As with Coney Island, the Rockaways, and Staten Island, Red Hook has become a hub where donations from cleaning supplies to food to books and toys are being collected and distributed to the surrounding families and businesses in the flooded streets of the neighborhood and being sent to other parts of the city affected by the storm.
Red Hook has played a central role in Brooklyn’s waterfront economy since the early nineteenth century. It has also been a thriving working-class neighborhood for much of that time. By the 1960s and 1970s, containerized shipping moved most commerce away from Red Hook to New Jersey, and the neighborhood’s industrial buildings crumbled with disrepair. But in the following decades, the architecture and history of this post-industrial neighborhood captured the imaginations of artists, small business owners, and other creative and innovative people, who joined a diverse group of longtime Red Hook residents.
It seems inevitable that Red Hook’s community will return with the same combination of industry and inventiveness it has nurtured for many years. To see more old photographs of Red Hook, visit our online gallery, or add more post-Sandy photographs to our Hurricane Sandy: Brooklyn Stories page. To continue with Sandy relief efforts, look to twitter and Red Hook Initiative.
Everyone at Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) is keenly aware of the wide impact that Sandy has had on Brooklyn and surrounding areas and we hope that services are reaching you and life is getting back to normal.
BHS is working on collecting information about Sandy and the effects of the storm on our borough to add to BHS’ collections. Over the next several weeks, PHOTO OF THE WEEK will document Sandy and its impact on Brooklyn. We encourage you to check out our Storify website, documenting our progress so far. Click here: Hurricane Sandy: Brooklyn Stories.
Interested in seeing more photographs from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery which includes a selection of our images. To search our entire collection of images, visit BHS Othmer Library Wed-Fri 1:00-5:00 p.m.
This blog post reflects the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of Brooklyn Public Library.
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