandwiches, perched on found logs or laying on beach towels. Even though this strip of

beach is merely a few meters wide, the welcome interaction with the natural environment just as it was directly related to the maritime industries surrounding the park, attracts locals and visitors alike, of all ages. This special place is a layered, human-scaled intersection of the Lidgerwood Warehouse’s architecture, the public access to nature in its site and surrounding landscape, as well as the updated pier as contemporary intervention that engages with history. It forms an oasis of human urban existence that is as precarious as it is evocative, telling the story of the neighborhood today in tandem with this specific Industrial era, a high point for the town’s production and population. Lidgerwood Warehouse’s site in combination with Valentino Pier is a perfect case study for the concept of Heideggerian dwelling. Here, whether in summer or winter, you can feel the intense genius loci o f Red Hook, the intersection of public works, access to natural ecosystems, and cultural authenticity: the three hallmarks of intangible heritage. The Tangible Value of Old Buildings Old buildings also offer a more intangible, but no less integral, type of heritage and character for contemporary communities. Urban theorist Jane Jacobs titles an entire chapter “The Need for Aged Buildings” in her seminal book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She begins with an urgent statement: “Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them” (187). The residents of Red Hook in the 21st century are still able to identify with the lifestyles created by these old buildings generations later, and to appreciate the rhythms of its streetscape.

Figure 30

One current resident, Izzy Hornstein, is a well-loved and long-time bartender at Sunny’s, a neighborhood bar that has been serving since the 1890s. “I’ve always lived near the water — I grew up in Yonkers, and lived on Manhattan’s West Side when I was younger,” says Hornstein. “I put the warehouses of Coffey Street right up there with the water when I think about why I love Red Hook,” she said while polishing and stacking glasses without having to look at her hands.25 The facade of the Conover Street establishment, seen above in figure 30, has stood unchanged for decades, and it is one of the busiest spots in town despite new, well-lit and spacious offerings that have opened in more recent years. This local spot, and more so its human appreciation (as Sunny’s popularity has spread to many other Brooklyn neighborhoods and NYC boroughs26) is a testament to the role of the bar in Red Hook’s intangible heritage: something that only a sense of place, rather than a name or function, can imbue. The construction of new, ground-up structures is a luxury reserved for a wealthy proprietor, often in the New York City of today only possible with the help of a developer.

25 26

Hornstein, Isadora. Interviewed by author, Red Hook, October 15, 2019. Sultan, Tim. “Sunny’s Bar, a Spiritual Holdout in Red Hook,” The New York Times. February 19, 2016.

However, as Jacobs noted decades ago, the old building stock of the city is available at reasonable prices for a more modest setup, and adds, therefore, to the diversity of residents, shopkeepers and creators in a neighborhood. It is a cycle: when a wealthier business grows out of its aging space, and makes the decision to build anew, a different business at the same level they were years ago has an opportunity to move in. Without these old buildings in a city neighborhood, new ideas and culture would not be able to gain a foothold. Jacobs writes, “Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.” The people who inhabit old buildings are, in the current culture, often artists, new immigrants, small businesses, international food vendors, bodegas, grassroots political groups, theatres and artisans. These sorts of businesses and personalities add the vitality people flock to cities for. Jacobs illustrates for us in her chapter a bit about the characters in her personal studio building: “The floor of the building in which this book is being written is occupied also by a health club with a gym, a firm of ecclesiastical decorators, an insurgent Democratic party reform club, a Liberal party political club, a music society, an accordionists’ association, a retired importer who sells maté by mail, a man who sells paper and who also takes care of shipping the maté, a dental laboratory, a studio for watercolor lessons, and a maker of costume jewelry.” This lengthy and eclectic list is a tactic Jacobs uses to say it straight to the reader’s face: the amount of diversity an old building can generate is unmatched and significant, and incubated by means completely separate from any human interference other than a low rent. She finishes by identifying herself with a desire for diversity and artistic production,

