The Industrial Colossus: Shipyards, Sugar, and Superfunds

• $40,000Price paid in 1801 for the 40-acre Navy Yard property
• 70,000 men and womenEmployed at the Navy Yard at its absolute zenith
• over 10,000 factoriesIn Brooklyn by 1890, the fourth-largest manufacturing city in the nation
• 1.8-mile-longIndustrial Gowanus Canal, designated a federal Superfund site in 2010

As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, Brooklyn's economic engine shifted definitively from agriculture to massive maritime industrialization. The borough's extensive waterfront along the East River, Wallabout Bay, and New York Harbor was systematically bulkheaded, dredged, and developed to support global shipping and manufacturing.⁶³

The absolute crown jewel of this industrial ecosystem was the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Located on the precise site of the infamous Wallabout Bay prison ships, the U.S. government purchased the 40-acre property for $40,000 in 1801. The yard evolved from constructing wooden frigates to pioneering ironclad technology. In 1862, it launched the USS Monitor, the Navy's first ironclad warship, altering the trajectory of global naval warfare.^44,68

Engineering feats at the yard were monumental. Construction of Dry Dock 1, which began in 1841, required engineers to overcome quicksand and underground springs by driving over 6,500 wooden piles to create a stable foundation; upon its completion in 1851, it could pump 610,000 gallons of water in just over two hours. The yard's output dictated American military supremacy; it built the USS Maine (whose explosion triggered the Spanish-American War) and the legendary battleships USS North Carolina, USS Iowa, and the USS Missouri—the latter serving as the site of the formal Japanese surrender that ended World War II. During the Second World War, the yard underwent a massive expansion. Buildings like the 712,000-square-foot Building 3 and the $4 million Building 77 were constructed at breakneck speeds. At its absolute zenith, the Brooklyn Navy Yard operated 24 hours a day and employed 70,000 men and women.^68,67

Further south along the waterfront, the industrial scale was equally staggering. In 1902, entrepreneurs constructed Bush Terminal, an unprecedented complex that synergized docking, manufacturing, warehousing, and rail transportation via extensive cross-harbor lighterage and carfloat operations (such as the Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal) that bypassed the need to unload freight onto Manhattan ferryboats. Along the East River in Williamsburg, the American Sugar Refining Company's massive plant, later known as Domino Sugar, processed an immense fraction of the nation's sugar supply. Pfizer pharmaceuticals, established in the nineteenth century in Brooklyn, began its ascent as a global medical supplier, and Standard Oil refined immense quantities of petroleum along Newtown Creek. By 1890, Brooklyn ranked as the fourth-largest manufacturing city in the nation, boasting over 10,000 factories, 110,000 workers, and a manufactured goods valuation of $269 million.^67,63

However, this aggressive industrialization carried devastating long-term human and environmental costs. The shipbuilding industry, particularly companies like the Todd Corporation operating out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and adjacent facilities, utilized vast quantities of asbestos for fire resistance, exposing thousands of workers to lethal carcinogens that would later manifest as mesothelioma.⁷⁰

Environmentally, the most glaring casualty was the Gowanus Canal. Originally a pristine saltwater marsh teeming with wildlife, it was converted in the 1860s into a 1.8-mile-long, 100-foot-wide industrial canal to service adjacent factories, chemical plants, and gas works.⁷²

For over a century, heavy polluters dumped toxic byproducts directly into the waterway. Despite early attempts at remediation, such as a flushing tunnel installed in 1911 (which subsequently broke in the 1960s), the canal devolved into a stagnant, toxic soup of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals, and raw sewage, famously devoid of aquatic life. In 2010, recognizing the catastrophic ecological legacy of Brooklyn's industrial golden age, the Environmental Protection Agency officially designated the Gowanus Canal a federal Superfund site.^74,75

The post-WWII era brought severe deindustrialization. Containerization made Brooklyn's traditional finger piers obsolete, and the Navy Yard officially closed as a military installation in 1966. The subsequent flight of manufacturing jobs and middle-class residents plunged large swaths of the borough into economic despair, urban decay, and systemic redlining. The remnants of this era—abandoned factories and warehouses—would sit desolate until the late twentieth century, when they were gradually repurposed by artists, artisans, and developers, triggering the massive urban revitalization, adaptive reuse (such as the Domino Sugar complex and Bush Terminal Park), and intense gentrification that characterizes modern Brooklyn.^67,63