Pratt’s Astral Oil Works on the East River at Bushwick Inlet (Scientific American 1872)
Walk alongside the western Greenpoint waterfront and you’ll eventually hit a jut of water bordered by a weathered fence, marsh plants, and a lingering stench of seawater. Unlike the mammoth Hudson or Superfund-famous Gowanus, Bushwick Inlet is easily lost in the hierarchy of remarkable city waters.
This humble inlet, however, joined the limelight this past Thursday, thanks to Sergey Kadinsky, an analyst at the New York City Parks Department and adjunct professor at Touro College. Speaking at A/D/O, a design hub and workspace on Norman Avenue, Kadinsky gave a wide-ranging talk exploring the “hidden waters” across the metropolitan area.
Kadinsky took the stage as the final speaker in a series on water and design. Once a tour guide on Gray Line double-decker buses, he channeled that same brio as he barreled through the five boroughs, pointing out disappeared bodies of water at a blistering pace.
Suffice to say, the city hasn’t been kind to its ponds, streams, creeks, or lakes. Take the now-defunct Collect Pond, which used to be Manhattan’s main source of freshwater. As the city grew, so did the surrounding industry. Contaminated wastewater from breweries, tanneries, and slaughterhouses seeped into the small lake, leading officials to fill it in.
1924 NYC Map aerial survey of Bushwick Inlet to McCarren Park (via Hidden Waters blog)
Bushwick Inlet had a similar history. Fed by the disappeared Bushwick Creek, it had an illustrious career, home to a notorious rumrunner during prohibition and was also the launch site for the first ironclad warship constructed in the United States.
City officials then filled in Bushwick Creek in the 19th century, which ran through north Williamsburg and present-day McCarren Park, leading to the contraction of the inlet.
While there’s little hope for the resurrection of Bushwick Creek (its path was projected to run through the location of A/D/O), Kadinsky argued that this doesn’t prevent us from “daylighting” previously forgotten waters.
Bushwick Inlet Park. Photo by Megan Penmann
For example, Collect Pond is gone for good, but city officials named a park in the same location in lower Manhattan Collect Pond Park, connecting past geography to present.
Bushwick Inlet has fared better than Collect Pond, but by all accounts needs a facelift. Luckily, it projects to be part of the northern extension of what will eventually be a complete Bushwick Inlet Park, a move to put the inlet “back on the map.”
Street artists trace the Bushwick Inlet’s underground stream into the surface
Stacy Levyis an internationally known artist who specializes in creating artful, site-specific interventions and engagements with water ecology. This past Saturday, she led an interactive family workshop in Greenpoint, where she and her volunteers mapped the historic Bushwick Inlet directly onto the hardscape using chalk paint: a mixture of chalk powder and water. Greenpointers caught up with Stacy to discuss her activism and the aquatic wonders of our local inlet. Continue reading →
Greenpoint Beer& Ale and Knick Knacks Brooklyn are teaming up one more time before the year is over and they’re going all out on October 21st for #crabfest#round3! They will be offering UNLIMITED SNOW CRAB LEGS with an order of SHRIMP, POTATOES and CORN for 75 MINS! ($65 per ticket – drinks a la carte) Get your fill, you don’t want to be the one left out! Check out the ticket link and pick your session. See you there! Buy tix [Sponsored]
WEDNESDAY 10/17
♫ The O’My’s @ Rough Trade (64 N 9th St.), 8pm, $15, Buy Tix ♫ Big Thief@ Brooklyn Steel (319 Frost St.), 8pm, $22, Buy tix ♫ Sontag Shogun, Christopher Tignor, Anastasia Clarke @ Arete Venue and Gallery (67 West St. #103), 8pm, $15, An evening of abstract sentimental music (for lovers and loners alike). All artists performing new music from forthcoming releases and improvisation, More Info ♫ ALBERICH, Geography Of Hell, DJ Becka Diamond, DJ JonBenet, DJ Guilt Attendant @ St. Vitus (1120 Manhattan Ave.), 11pm, $10, Buy Tix
THURSDAY 10/18
♦ Nicolas Holiber: Birds on Broadway Audubon Sculpture Project @ Kingsland Wildflowers (520 Kingsland Ave.), 5:30pm, $15 suggested, Learn about an ambitious public-art project set to line Broadway with 12 larger than life bird sculptures next year, more info * Pints for Paws @ Brouwerij Lane (78 Greenpoint Ave.) 6pm, $5 raffle ticket, hourly raffle to benefit BARCS Animal Shelter, More info # COPENHAGEN FOOD with author Trine Hahnemann @ Archestratus (160 Huron St.), 7pm, FREE, Get a free glass of Glögg with the purchase of the new cookbook Copenhagen Food: Stories, Traditions and Recipes, More info ^♥ The Poetry Brothel: Season of the Witch @ House of Yes (2 Wyckoff Ave.), 7pm, $50+, immersive cabaret featuring poetry, burlesque, live music, vaudeville, aerials, visual art, magic, and mysticism, with newly integrated themes, performances and installations at each event. Buy TixContinue reading →
A rendering of the Monitor Museum restored shoreline, via Brooklyn Paper in 2015
The USS Monitor, built here in Greenpoint by Continental Ironworks in 1862, was one of the first iron-clad battle ships in the US Navy. During the Civil War, the Monitor took part in the “Battle of the Ironclads,” and money from the building of the Monitor contributed to the building of the Church of the Ascension (127 Kent Street).
Given The Monitor’s deep role in the industrial, naval and ecclesiastical history of Greenpoint, and the United States itself, lifelong Greenpoint residents George and Janice Weinmann have been advocating for a museum dedicated to the boat since 1996.
