Brooklyn Navy Yard

Category: Military Sites/Structures

Shipyard Active: 1801 - 1964
Current use: Industrial Park & active drydocks
Designation: Drydock No. 1, Naval Hospital, and Surgeon's House are NYC Landmarks.

Description: The 300-acre historic waterfront site where the USS Monitor was commissioned, the steamship Fulton constructed in 1815, the USS Maine launched in 1890, and the battleships Arizona and Missouri were built, was once America's number-one ship-building center. Four of the six docks are still in operation, including the more than 150-year-old granite Drydock No. 1. The yard began building ships to help fight piracy on the Barbary Coast, went on to make frigates for the War of 1812 carrying on to construct battleships for World War II, its peak years employing 60,000 people.

WPA GUIDE TO NEW YORK CITY (1939):
"The yard is traversed by more than five miles of paved streets, and contains four drydocks ranging in length from 326 to 700 feet, two huge steel shipways, and six big pontoons and cylindrical floats for salvage work. In addition to the numerous foundries, machine shops, and warehouses it has barracks for marines, a power plant, a large radio station, and a railroad spur."

Sites at the Navy Yard:
• Drydock No. 1, Dock St. at foot of 3rd. St., whose huge basin employing the original pumps is a long as the Empire State Building is tall.
• U.S. Naval Hospital (1838) and Surgeon’s House (1863) , and a military burial ground.
• Admiral’s Row is a street lined with ten dilapidated officer's houses built between 1864 and 1901, which may be torn down to make way for a supermarket.

There is no public access at this time, though the Sands Street Gatehouse is being restored into a Visitors Center to reveal the history of the Yard.