Alfred Hitchcock made the Brooklyn Navy Yard the setting of his film, "Sabotage." Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly hopped ashore there at the beginning of "On The Town." So, it is fitting that a movie studio is about to be built there.
The Navy Yard is ringing with the sounds of construction of the Steiner Film and TV production studios. The first of the mammoth buildings, requiring their own power plant, will be completed in a year. The studios will employ 2,000 people.
If this was all that was going on, it would be impressive enough. But there are many, many more plans and projects.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard was at its most glamorous when it was at its most useful. During wartime, it played a critical role in the nation's defense for more than a century and a half, from the War of 1812 to World War II. During peacetime, it suffered neglect. The Navy closed it down completely in 1966.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard is not just a monument to its amazing past. The City of New York purchased about 255 acres of the land and made it into an industrial park. Currently, there are 225 businesses employing 2,500 workers. And the level of innovation that is promised for the future is inspiring.
Already, in 1997, the first power plant to open in New York State under the strict Clean Air Act emissions restrictions was built in the Yard, using natural gas combustion turbines and reusing the waste heat to turn steam turbines.
The Navy Yard is committed to continuation of the Navy Yard's tremendous resources, four active drydocks and five piers. There are two large ship repair companies, chandlers, and a maritime workshop teaching wooden boat building and repair skills to high school-age youth. And berthed at the Navy Yard are the Statue of Liberty Circle line ferries, Staten Island ferries, and New York City fireboats.
A capital program will repair and rebuild the piers. About $30 million will go to repair the bulkheads surrounding the piers. Pilings, being eaten away by the marine borer, are being wrapped in special plastic casings. Capital funding will also be used to dredge the underwater channels leading to the drydocks, piers, and berths that interlace the Navy Yard's landscape. The dredging is necessary to allow entry to the new larger ships needing repair.
One proposal, which has received some government funding, is to use the silt from the dredging to create four acres of new land as part of a new ferry landing to service the influx of new workers.
Buildings are being refurbished. The Brooklyn Navy Yard administration building's top floor, outfitted for the sailor barracks during World War II, was totally refurbished and re-wired, creating new offices for businesses that can benefit from high tech capability. The refurbishment is being promoted through Digital New York. The roof of the building was repaired, in a simple elegant fashion. With views of the city across from Wallabout Bay, word has got around and it is being rented for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and cocktail parties.
The Navy Yard is moving in the direction of more private financing and undertook its first private sector bank lending for construction of a light manufacturing factory and warehouse building that can house five separate businesses, to be operational by November.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation has increased its size recently by adding 28 acres of adjacent property.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation has begun refurbishing an existing building for use as a day care center for worker's children (90 children) to open next year. In addition, more shuttle buses to help workers and visitors get from the subway station to the Yard and to travel within the Yard, and the ferry system are in the works. The Navy Yard has also established an employment center to help people living in the neighborhoods surrounding the Yard obtain good jobs.
Security, one of the selling points of the facility, is very tight, and an individual cannot just pay a casual visit. However tours are given by the 92nd Street Y; Neighborhood Open Space Coalition and its Take A Walk New York program; the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment; and the Brooklyn Historical Society.
Peter B. Fleischer, currently writing a book on the New York City waterfront, was formerly a transportation and environment policy advisor to New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.
A thousand feet from land, at the edge of the Canarsie Pier in Brooklyn, looking across the gentle chop of an inland sea at an uninhabited tree covered island, Patie Ventre cast a memorial wreath into Jamaica Bay. A cannon was fired. The American flag was raised. The National Anthem was sung.Ventre is the Commander of the United Inter-Yacht Clubs Association, and this was the 47th Annual Blessing of the Fleet.
Rabbi Cecil Walkenfeld, a Chaplain with the New York City Department of Corrections offered his blessing, "Let man and boat work together to successfully navigate our way". Father Angelo Pezzullo of Nativity Church in Ozone Park joined him. He asked God to bless "all those who protect this country by sea, make their livelihood from the sea, and use the sea for enjoyment."
Under powder blue skies, a warm sun and with a steady off-shore breeze, representatives of eighteen Jamaica Bay yacht clubs formed a maritime procession lasting two hours. In turn, powerboats, sailboats, and hand-powered craft floated past the reviewing stand on Canarsie Pier. Passengers and crew aboard the ships stood at attention, saluting, most of them in formal dress white, a few in navy blue and white. It was an impressive display of pomp and protocol.
As the lead boat from each club passed the reviewing stand, the ecumenical clergy team offered each fleet their blessings. Two hundred feet down the pier a ten gauge cannon was fired.
Commander Ventre stood at a reviewing stand or "Bridge" with Vice Commander Richard Brew and Rear Commander, Gaetano "Tom" Polito. A team of five judges from the New York Police Department Harbor Unit, the US Park Service Police, the National Park Service and the owner of Canarsie Pier's Sunset Landing judged each ship in the fleet for seamanship and procedure. Clubs were judged based on attendance.