saying, “There is no place for the likes of us in new construction.” Artistic types, arctivists, immigrants, changemakers: these are the types of people who dwell in the vernacular, layered spaces representative of the human-scaled urban traditions they uphold, taking a personal and vested interest in space and its uses. Today, despite a recent influx of artists and other cultural capital, 58% of Red Hook’s commerce remains industrial, contributing the most industrial activity to the area of Southwest Brooklyn where 52% of residents are employed in industrial sectors. This makes Southwest Brooklyn second in NYC-area industrial production, eclipsed only by Long Island City, at 58%, a more recently emerging neighborhood further north on the East River.27 Lining the more commercial waterfront streets of Conover, Ferris, Clinton and King Streets are metalworks, auto repair shops, architectural glass outfits, and even the storied Maraschino cherry company, Dell’s. This strong industrial culture has the potential to keep the “artists-as-gentrifiers,” and the negative transformation of Jacobs’ Greenwich Village from arts and activist center to bedrooms for investment bankers, at bay. A deletion of the old buildings these blue-collar, community-based small businesses and light industries operate out of, or the jobs they create, would result in a cultural as well as economic crisis for any city. The impending crisis of Red Hook lies in its position at the intersection between the modern, service-industry focused New York City and the hidden industrial history that is

NYC Planning Report. “Employment in New York City's Manufacturing Districts.” November 2015.

the very fuel motivating this wealth. This precipice reflects the atmosphere explored by architect and theoretician Lebbeus Woods in his essay Radical Reconstruction. While Woods frames his essay, oddly aligned with the preservation issues raised in this thesis because of its forward-thinking attitudes about fringe populations and future lifestyles, around the violence and destruction that World War II inflicted upon European cities that allowed, or “begged for” such reconstructions, Red Hook has experienced a less literal violence. Rather than bombs, politically-driven economic tides and immigrant migrations shaped as well as gutted Red Hook’s landscape — the remaining shells and decay serve as an ideal environment for a Woods-esque scene of rebirth. The architect has designed sets for Aliens and drafted a yet-unrealized screenplay titled Underground Berlin. While he has built astoundingly little (never a fully realized building) his expansive writings and his architectural theories, particularly on the decay and deconstruction of built environments in what he views as the inevitable apocalyptic world toward which human behavior is launching itself, are surprisingly aligned with the work of architectural preservationists and practices of adaptive reuse. Upon what foundation, he asks, have we rebuilt the cities of Sarajevo and Havana, his case studies in Radical Reconstruction? While those violently deconstructed cities g ave way to their own stories of rebirth and peripherality, I believe Woods would be just as compelled by Red Hook as a case study for radical reconstruction, because it is a place that has always formed as an edge condition for the marginalized, simultaneously standing at the periphery and the entrance to one of the most powerful port cities in the world.

While it is a human instinct to attempt to rebuild a way of existence irretrievably lost, the universal predictable, generational mindset tends to consider the previous age to be in all ways more vivid or moral. A rebuilding in imitation of a previous status or state is inherently an act of statecraft, a representation of an old way of being reestablished, while both governments and their majority working class citizenry know it is dead. The rebuilding of old monuments to exact proportions but as new is always ingenuine, and in Woods’ words, “suited only for tourists.” However, what exists of the old is integral to catalyze anything new, as the layers of social and architectural discourse that evolve symbiotically over time show us how humans can move forward. They reveal how to be modern without erasing or ignoring the lessons inherent in the past (and they avoid the fate of the Modernists and Urban Renewals). Red Hook’s built landscape has remained relatively intact due to a variety of factors, from relative isolation by the MTA to private ownership of warehouses and piers that resisted large-scale state interventions. The peninsula has such a palpable genius loci because residents use their authentic remaining architecture to continue to express themselves and to identify with their places of residence and work, and therefore this fabric should be preserved and built upon, rather than erased and reiterated, in order to ensure the survival of the delicate layers of history and urban dwelling. While a regeneration and protection for Red Hook’s architectural heritage is of utmost importance for its long-term health as a neighborhood, the question of who, or what, carries out this regeneration is something addressed in Woods’ writing, and it is also an

