The old Huron St. public bath. (Photo via Geoffrey Cobb).
GEOFFREY COBB
Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past”
gcobb91839@Aol.com
Greenpoint has a fascinating industrial past. It was once home to a variety of factories. When I came to live in Greenpoint in 1994 much of its history was still visible. Many of its factories, theaters and homes remained.
Everything changed in 2005 when the Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfront was rezoned mixed use. Suddenly, developers had an incentive to tear down historic buildings and replace them with shiny, glass and steel luxury high rises.
The first time I ever led a historic walking tour I stopped at the now-gone 85 Calyer Street, the residence of Thomas Fitch Rowland, whose company, the Continental Iron Works built the famous Union ironclad the Monitor. The owner, delighted by the fact that I was talking about its history greeted my group with historic photos of the building. The house was not landmarked, and a developer bought it and tore it down.
When I arrived here much of the American Manufacturing Company’s rope works still survived, including New York City’s last bit of wooden sidewalk on West Street. Oblivious to the history, someone tore the wood plans up of the sidewalk and replaced it with concrete.
West Street has been the biggest victim of developers destroying our industrial history. On May 2nd, 2006, a suspicious fire consumed fifteen buildings of the rope works. The Municipal Art Society had been pursuing landmark status for the entire terminal market complex, perhaps creating an incentive for the buildings to burn.
The Meserole Theater. (Photo via Geoffrey Cobb).
The Huron Street Public Bath at 139 Huron St) was built in 1903 as part of a city-wide initiative to provide hygiene facilities for tenement residents. The neo-Classical building, served thousands of people daily before closing in 1960. It has since been converted into a luxury condominium known as “Bath Haus,” but at least the façade hints at its historic past. Greenpoint used to have eight vaudeville theaters.
The best preserved was the Meserole Theater on Manhattan Avenue, which had become a drug store after its days as a theater ended. The theater’s lovely auditorium was demolished in August 2021, again destroyed by a developer who replaced the old theater with apartments.
Until about six years ago, there was a bronze plaque on the side of the Greenpoint Bank on the corner of Calyer and Manhattan Avenues. The plaque, which dated to 1904, commemorated the founding of the bank. I used to point out Adrian Meserole’s name on the bank, one of its founders and a man who saw Greenpoint change completely from rural to industrial during his life from 1822 to 1913.
When I came here in the 1990s the Domino sugar refinery, the world’s largest was still actively refining sugar. The owners realized the land was more valuable than the refinery itself. It was sold to real estate developers who had to keep the façade, but gutted the refinery’s interior, robbing us of another piece of our industrial past.
I wrote in a previous piece about how our iconic water tower seems to be doomed and I have just learned that developers plan to purchase and demolish 60 West Street, one of the few remaining warehouses of the American Manufacturing Company. I also fear that the nine-building former Dorflinger glass factory at 93–99 Commercial Street could be a victim of the wrecking ball.
Luckily, Greenpoint has two locally designated historic districts: the main Greenpoint Historic District and the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District, which preserve and protect many of Greenpoint’s historic buildings.
Soon, it might be hard to see any traces of Greenpoint’s rich industrial past. It would be a pity if future generations lose these important relics of local industrial history. Every historic building helps us recall our past. Losing these buildings make it hard to have a strong sense of our own local history.
