Walking Brooklyn. Adrienne Onofri
to fold boxes, and launched a cardboard-box factory that operated in this area from 1888 to 1927 with a workforce that reached 1,700—largest in the neighborhood.
A bunch of people are probably standing in the middle of the Washington–Water intersection taking pictures. Join them to behold an awesome view of the Empire State Building between the columns of the Manhattan Bridge.
Turn and walk away from the river on Washington. See Gair’s name inscribed in the doorway on your left—this was the first of roughly 10 reinforced-concrete facilities he built. Another is to your right. Where did it fit in the company’s chronology? He tells you at the corner with Front Street, along with the year of construction on the shield to the right above the door.
Turn right on Front, then make a right on Main Street. The Sweeney Building at #30 was a nickelware factory when it opened in 1911; now it’s condos. Across Water Street on your left, the Stable Building was built by Gair for just that purpose in the 1880s and currently houses several art galleries. Check ’em out—some have entrances on Water.
On the other side of Main Street stands Dumbo’s most recognizable landmark, the Clocktower Building. Completed in 1914, it was the final—and tallest—Gair building but now bears the name Walentas, after the developer who converted it to condos. Its triplex penthouse, which includes 14-foot clocks (you can see out of them) and a glass elevator, sold for $18 million in 2016. Walentas bought the whole building in the 1990s for a million.
From Main Street, go right on Plymouth Street—but look down Plymouth in the other direction at the Brooklyn Bridge, designed by John Roebling. Esteemed architecture critic Lewis Mumford once commented that the only person who had a bigger influence on the Brooklyn waterfront than Roebling was Robert Gair. At the Washington Street corner, visit the
From Plymouth, turn left on Adams Street. Bliss’s factory occupied the entire block to your right.
Cross John Street and enter another section of Brooklyn Bridge Park via the path beside the new condo (which contains only 42 apartments, 4 of them penthouses). Follow the path to the left, crossing footbridges over a salt marsh and tidal channel. Look for the ziggurat-shaped metal relics arrayed in a sunken area with rocks. These were the footings of a demolished building of the Arbuckle Brothers’ sugar refinery. A surviving structure from the refinery is now the other residential building on the park. As part of its recent conversion, the brick building is getting a new glass-and-steel facade on the water side—a look inspired by sugar crystals. Continue around that building and exit the park at Jay Street. The building to your right across Plymouth was erected in 1909 for the Arbuckles, following Robert Gair’s lead regarding reinforced-concrete construction.
The Arbuckle Brothers employed 670-plus people in the sugar refinery, but their business actually revolved around coffee. They were pioneers in the packaging of roasted ground coffee—before their Ariosa brand was introduced, people had to roast their own coffee beans at home. The Arbuckles started producing sugar because they needed it as an ingredient in the glaze that was applied to the roasted coffee beans as a preservative. Their company grew into the world’s largest coffee roaster and shipper, with its own fleet of vessels sailing to South America to get the raw materials.
On Jay Street at the left corner, in a building previously inhabited by the Arbuckles,
Continuing up Jay, you next reach
Before turning left on Plymouth Street, look across the Jay–Plymouth intersection (to your right) to the redbrick building with an arched doorway on Jay. It was built in 1891 for Masury Paint, which patented the can with a thin pryable lid that we think of as a standard paint can. Masury’s invention made it possible to sell ready-made paint, and the company maintained an exclusive patent on it for 21 years. Follow the old rail tracks from Jay to the left on Plymouth. #185, built for the Arbuckle Brothers in 1900, was used in the ’40s and ’50s for offices of Brillo (its scouring-pad factory was on John Street). The tall building at #195 was erected in 1892 as the metal spinning and plating plant of S. Sternau & Co., which invented a small burner called a Sternau—eventually spelled Sterno.
This is truly dumbo—down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass—on Pearl Street
Turn right on Bridge Street, as the rail tracks do. They go all the way into the lobby of the residential conversion at #37—originally built for Kirkman & Son’s fat storage. They were soap makers, and the adjacent building was their glycerin plant. These were 1910s additions to their main facility across the street, #50, which was designed in 1894 by William Tubby, a leading residential architect of the late 19th century.
Turn left at Front Street, entering Vinegar Hill. The red garage door on the left is on a former firehouse, now a residence, built around 1855. #231–233 dates to 1908 and was designed by Tubby for a Benjamin Moore paint factory. It’s followed by a row of Greek Revival brick townhouses. Most of them date to the 1840s; the second pair may have been built as early as the 1830s.
Vinegar Hill originated as a working-class community of Navy Yard employees and people who served as domestics in Brooklyn Heights. Today it’s a 19th-century village scrunched between a power plant, a highway, and a housing project. Vinegar Hill’s residents were predominately Irish throughout the 1800s, and local landowner John Jackson named it after a battle of Irish independence.
Turn left on Gold Street. These Greek Revival brick rowhouses on the right, including those at each end with street-level storefronts, are from the 1840s.
Turn right on Water Street. Go left at Hudson Avenue, then promptly right on Evans Street. At the end on your right is a gated property with a lawn and a pretty white mansion—looks more like a Hamptons estate than something you’d find in the city. This now privately owned house was built in 1806 for the Brooklyn Navy Yard commandant and designed by the same architect as the United States Capitol.
Go left on Little Street, which abuts the decommissioned but once mightily important Navy Yard. Shipbuilder John Jackson, who’s considered the founder of Vinegar Hill, sold land to the US government in 1801 that was developed into the Navy Yard—which operated until 1966 and still has a few active dry docks (see page 140 for more about it). Vinegar Hill turned into a red-light district during the Navy Yard’s tenure, earning the nickname Hell’s Half Acre.
Turn left on Plymouth, then left on Hudson, the main drag of Vinegar Hill. Original ownership of both corner buildings has been traced to John Jackson’s family: #49 may have been built as early as 1801. On the next block, Vinegar Hill House (#72) was the only retail business in the neighborhood when it opened in 2008—all these other storefronts were vacant or converted to residential. Opposite