inherent question to ask after witnessing the greyscale of successes and failures of larger projects like Canary Wharf, funded by capitalist government sources. Governments and developers, whose aim is financial accumulation, “cannot be trusted” to carry out this intricate means of rebuilding in Woods’ mind. Community-based planners everywhere have voiced support for more recent and well-aligned architectural concepts like Mike Lydon’s Tactical Urbanism a nd sidewalk interventions like Parklets and pedestrian ways. To avoid blank-slate plans and mistakes as represented by Hudson Yards and others, governments must model their impetus towards rebuilding from what Woods refers to as “below” — from people who begin to build directly, without the sanction of institutional authority, as they understand how they need to live, and how the fabric of their community has been layered. These grassroots movements, often instigated by the people who inhabit the peripheries of a society or system and begin out of necessity, represent the ability of people to integrate t hemselves with an architecture, rather than merely accepting statecrafted architectures of economy that often degrade or oversimplify urban dwelling. The haphazard resources and the amenities created by, for example, a squatting community inhabiting an abandoned or damaged space, is one such model we can follow. Red Hook actually gained recognition in the early 20th century for its community of squatters, as the open lots east of the manufacturing districts where the NYCHA houses now stand were occupied during the Great Depression and even earlier by impoverished dockworkers, living informally in lean-to structures and various forms of shacks with

Figure 31

animals and family members.28 Yet even then, the community feeling was strong enough amongst the immigrants and workers that the settlement was more or less permanent and well-documented. While I have left the more modern eastern portion of Red Hook out of the scope of this thesis, this community of dockworkers was eventually recognized, and given housing in the form of the Red Hook Houses in the early 1930s, rather than continuing the neighborhood’s vernacular rowhouse styling. The informal ability of people to see space as a potential to satisfy both immediate and communal needs, outside of considerations of ownership or financially-motivated ideas of longevity, continues in fringe communities everywhere. If such a model could be studied in Red Hook as the researchers from Het Nieuwe Institut undertook for their book, On Squatting as Spatial Practice, t he often empty, aged and damaged warehouses of Red Hook’s peninsula would represent an ideal site for such a social architectural experiment, even if more official and legal spatial interventions served as the product. 28

Spellen, Suzanne. “A Look Back at Tin City,” Brownstoner, J une 20, 2018.

Figure 32

In a large swath of underused historic architecture existing as an edge condition, the potential for people to “scab” the freespaces with dynamic architectural tissue without hierarchical influence abounds, as showcased in figures 32 and 34. Woods defines a scab as “a first layer of reconstruction, shielding an exposed interior space or void, protecting it during its transformation.” In our language, scab is an ugly word, but the process of reconstructing a space in order to start afresh is aligned with that ugliness, and so is the inevitably messy, temporary result. By using the warehouse and industrial history of the area as a guide, still available for study and reflection via the existence of these original structures, new ways of life can emerge, added to rather than erasing the layers of social

Figure 33, 34

history that came before. In taking Wood’s literal healing metaphor further, the preliminary “scabbing” of repurposing or repairing old structures can eventually lead to a “scar,” a visceral contrasting element that cannot be erased; a mutant tissue acting as a precursor of unpredictable regenerations. Such interventions are observable in the Red Hook of today mostly in the form of landscape interventions: private gardens extending into an adjacent abandoned lot, houses for stray cats in overgrown parking lots, makeshift benches and tables nestled in abandoned, often dilapidated structures. Though these interventions turn “freespace” into potential, there is still no clear line of ownership or programmatic development. Yet, just through minimal interventions, these spaces are claimed as useful, not sitting in wait for development. By taking architecture into our own hands, we shape the built environment to reflect the personal scabs and scars, or past stories and currently developing ones, of humans themselves. One's own stories inform those they are building, and these are in turn informed by the ones they are physically building on or around. With individuals (especially those who gravitate towards the fringe) adapting the built environment, architecture will inevitably become more and more distanced from either previous or existing demands of an institution towards conformity and authoritarian norms. Scabs and scars, in Woods’ theory, will eventually cease to be seen as ugly, just as art and life will cease to be seen as beautiful and decaying: the ideas of beauty and decay will merge into one, conceived of as beautiful in the same ways that we now see beauty in diversity and multiplicity. At the edge of our cities, our societies, and our own

personal thought lay the “freespaces,” or the places between the wall. There, the importance of abandoned architectures not looking to be filled, but looking to stand as transcending the layers, are those which we cannot afford to erase. Figure 35, 36

Today, these old warehouses have been reclaimed and have begun to be “scabbed” by many artists and small businesses. Carvart Glass operated in the 1886 Brooklyn Clay Retort and Fire Brick Warehouse on Van Brunt Street, the only existing landmarked building in Red Hook today.29 MADE architects, a young design firm, has an office and woodshop at number 12B in the Beard and Robinson Stores, and the aforementioned Steve’s Key Lime Pie calls the Liberty Warehouse complex adjacent to Lidgerwood and Valentino Pier home.

