A Strange Sentinel
The far-east corner of the Brooklyn Navy Yard is the stuff of George A. Romero’s most delicious nightmares. Behind the “Government Property” signs that promise to sic dogs on trespassers, tendrils of ivy have climbed the walls and spilled down, their curls almost touching the street. An overgrown green fortress broods among the neighborhood’s behemoth gray warehouses.
Rooted among all this thriving vegetation is an old wooden hospital, beautiful and abandoned. A single boarded window watches silently, often unnerving late-night passerby who peer through the dark to realize that they are inches away from a crumbling cemetery. The history behind that fence is palpable.
This landmark’s story runs parallel to that of America’s. It has housed soldiers during the Civil War and during World War II (for the good of the country or more sinister reasons), manufactured several of our most famed warships, including the U.S.S Maine and the U.S.S Arizona, and sat at the helm of the Industrial Revolution.
Now so obscure, The Brooklyn Navy Yard’s has been quietly earning New York City millions of dollars daily. The Yard’s 200 (and counting) corporate tenants are also positioning themselves as leaders in tomorrow’s clean, green technology. All in all, it’s 300 acres of damn cool stuff.
A History of Violence
The Brooklyn Navy Yard’s official timeline boasts that it existed when Brooklyn was part of a land of trees purchased by the Dutch for a fistful of cash. It existed during the Revolutionary War, when 11,000 American patriots died as prisoners on Confederate ships. The legendary Battle of Brooklyn was fought on what is now Fulton Street on August 27, 1776 . The corpses of the revolutionaries, sustaining heavy losses, were buried at the Vinegar Hill memorial. Thousands of bodies were later disinterred from the Navy Yard, years after the Hospital Annex was built … well, more on that later.
Americans were building boats at the Wallabout Bay location since 1781. The USS Adams was the first ship made on the premises, protecting the then-pristine coast from French bullying. The Navy acquired the Yard for exclusive use in 1801 for the production of warship accessories, guns and artillery cannons.
Beautiful housing was erected for the yard’s overseers, and the country’s prominent architects were commissioned for the design. The researchers at the Urban Oyster tour group presume that the Commodine mansion was the creation of Charles Bulfinch, one of the gentlemen responsible for the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
Today it is privately owned, so the public is not welcome to take a look. However, this privacy may be a boon to the house’s preservation, as many of its city-owned brothers have fallen. Admiral’s Row, named for its historical residents, suffered from a devastating fire in the 1980’s and, lacking the funds for repair, has since been steadily collapsing.
Banana Lube and Welding Women
Technology began to gather speed in the 19th century, which meant better production machines and more of them. One star of these operations was the United State’s first steamship, the Fulton Steam Frigate. Dry Dock 1, America’s first steamer-building dock, was assembled in 1851 for a price now equivalent to $2 million. A canal floated materials into the dock, stranded them for the duration of construction, and then pumped a boat out into the bay.
It was a time of experimentation and enlightenment: the new-fangled monsters necessitated lubrication to slip into the water, and a troop of men would rub bananas along their hulls to help budge the ships.
It was also a time of mistakes: the Fulton accidentally exploded in 1829, killing 29 soldiers. Forward movement progressed nonetheless.
Marvelous feats of construction were realized during World War Two. The U.SS Monitor and the U.SS Maine, which ignited the Spanish-American war, were born at the Navy Yard. The USS Arizona was made during World War I and sunk by the Japanese in the next world war.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard plunged headfirst, along with the rest of the country, into construction during the turbulence of World War II. Seventy thousand employees worked on 70 ships at once during those productive years. The Hammerhead Crane, the world’s largest, towered over the concrete to lift 350 gross tons onto ship superstructures.
Women were called upon for the first time to fill workforce gaps. While pop culture trumpeted Rosie the Riveter, Wilma the Welder was toiling away at the Yard.
The fire-wielding Wilma’s of 1938 to 1949 were unique to Brooklyn. They were the first to utilize a revolutionary method called “cold welding” to quickly adhere metallic parts. Instead of waiting for the metals to melt, they applied vacuum pressure to stick the molecules together. Reminiscing about their work, two former Welding Wilma’s Sylvia and Ida vividly recall wearing leather to protect their skin against rampant sparks, and yet they were paid 15 to 30 cents an hour– less than half of the men whose work they rivaled. An audio excerpt of their story is available at www.bnyc92.org, and the full series is at the Brooklyn Historical Society’s library upon special request.
Although the Wilmas ultimately won wages equal to men, they were still subjected to suspicion. According to a bit of juicy gossip from Adam Schwartz of Urban Oyster Tours, female employee’s beds were stripped of anything soft to discourage the ladies from engaging in “inappropriate acts”.