The couple secured land for the museum on Quay Street at the Monitor’s construction site in 2003, and scored a grant from GCEF to fund the museum in 2015. The project requires a restoration of the ecological shoreline at the Quay Street property, and the museum has been working with design and engineering firm AECOM to make it happen. On Wednesday, June 13, friends of the Monitor Museum teamed up with AECOM to host a public info meeting about the current status of the project. Continue reading →
This past Saturday, December 17th, Mayor de Blasio came to Bushwick Inlet Park to praise the community activists who after ten years of strugglefinally prevailed and forced the city to purchase the twenty-seven acre site for the park. De Blasio continually referred to the community’s victory and praised the local group Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park for their tireless advocacy for the park. In his remarks the Mayor laughed about the persistence of local City Councilman Stephen Levin, who incessantly nagged him until the park was purchased. The Mayor spoke of the high cost of acquiring the land ($150 million just for the final piece), but said that the city was fulfilling its promise to the community to acquire the waterfront site.
Stephen Levin and Carolyn Maloney
A number of other local politicians spoke. Borough President Eric Adams mentioned that the park was proof of the city’s commitment to provide waterfront access to all the people of Brooklyn, not only those with the means to purchase luxury waterfront real estate. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney also addressed the gathering saying that the actions of community groups in gaining the park would serve as a future model. State Assemblyman Joseph Lentol reminded people that he had been an advocate for the park for a decade.
Joe Lentol
The mood at the gathering was celebratory, almost euphoric. Many of the people in the crowd had done the hard work of advocating for the park for years. They had made phone calls, signed petitions, and even slept out in the rain to gain the parkland, and they were in the mood to celebrate. As they walked home to Greenpoint, Stephen Chesler, Scott Fraser and some of the other people who fought the hardest to gain the park posed for pictures by the fence, which recently read Where’s Our Park? but now reads triumphantly, Here’s Our Park. Those words said it all.
Bushwick Inlet, the truncated, morose, post-industrial body of water west of Kent Avenue at North 14th Street, hardly seems worthy of the huge controversy for a shoreline park, nor would it appear to have a rich history, but the body of water is both controversial and historic. Although park protestshavegeneratedalotofheadlines, few know its history.
There was not always a Bushwick Inlet. The inlet is a relatively recent creation. It was once Bushwick Creek, which was a far longer, deeper and prettier estuary whose headwaters covered much of what is today McCarren Park. A tidal creek, at high tide its waters covered a large area encompassing much of McCarren Park, forming a water boundary between Williamsburg and Greenpoint and beautiful miniature bays. Low tide, though, was a different story as the waters receded they left a stinky slime whose odors offended local noses for generations. Continue reading →
This weekend, on Saturday December 3rd from 10am–1pm, you can help beautify the existing park land with flowers! With generous assistance from Partnerships for Parks (who will be providing bulbs and guidance), Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park together with the community will seed the continued park activation process by planting daffodil bulbs on park grounds. Folks will assemble at the BIP community building located on Kent Ave at N. 9th Street in Williamsburg. Gloves and tools will be provided. Please dress for the weather and encountering dirt.
Can you make a 311 call and Tweet DeBlasio @NYCMayor today? Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park is organizing a Twitter Storm at 12pm!
After manymonths of nonstopactivism to try to get the city to acquire the CitiStorage site—the last piece to complete Bushwick Inlet Park—it looks like the city and the owner of the property are close to reaching a negotiated deal. But they are only “close” and time is genuinely running out.
From Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park: We have been relatively quiet recently to let them work things out but now MAYOR DEBLASIO NEEDS TO HEAR FROM ALL OF US (ALL AT ONCE PREFERABLY).
We need to tell him to: CLOSE the CitiStorage deal and deliver the FULL 27 Acre Bushwick Inlet Park NOW! Let’s all engage in a “Twitter-Storm” and/or 311 call-in from 12 noon- 2 p.m. today, Thursday, October 27. A flurry of activity will maximize our impact! Twitter: @NYCMayor Call: 311 (Parks and Recreation: You can let them know that eleven acres are missing from Bushwick Inlet Park.) You can also sign the Bushwick Inlet Park petition here.
The North Brooklyn Community and Elected Officials at the steps of City Hall
“The city can’t just rest on its laurels and say it made an offer,” said State Assemblyman Joe Lentol on the steps of City Hall, where the North Brooklyn community alongside elected officials turned up the heat on an already sweltering summer day for Bushwick Inlet Park. It’s because the $100 million offer that the city made to acquire the last remaining parcel of prospective park land expired yesterday, Monday, August 8.
This puts the future of all 28 acres of open space in a precarious position and Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park is not taking it lying down. With impassioned chants of “Where’s our park?” and a series of speeches by community leaders and elected officials, they demanded that Mayor de Blasio does what it takes to deliver the waterfront park that was promised 11 years ago. Continue reading →
The city is just 11 acres away from fulfilling its promise to deliver all 27 acres of Bushwick Inlet Park and made a $100 million offer to purchase the final piece needed on June 9th. Two days later, owner Norm Brodsky officially refused the offer and it expires tomorrow (Monday 8/8).
In a call to action to the community to rally at City Hall tomorrow (Mon, 8/8, 11AM), Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park writes:
We’re Close! But North Brooklyn Needs YOU To Make a COMPLETE Bushwick Inlet Park a Reality!
We’ve been fighting for over a decade to get this park built. And after Mayor de Blasio’s historic $100 million offer to buy the last piece of land, we are inches from the goal line.Continue reading →
WEDNESDAY 10/17
THURSDAY 10/18
Can you make a 311 call and Tweet DeBlasio 
