Red Hook Stores
Red Hook Stores , German store by Red Hook , is part of a whole complex of several large warehouses in Red Hook , a district of Brooklyn ( New York ), which was built in the 1870s. It was primarily used as a transshipment point between the cotton fields in the south and the textile industry in the northern states of New York and New England . The heyday of the ports and the warehouses lasted from 1870 to 1910/1920. Today there is a branch of a supermarket chain and lofts in the building.
The current building of the Red Hook Stores, the largest of the entire location complex, is at 480, Van Brunt Street. The building was built in 1869 and was first called The W. Beard & Robinson Stores . Today there is a branch of the Fairway Market supermarket and several lofts.
background
After Eli Whitney invented the cotton ginning machine ( egrenier ) in 1793 , production increased from 200,000 to 4 million bales of cotton in 1860. Cotton spinning mills in England also obtained 75 percent of their requirements from American plantations due to a temporary ban on Indian cotton . The volume and increase in trade in cotton could no longer be handled by the comparatively small ports in New York City at the time, and an alternative was found in South Brooklyn, in Red Hook.
history
Red Hook Stores, like Red Hook itself, is closely connected to the commitment of the Irish immigrant William Beard (1806–1886). In 1851 Beard began expanding the harbor basin at Erie Basin , and from 1869 he built the warehouses there, which were first called W. Beard & Robinson Stores. They were used from the early 1870s, initially for storing various commercial goods such as cotton, sugar, fruit, indigo, coffee, fur, wood, jute and other products, but from the late 1870s only for storing cotton. Red Hook Stores is Beard's largest brick building in the Erie Basin harbor, which was quickly becoming the busiest part of Brooklyn and New York City harbors.
With the boom of the trade union movement at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, cotton mills were relocated further south where wage costs were lower. In addition, competition arose around this time from the increasingly cheaper road traffic. The spinning mills in England obtained their cotton again from India and Egypt. From the beginning of the 20th century, the Red Hook port and storage facilities began to lose importance.
The building and the architecture
The area of the individual floors is 40,900 sq feet, ie approximately 3,800 m² (according to other sources it is 52,000 sq feet, ie approximately 4,830 m²). The four-story building is solidly built to protect the goods well. The outer walls are around 120 to 150 cm thick, the load-bearing walls between the individual compartments are around 60 cm on the inside. The large windows, which made it possible to load and unload the goods, can be closed with heavy metal shutters.
In the past there were three big fires of the stored cotton (1876, 1894, 1901), but the massive walls prevented the goods from completely burning down and the further spread of the fire.
In 2006 the building was thoroughly renovated by the owners at a cost of US $ 25 million. The necessary measures, with which the technology was then brought up to date, were adapted to the character of the almost 140 year old building in the style of the architecture of the civil war era. Requirements and ideas of environmental protection were also taken into account: The building has a modern combined heat and power plant , which can cover up to 90 percent of the energy requirement. Another renovation was carried out in 2012/2013 after Hurricane Sandy , which caused a lot of damage and, in particular, flooded the ground floor with a storm and spring tide of up to one and a half meters.
Red Hook Stores today
After the renovation in 2006, there are apartments and lofts, workrooms and artist studios on the top three floors. The first floor with the floor above was rented to the supermarket chain Fairway Market , which opened a branch there in 2006 and soon developed into a popular shopping center in Brooklyn that is frequented by many visitors from Manhattan.
Trivia
Since Ikea opened, a comfortable and, above all, cheap connection from Manhattan has been provided by a New York Water Taxi company known as the “Ikea express shuttle” or “Ikea taxi” , which runs between southern Manhattan and the Ikea pier in Red Hook Stop at the pier in front of the Red Hook Stores building.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f The History of King Cotton and the Red Hook Stores , in Waterfront from July 30, 2015, online at: redhookwaterfront.com/2015/07 / ...
- ↑ a b Building of the Day: 480 Van Brunt Street , online at: brownstoner.com / ...
- ↑ How did Red Hook and the Buttermilk Channel get their names? In Red Hook Waterfront, August 25, 2015 online at: redhookwaterfront.com/2015/08 / ... .
- ↑ a b c Fairway Market: Red Hook's Favorite Destination , in Waterfront on February 16, 2016, online at: redhookwaterfront.com/2016/02 / ...
- ↑ a b Redhook Stores , in: The journal of the american institute of architects July 8, 2013, online at: architectmagazine.com / ...
- ↑ a b Red Hook Stores , in: Doban Architecture (Architekturbüro), online at: dobanarchitecture.com / ...
- ↑ Fairway in Red Hook Reopens , in: I Happen to Like New York from March 3, 2013, online at: ihappentolikenewyork.com / ...
- ↑ Fairway Opens in Red Hook , in: The Sun (New York) of May 17, 2006, online at: nysun.com/
- ↑ IKEA Express , Info from New York Water Taxi, online at: nywatertaxi.com / ...
Web links
Coordinates: 40 ° 40 ′ 26.8 ″ N , 74 ° 1 ′ 1.2 ″ W.