Semester 1: The History of the Brooklyn Waterfront
Inaugural Public Event: “Water and Work: An Interdisciplinary Look at the Brooklyn Waterfront”
This panel event will feature three eminent scholars, who will focus on the Brooklyn waterfront from their areas of specialization. Professor Karen Karbiener will discuss Walt Whitman’s close relationship to the waterfront and its presence in his poetry. Professor Joshua Freeman will focus on the history of waterfront labor in Brooklyn since World War II. Professor Betsy McCully will focus on the natural history of Brooklyn’s waterfront.
Meeting One: “The Brooklyn Waterfront: From Red Hook to Greenpoint”
This session will be held at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Led by the staff, faculty participants will be introduced to a vast store of primary source materials—manuscripts, paintings, photographs, and maps that document the evolution of Brooklyn from indigenous populations to the present. Particular focus will be on the Pierrepont Papers which cover the development of the Brooklyn Heights esplanade and the Brooklyn ferries. We will also explore the history of land use in Brooklyn, its evolution from farmland to the second largest American city in the 19th century, and its industrialization in the 20th century.
Readings: Ellen Snyder-Grenier, Brooklyn: An Illustrated History; Marcia Reiss, Brooklyn: Then and Now; Ray Saurez, “The American Factory, Brooklyn, N.Y.” from The Old Neighborhood; John Tierney, “Brooklyn Could Have Been a Contender.”
Meeting Two: “Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn”
This session will be led by Karen Karbeiner, who will speak on Whitman’s Brooklyn boyhood and his poetical and journalistic writings about it.
Readings: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Barnes and Noble edition, with foreword by Karen Karbiener), Henry M. Christman, ed. Walt Whitman’s New York; David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America.
Meeting Three: “The Change in Maritime Technologies Along the Waterfront”
This session led by visiting scholar Marc Levinson and facilitated by Richard Hanley will focus on Levinson’s recent book The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger. The discussion will center on the effects of the change in maritime technology from labor-intensive break-bulk shipment to containerization.
Meeting Four: “Yesterday’s and Today’s Waterfront—A Walking Tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Its Environs”
The Brooklyn Navy Yard is a 261-acre maritime and industrial park with 4.3 million square feet of building floor area mostly in mid-rise loft structures, five piers and six dry docks. Purchased by the U.S. Navy in 1801, it employed 70,000 people at its peak during WWII. As indicated in New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan of 1994, the Navy Yard had 85 industrial establishments employing 2,555 workers and an additional 600 non-industrial jobs. Led by the Brooklyn Historical Society and Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment, this field study will enable faculty to tour Brooklyn’s massive naval facility with a focus on the history of the buildings, its current usage, and changing labor history.
Reading: Joshua Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II.
