Brooklyn/Queens Waterfront
East River Ferry: Greenpoint to Hunters Point South
This series of 6 podcasts was produced by the Brooklyn Queens Waterfront historic preservation studio at Columbia University in Spring 2012. The podcasts are meant to be listened to while taking the East River Ferry north from Wall Street to East 34th Street. There is a podcast for each ferry stop.
East River Ferry: North Williamsburg to Greenpoint
This series of 6 podcasts was produced by the Brooklyn Queens Waterfront historic preservation studio at Columbia University in Spring 2012. The podcasts are meant to be listened to while taking the East River Ferry north from Wall Street to East 34th Street. There is a podcast for each ferry stop.
Originally the American Manufacturing Company, the complex was a series of interlocking buildings established in the 1890s as a manufacturer of rope and bagging for the shipping industry. Growing over a 30 year period the complex covered six blocks linked by skybridges. After WWII the company left and the site was turned into a storage facility known as the Greenpoint Terminal Market. In 2006 a fire destroyed much of the complex; little survives of what was once considered one of the most fascinating pieces of architecture along the East River waterfront.
On February 12, 1933 the final passenger ferryboat left Greenpoint, where service had operated for nearly 100 years, from the foot of Greenpoint Avenue. Local political leader Pete McGuinnes was there to bid farewell to the ferry, marking the beginning of the end for Greenpoint’s waterfront industry in the midst of the Great Depression.
This photo is of the Elmhurst, photographed by the Brooklyn Eagle, leaving Greenpoint for the last time: courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library.
Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District
Between Franklin, Kent, Greenpoint, and West Streets
Designated in 2007, the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District consists of eight buildings and the remaining portions of three partially demolished nineteenth century facades of the former pencil factory which opened in Greenpoint in 1872. The pencil factory was founded in 1861 in Manhattan and moved to Brooklyn, after a fire in the original plant, where it remained until 1956. The company is credited with bringing German lead pencil-making to the United States and employing hundreds of workers, most of which were women. The mid-nineteenth century and early twentieth century buildings are decorated with stone lintels displaying the company’s logo, the Faber star and diamond. The final building constructed in the district was completed in 1924 and is the largest and most notable structure, a six story tall building embellished with giant pencils and stars made of glazed terra cotta.
