Brooklyn Grange

Twelve stories above the streets and docks of the Brooklyn Navy Yard is something unexpected . . . a farm.

Brooklyn Grange is a commercial urban farm, covering 65,000 square feet (about an acre and a half) of the roof of Building 3. They have another rooftop farm in Long Island City. The farm grows a variety of crops - over 50,000 lbs of produce a year - which are are sold at greenmarkets, to restaurants, and through a CSA. There is even an apiary and a chicken coop!

You can take tours and hold events there. There's great views of the Navy Yard and Brooklyn.

Thanks to Brooklyn Grange Office Manager Stephanie Diaz for letting me hang out for awhile.

Brooklyn Roasting Company

I got to spend some time at the factory floor of the Brooklyn Roasting Company at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during Open House New York a few weekends ago.


The roaster, here roasting huge bags of sumatra.

This machine seals cans of coffee. It's called "The Panama," built by the Continental Canning Company, circa 1905. They can about 10,000 lbs. of coffee per week with this thing.

Small Boats at Work

In addition to the large ships unloading at the Lehigh Concrete Distribution center, and the ships in dry dock at GMD Shipyard, there is a variety of small craft doing various work on the waterfront at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The New York Harbor School is a college-prepatory program that trains young people for maritime careers. They're based on Governor's Island, but this day I found them doing maintenance on a boat on Pier G.

They also run the Billion Oyster Project, which aims to replenish the oyster reefs of New York Harbor. The waters of New York once teemed with oyster life, but they were destroyed by overfishing and pollution by the beginning of the 20th century. Decades after the passage of the Clean Water Act, the harbor is finally clean enough to support the return of marine life, and this plan aims to seed a billion oysters by 2035. Here their boat is moored at the end of the Wallabout Basin, near the Clymer Street entrance.

The NYC Ferry has its home port at the Yard. In the future, they plan to operate a stop there, but for now they just park their fleet there.

At the end of Pier G, the Fire Department has FDNY Marine 6. They have a bunch of boats there. I'd done these three drawings and was working on a fourth when a fireman came out and told me I wasn't allowed. I didn't think that was true, but I wasn't 100% sure that there isn't some law against recording images of emergency services facilities or something, and at any rate it's probably wasn't a fight I was going to win. I didn't point out that it was unlikely that a terrorist surveying the site would be unlikely to do so with a sketchbook, or that I'd already spent hours over two days drawing their boats, as well as taking dozens of reference photos, so if there really was a legitimate security concern, well, that ship had sailed. All I ask is that if you are looking at these drawings, please do not use them for nefarious purposes.

Big Ships at Work

One of the cool things about having access to the Brooklyn Navy Yard is being able to get relatively close to working docks. Most of the docks are occupied by GMD Shipyard, which services and repairs ships, but one part that is used for off-loading cargo is Piers J and K, at the northern end of the yard. It is the location of the distribution center for the Lehigh Hanson Cement Company. Pretty regularly, you find large cargo ships delivering product to the huge mountains of cement on the dock. Some do it with large cranes, and some, like the Alice Oldendorff, pump it out through these huge hoses and pipes.

I also drew this large barge at Dry Dock 3. I don't know if it's under repair, or just docked there. It's been there awhile.