NYC Preservation Commission. “Brooklyn Clay Retort and Fire Brick Storehouse,” December 18, 2001.

This acknowledgment of the excellent ability of

Figure 37

old buildings, and the landscape or fabric they create, to offer diverse uses and to cater to diverse urban populations was manifested in Red Hook as the neighborhood began to slowly recover from years of public divestment, violent crime and drug trafficking in the 90s. Artists began to inhabit the area for the same reasons they infiltrated SoHo in the 60s — the industrially zoned lofts and warehouse structures available (often empty and abandoned) in the area gave them license to practice a low-income art or start a business with low financial risk: it all begins and is perpetuated by low overhead. Furniture makers and glass blowers came first to Red Hook, taking advantage of the industrial material suppliers that had already been there, now in close proximity. But other recent newcomers, namely ecommerce giants like UPS, have shown potential to disrupt the diverse spirit of Jacobs’ mixed uses or Woods’ layered spatial interventions. Contemporary Movements Since Hurricane Sandy hit the peninsula in 2012, its floodwaters leaving many homes uninhabitable and storefronts damaged beyond repair, development has been quickly yet quietly picking up the pieces the residents were forced to leave behind. Yet in this

remote corner of Brooklyn, development did not immediately take the form of glassy high rises and Equinox gyms due to the unique mix of zoning in Red Hook. While much of the historic western portion of the neighborhood has been zoned for Manufacturing (M) since 30

the 1961 zoning act, many other

Figure 38

areas, notably on the southern waterfront, have been recently rezoned as Special Use Districts, where a mix of manufacturing, commercial and residential zoning can coexist. While these special zoning ordinances have allowed developments like a Fairway supermarket in the old Red Hook Stores, and notably for this thesis, the art galleries, glassworks, ice cream stores and furniture showrooms that exist side-by-side in the Beard and Robinson Stores, the major developments disrupting community life have come from a less expected source. Due to the minimal strictures on area development, e-commerce giants like FedEx, Amazon, and UPS have taken measures to buy cheap, previously underutilized industrial land, demolishing buildings that lack landmark status for parking lots.

NYC Planning. “Employment in New York City’s Manufacturing Districts,” nyc.gov. November 2015.

While the buildings themselves are not seen as valuable — many do not meet current fire codes or they require intensive interior renovation — ecommerce companies see the opportunity to buy large amounts of land cheaply to serve parking needs through easy demolition, making way for trucks and services to meet the ever-growing demand for rapidly delivered goods in the New York City area. Red Hook is conveniently located adjacent to the Manhattan-connected Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, the Gowanus Expressway link to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and Hamilton Avenue and Columbia Streets, all of which are major thoroughfares taking trucks directly into other areas of Brooklyn. By pursuing this process of demolition and negation, ecommerce developments are actually anti-developments, erasing rather than enacting new, modern and radical reconstruction. Subtracting from the built environment in favor of razed parking lots and fencing that now dominates a landscape of once-abandoned corner lots near Red Hook’s docks, these are not “freespace”31 for public intervention, nor do they deploy scabs and scars for new ways of living amongst the old fabric. Rather, they are just more square footage in the developer’s arsenal, serving

Figure 39

increasingly elite audiences far from Red Hook itself.

Woods, Lebbeus. “Radical Reconstruction” Princeton Architectural Press, 1997.