Powerboats have an interesting history in Jamaica Bay. The legendary bandleader Guy Lombardo raced powerboats in its waters. Its many channels, basins and islands provided hiding spots to rumrunners during Prohibition. The Hudson River Yacht Club located in Padergat Basin was founded in 1873.
The Fleet's half-century-old traditions stem from a post-World War Two emphasis on safety in a Jamaica Bay that had only been recently transformed from a military base to a haven for recreation. Additionally, many club members had served in the military and were eager to maintain their navy traditions - discipline, respect and duty.
The genesis of the oddly named United Inter-Yacht Clubs Association dates to the early 1930's. At that time, Robert Moses' plans to construct a "Belt" Parkway threatened havoc to the dozens of boat clubs that lined the bay's northern edge. The clubs organized to coordinate their response to Moses' plan and eventual construction of the circumferential roadway and bridges. In the end, many clubs folded and others were forced to move.
Today the association continues to work together on matters of mutual interest. The group strongly opposed the recent closure of a Jamaica Bay Coast Guard facility citing safety concerns. With their membership highly devoted to fishing, they closely watch matters that impact the bay's environmental health.
Commander Ventre of the Brooklyn Yacht Club was the first woman to become a fleet captain. A dynamic and optimistic leader, she sees the need for her organization to work more closely with the estimated one hundred boat clubs in a twenty-five mile radius of New York City. Ventre brings inclusiveness to her association that augurs well for the growing, diverse use of the harbor. Though a power boater, she welcomed the participation of the kayak oriented Sebago Canoe Club. Of particular importance to the commander was the presence of a Coast Guard vessel for the first time in recent years.
Peter B. Fleischer, currently writing a book on the New York City waterfront, was formerly a transportation and environment policy advisor to New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.
Remnants of waterfront fortifications more than three centuries old dot New York harbor. These historic port defenses are among the most impressive sights on New York's oceanfront. Yet, these sites are unknown to many New Yorkers and much of their history is being lost.
New York was both a target and battlefield, but the shape and size of the harbor provided a strong defense from the days of the Dutch.
In 1776, fearing British attack, the colonial army built a series of harbor forts. Geographically, the most impressive is Fort Washington, built on a high point of Manhattan near 181st Street. In that era, New York required defenses against attack by British ships sailing south as well as north along the Hudson River.
The southern entrance to New York's harbor has historically been the most important for shipping and commerce. Consequently, the military expanded its defensive network adding new forts and advanced technology.
Castle Clinton, which was built in 1811, is located at the Battery. This low, round, stone fort operated in conjunction with Castle Williams (1811) and Fort Jay (1800) on Governor's Island. They were Manhattan's main defense against British attack. Fort Wood located on Bedloes Island (now the massive granite pedestal for the Statue of Liberty) was added to the harbor defenses in 1814.
In the aftermath of the War of 1812, new fortifications were built away from Manhattan at the Narrows. Fort Hamilton, built in 1831 on the Brooklyn shore is today an army base. Its water's edge battery, Fort Lafayette, was destroyed during the construction of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.
In 1856, Fort Schuyler was built at the Bronx tip of Throgs Neck. In 1862, Fort Totten was built on a bluff in northeastern Queens with a commanding view of the narrow passage between Queens and the Bronx (now spanned by the Throgs Neck Bridge). Fort Totten operated jointly with Fort Schuyler. These coastal forts guarding the northern harbor entrance went unchallenged by the British and Spanish. Their guns never fired in anger.
Today, the great stone structures are museums to the era of stone, cannon and gunship. While history's ghosts abound in museums at both locations, visitors to these shorefront locales find tranquil and far-reaching views of the surrounding seas that once held the specter of foreign threat.
Fort Weed, now part of Fort Wadsworth, was begun in 1841 on the Staten Island side. Fort Wadsworth now houses Coast Guard and National Parks Service offices. At water's edge in the shadow of the giant steel bridge, is the impressive stone structure known as Battery Weed. This bastion completed in 1860 is well preserved. From this site, during World War Two, naval mines were deployed in the Narrows.
At the harbor's periphery is Fort Tilden, located on the Rockaway Peninsula by the open ocean. Today, at Fort Tilden, now administered by the National Park Service, one can visit fifty-foot high concrete gun emplacements that for decades anchored the Army's hidden artillery. These guns, together with matching batteries in New Jersey, six miles across the harbor entrance, guarded the port for half a century. Today, these wartime remnants exist between sand dunes and a beachfront forest.
Not far from the gun emplacements are the remnants of a NIKE missile battery built to defend the New York area from Cold War missile attacks. A second NIKE base was located off New Rochelle in the Long Island Sound. The missiles were removed in the seventies. Outmoded technology and detente led to a new waterfront park.
Sounding Off
New York's harbor remains threatened. Governmental neglect undermines waterfront parks and open space. Toxic dumping delays port modernization and needed expansion. Sensitive wetlands are threatened by over use and pollution.
Maintaining the port's world-class status in the context of its natural resources and its recreational potential requires that new resources be invested in the port. The public agencies whose bridges and facilities overshadow and undermine these historic monuments should contribute to their maintenance. Defending and preserving the harbor's historical resources should be among the first steps toward the preservation of the city's maritime treasures.