1857
The City of Brooklyn completes the world’s first comprehensive sewer system (without treatment).
1857-69
The Erie Basin is constructed in Red Hook. William H. Beard, an Irish immigrant and railroad contractor, builds a mile-long breakwater using ballast from visiting ships. The 60-acre basin accommodates more canal boats from upstate.
1866-70
The Gowanus Canal Improvement Commission creates a 100-foot-wide channel extending from Butler Street south to Hamilton Avenue (widening to 300 feet in Gowanus Bay).
1868-74 Private basin construction. Landowners along the canal build side basins extending the canal into their properties.
Composite map useful for understanding the route chosen by canal engineers (base map: Colton 1849; Coles mill pond from Bleecker 1836; canal outline in red from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 1942)
1870
Park Slope develops with new brownstones and sewers that drain into the canal.
1873
The Coignet Stone Company builds its headquarters at 3rd Street and 3rd Avenue. The structure later becomes the office of Edwin C. Litchfield, head of the Brooklyn Improvement Company, who sells farmland for industrial development.
1877
View of an unidentified section of the Gowanus Canal, Circa 1877 Taken within about a decade of completion of the main canal, this view suggests the rapid industrial growth along the waterway. Source: Brooklyn Public Library.
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