However, these demolitions have recently come to the attention of many residents. At first, a chief complaint amongst residents was that the concentration of trucking operations disrupted the small town-scaled traffic flow and added to noise complaints. Emboldened by early success, these ecommerce outlets were beginning to gain confidence, spending millions to buy the more massive, and historical, warehouses that line more important or idyllic streets. The local grassroots preservation movement crystalized in a landmark preservation case in May 2019, a response to the partial demolition by UPS of the Lidgerwood Warehouse, the previously well-kept and prominently located red brick warehouse discussed above, which is located at the mouth of one of the neighborhood’s most popular parks, Valentino Pier. Carolina Salgeuro, founder of PortSide New York, is a life-long Red Hook resident who currently lives aboard the 19th century oil tanker berthed in the Erie Basin, adjacent to the ferry station. Currently the home of her organization and its operations as well, Salguero is acutely aware of the developments regarding the waterfront of which she is an active part. Speaking with the Brooklyn Eagle, she said, “Red Hook was significant for 100 years for its maritime and industrial production and innovation. The Lidgerwood [Warehouse] is a symbol of that.”

Figure 40

She also specifically addressed the aesthetic value of the specific warehouse, one of many on this western waterfront: “Sometimes historic buildings are ugly carbuncles,” she said. “In this case, it’s a very handsome building. It’s a win-win.”32

The UPS demolition began in the middle of the night, just days before the city was to vote on the landmark protections for the building. Rallying in the dark, volunteers from Salguero’s PortSide, as well as from other local organizations like the Red Hook Initiative and Resilient Red Hook, came with signs and chants, standing in front of the bulldozers, demanding a halt to demolition. UPS workers agreed to stop their work, and councilwoman Nydia Velasquez demanded that UPS cooperate with her government and the locality in a formal and transparent way. Salguero commented that, “UPS is a customer-service company,” she said. “It matters to them what people think.” Since then, UPS released the renderings for its construction to adapt the warehouse rather than to demolish it completely, included below as figure 41. Yet many, from architectural historians to lay people, can see that “sensitive” is not a word one could use to describe the proposed scheme; it appears to be another glass box erasing the crowning pedimental elements, and therefore erasing the history and consistent neighborhood identity of a very adaptable and beautiful building.

Croghan, Lore. “Red Hook activists fight to save historic factory from UPS demolition,” The Brooklyn Eagle. M ay 23, 2019. 32

Figure 41

This success on the part of local activists set a precedent for other loved and endangered buildings in the area, and it brought the quiet assaults of ecommerce on abandoned or underutilized waterfront buildings to the attention of neighbors and shopkeepers. The concept of adaptive reuse is now a common topic of debate amongst organizations and political representatives. According to Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council,, “[I]t’s a shame when a historic building as characteristic of its community as this one is thoughtlessly destroyed, and it is difficult to believe that UPS cannot find an adaptive reuse for such an iconic Red Hook structure.” Yet city records point to a very thought-out plan for destruction of the historic waterfront fabric: UPS reportedly bought Lidgerwood from a Milan-based real estate firm, Est4te Four, for $37.24 million, coupling this purchase with a $303 million purchase from local industrial landlord Sitex Group that included several other warehouse structures directly adjacent to the Lidgerwood’s 202 Coffey Street address. Clearly UPS has been

strategically planning its development in the area for some time, without any community notice or involvement. Conclusion While some may defend UPS and other e-commercial presence in Red Hook as a continuation of its transportation and industrial history, or even as a creator of jobs in an economically depressed region, the monopolization of development by institutions that exercise power over the poor and marginalized is a recipe for failure. We observed this arc at Canary Wharf, where a temporary boom in the 80s has now begun to turn downwards, while Wapping is only continuing to increase its community engagement and economic draw. The success of Wapping is due to its preservation of layers of history that reflect its genius loci, and that celebrate life at all thresholds, not only that of the ultra-rich or ultra-visible. By combining the theories and pedagogies of thinkers and philosophers outside the strictly architectural canon or historic preservation world, (though their work is important, especially in the ways they set precedents and sought visibility) but also including voices and concepts from social, political, and as yet undefined interdisciplinary sectors, we can conceive of architecture and place as more than just an aesthetic expression or engine for financial viability. To ignore the effects of the Industrial Revolution on us and our society is to take a position of naivete. It is a narrow view to only look at 18th century landscapes of idyll and

arcadia. It is ignorant to celebrate new waves of technology without recognizing their roots in industrialization and the earliest waves of overseas globalization. L. S. Lowry painted the world he lived, worked and died in. He painted the “matchstick men”33 of modern society as we don’t like to see ourselves. To escape that machine-like existence is to occupy the fringes and retake space in our cities for ourselves, to recreate the layers of organic culture and life that humans naturally are drawn to. Structures and spaces are malleable, despite the exclusionary nature of the architecture and design community as we know it today. Urban dwellers can and should seize the opportunity, and power, that comes with regaining space and reworking the old, rather than continuously enacting violence over the landscapes in the name of a blank slate or predescribed notions of “modernity.” We can learn from our past without stagnating: Red Hook’s industrial landscape offers a ripe environment for experiential forms of inhabiting the future, rather than following a predetermined program.

