Where is gowanus

Huge slicks of oil and debris float around their barges and tugboats, releasing an eye-watering stench of gasoline and rotten garbage. Conducting a Superfund cleanup in a densely populated urban area presents numerous logistical challenges, and to ensure public safety, the EPA has installed a series of air monitoring stations near the dredging areas. And some days more than others. So far, the EPA has not noticed a significant increase in airborne toxins during the cleanup.

The first phase of dredging at the Gowanus Canal is expected to take at least three years to complete, but the city government and private developers are already moving ahead on their plans to transform its industrial landscape into a residential neighborhood filled with new glass towers. Empty lots now line the shoreline, and new buildings are already rising. The best place to view this future vision for the Gowanus Canal is also at its first dredging site, where the shoreline on both sides is owned by billionaire developers.

The Gowanus Canal has suffered from hundreds of years of neglect, and the neighborhoods surrounding it have lived with its toxicity for decades.

For them, the Superfund cleanup is a clear victory for the environment. Pinterest Facebook Twitter Instagram. Gracias a NYCTutoring. The Gowanus neighborhood was originally a tidal inlet of small creeks in the original saltwater marshland of South Brooklyn. These marshes and meadows teemed with fish and other wildlife and early settlers named it "Gowanes Creek" after chief Gowanes, leader of the local tribe of Native American Canarsees, the Algonquin-speaking Delaware Native American who lived and farmed on the rich shorelines.

Both Henry Hudson and Giovanni da Verrazano navigated the inlet and a critical portion of the Battle of Brooklyn was fought nearby, when American troops fought off the redcoats long enough to allow George Washington to retreat.

In the Dutch made an initial purchase near Gowanus Bay and three years later, the earliest recorded real estate sale was made between settlers: land for a tobacco plantation. In the s, many Dutch farmers, who settled along the banks fished for the large, succulent oysters and shipped them by barrel back to Europe, making Gowanus oysters Brooklyn's first export. The creek was close to sea level and the six-foot tides of the bay forced salt water up into its meandering course to create a brackish mix of water that was ideal for the bivalves.

By the middle of the 19th century, the City of Brooklyn was the fastest growing city in America and had incorporated the creek and farmland into the larger urban fabric.

As the need for navigational and docking facilities in the burgeoning port of New York City grew, in the New York State Legislature authorized the construction of the Gowanus Canal completed in the late s. Despite its relatively short two-mile length, the Gowanus Canal soon became a hub of Brooklyn's maritime and commercial activity. Factories and residential communities sprang up because of its construction. In fact, much of the brownstone quarried in New Jersey and the upper Hudson were placed on barges and shipped through the canal to create what we now refer to as "Brownstone Brooklyn".

The Gowanus Canal became one of Brooklyn's key locations for concentrating heavy industry, including coal gas manufacturing plants, oil refineries, machine shops, chemical plants, a cement maker, a sulfur producer, a soap maker and a tannery. The growth of this industrial corridor along the banks of the Gowanus Canal ushered in new land speculation in the first part of the Twentieth century.

Large working class residential areas, populated for the most part by families of Irish and Scandinavian decent, were developed around the industrial core.

The neighborhoods of South Brooklyn were growing at a remarkable rate, with as many as new buildings a year. These new buildings required a sewer connection that ended up discharging raw sewage into the Gowanus Canal. By the turn of the century, the combination of industrial pollutants and runoff from the storm water and the new sewage system had rendered the waterway a repository of rank odors, known to residents as "Lavender Lake".

Compare all your quotes in one place. Book the right mover for you. Almost there! We just need a bit more information from you to get going. We'll only share your contact details with our trusted moving partners.

Select one I'm moving for work I'm moving for retirement I'm moving for education I'm moving for a different lifestyle Other. You might also like Red Hook. Sunset Park. Or get personalized neighborhood recommendations from our Neighborhood Explorer. Are you a local expert? A variety of multi-family homes and townhouses on leafy streets, plus chic new condos. The businesses that call it home, including family-friendly breweries and one very popular ice cream shop. Once a marsh and creek, Gowanus was named for a local Native American chief, and became Dutch farmland before seeing battle in the Revolutionary War.

Industry boomed, and cleanup from the effects on the local waterways is almost complete, ushering in a new era of development. Artists have dominated this area in recent decades, drawn by inexpensive rent and the strange allure of the Gowanus Canal.

While cleanup of the canal is well underway and developers have taken note , an intimate feel and sense of frontier living are still palpable.