Cranes and Ghosts
By the end of the first world war, the Brooklyn Navy Yard was a complete community with its own market, Wallabout, and a miniature red-light district to satisfy other needs. The Hospital Annex offered rest houses devoted to drink, dance, and film screenings. The Yard has had its fill of human experience, but the voices that flowed freely inside have quieted.
The U.S Navy cleared out in 1965, after its last ship headed for Vietnam. New York City didn’t purchase the land until a year later; it was acquired for over $24 million.
The Hammerhead Crane has been reduced to a latticework of rivets on the ground. Most of the factories are no longer in use, their starved skeletons left exposed and rusting. Lawn chairs and torn umbrellas are littered in odd places. Still, the Hospital Annex provides the most impressive vision of the life that once was.
If ever a zombie war were to plague the earth, it would originate in the grassy knolls of the Hospital Annex. It was built separately in 1838 to house soldiers, but it was also used by Bristol-Meyers Squibb for an ether-stabilization laboratory. The gorgeous Surgeon’s Residence was put up in 1864.
As for ghosts, rumor says that there are plenty. While checking out the hospital on special permission, an employee of current renter GDM heard a voice whisper into his ear, “Tell my wife I’m okay”. Group tours make a brief excursion into the Annex grounds, but the only man with door keys is Tom the gatekeeper. It’s possible to peep through the locked doors of the Surgeon’s Residence and see a single whitewashed cabinet spiral staircase looming up into obscurity.
The area would attract Halloween revelers in droves, but it can no longer support large quantities of people. Mr. Schwartz explains that no electric or sewage infrastructure runs through it, and it would now be too costly to install. Care is taken to save the Annex from decay; the adjoining cemetery has been closed and its occupants reinterred at Cypress Hill National Cemetery. It may soon be used as a rest area along the Brooklyn area of the Greenway, a thin paved road for bikers that extends along the Eastern coast from just under Canada to the Florida Keys.
Bright Sights for the Future
Great things are sprouting from the post-apocalyptic, previously asbestos-riddled rubble. More than 200 private tenants have rented out the useable structures. Businesses ranging from art restoration to warehouse storage operate in the perfectly secluded workspace.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard is racing ahead of the game in clean technology innovations. The Yard resourcefully conserves material by not constructing any new buildings. All its residents work out of cleaned buildings that have been standing since the 19th century. The three remaining dry docks are fully useable, and are now “graving docks” that repair ships instead of creating them. Their business contributes tens of millions of dollars yearly to the city’s economy. The Yard employs 4,000 New Yorkers, and that number is expected to expand by 1,500 as Bloomberg and BNYDC (privately) pour in $250 million dollars of funding.
A list of private businesses is publicly available from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but the notable ones physically stand out among gray factory coils. What looks like a lot of model homes is a plant that makes prefabricated housing from recycled supplies. A company called IceStone turns broken glass into a sturdy, granite-like substance. The futuristic CoGen (short for CoGeneration) headquarters uses waste heat to boil water for energy. It is also solar-powered and collects rainwater for its toilets. Perhaps not all the companies are so dedicated, but they do sport LEED-accreditation.
To Hollywood and Tomorrow
Hollywood also has its Eastern stronghold in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Steiner Studios is New York’s very own film production house, the largest outside of Los Angeles. It is responsible for Spider-Man 3 and the hit show Damages. The complex is leased for private events, introducing rich and interested patrons to the BNY. The nonprofit Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation is helping it expand by 280,000 square feet.
A 2007 press release by Mayor Bloomberg announced plans for the restoration of the Commandant’s Residence. By 2010, the building will be BNY Building 92, the official museum of Navy Yard history, meeting place of the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment, and part of the new paradox of an environmentally-friendly industrial park.
Building 92 is removing the BNY’s mysterious shroud. According to the press release, the $15 million project will display 35,000 original architectural plans and thousands of digitized photographs. Audio recordings are being stitched together to form a comprehensive timeline of the Yard. The Welding Wilmas will speak again.
Marilyn Gelber, Executive Director of private funder Independence Community Foundation, puts it best: “This exciting (restoration) project will provide access to and context for the Yard’s rich military and industrial past, while simultaneously introducing visitors and students to the Yard’s current tenants: the media and green manufacturing firms in the vanguard of Brooklyn’s economic renaissance.” It is hard to keep history silent.
Special thanks to Cindy VandenBosch of Urban Oyster Tours for helping me get access to this juicy piece of history.
http://www.gowanuslounge.com/2006/07/25/wallabout-update-affordable-housing-coming-to-brig-site/
http://www.brooklynnavyyard.org/history.html
Deeply attractive to some diners and intensely repulsive to others, oysters are an unusually engrossing food. They should be savored slowly with the tongue, slipping by unnoticed if swallowed in one cold sip without even an echo of an aftertaste- but with their gourmet price tag, why bother ordering if not to explore?