Hudson, Mark. “L.S. Lowry: There’s More to Him than Matchstick Men,” The Telegraph. June 24, 2013.

Image Credits Title Page: Photograph by author. Red Hook Stores (Fairway) Fall 2019. Introductory Image: L.S. Lowry, Industrial Landscape, 1955. Tate Modern. Figure 1 - H illa and Bernd Becher. Pitheads, 1947. Tate Modern. 2 - George Frederick Crutchley. Crutchley’s Map of London, 1839. UCLA Libraries. 3 - National Maritime Museum. Plan of East India Docks at Blackwall, 1 803. PortCities UK 4 - Robertson, E. Arnot. Thames Portrait, “ Wapping Old Stairs.” 1937. Museum of London. 5 - “Shadwell Basin, Wapping Canal.” Youtube, Settime2588. 2017. (still) 6 - Baynes, Mark. “Water Flowing on Wapping Canal Again.” 2014. 7 & 8 - Baker, Rob. “Shadwell Dock Basin.” Flaskbak. 1973. 9 - Williams, David. “Canals of Wapping.” geograph.org.uk. 2 006. 10 - East Mall, Tobacco Dock. Event Booker. 2020. 11 - “The Strange Story of the Tobacco Dock Shopping Centre in Wapping.” Isle of Dogs Life. 12 - Bradley, William. “An Aerial View of Canary Wharf,” SurryLive, G ettyImages. 2020. 13 & 14 - Photographs by the author. Fall 2019. 15 - Holmes, Joe. “Brownstones Along 3rd Street in Park Slope.” Flickr. 16 - Photograph by the author. Spring 2020. 17 - The Welikia Project. 2010-2013. Sutori.com. 18 - Ratzer, Bernard. Map of Brooklyn, 1 770. Brooklyn Historical Society. 19 - The New York Times, “ Bale Hook, Symbol of Dockhand…” January 24, 1965. 20 - Sanborn Map Company, “Brooklyn, V. 1, Double Page Plate No. 3 [Map bounded by Van Brunt St., Atlantic Basin, Sackett St.]” The New York Public Library, Digital Collections. 1884. 21 - Sanborn Map Company, “Plate 31: Bounded by Richards Street, (Erie Basin Dry Docks) Beard Street, Dwight Street, Bush Street, Columbia Street, Center Street, Hicks Street, Hamilton Avenue, (Gowanus Canal) Smith Street, Percival Street, Court Street, Bryant Street, Clinton Street, (Henry Street Skip, Hicks Street Slip) Bay Street, Hicks Street, (Erie Basin) Halleck Street and Beard Street.” The New York Public Library, Digital Collections. 1908. 22 - Google Maps. “Red Hook,” 2020. 23 -26 - Photographed by the author. Fall 2019/Spring 2020. 27 - Wadsworth & Wells. “Storage… At the Atlantic Dock,” Doggets Directory, 1847. PortSide. 28-30 - Photographed by the author. Fall 2019/Spring 2020. 31 - Municipal Archives Collection. “Hoover City Shacks,” 1930-1932. NYC Dept. of Records. 32-34 - Photographed by the author. Fall 2019/Spring 2020. 35 - Kelly, Nolan. Portrait of the author with Fire Brick Storehouse, 2020. 36 & 37 - Photographed by the author. Fall 2019/Spring 2020. 38 - NYC Planning. “Red Hook Existing Conditions and Brownfield Analysis,” S eptember 2014. 39 & 40 - Photographed by the author. Fall 2019. 41 - UPS, Customer Service Response to Inquiry. Fall 2019.

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