Navy Yard Pump House

My stint as a visiting artist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard wrapped up in November, but I still have a buttload of work that I’ve been finishing up, so there will be several more posts with lots more Navy Yard images.

One of the places I discovered was a small building at the Northeastern corner of the Yard, at the junction of Piers J and K. It is nondescript, abandoned and unused, and inside are two gigantic machines that look like the Daleks from Doctor Who, and an assortment of huge, rusted pipes and valves, electric panels, and mysterious-looking equipment, surrounded by garbage, debris, forgotten piles of supplies, and random stuff. It didn’t seem like a place I was supposed to be in, but the door was wide open, and there was no “Do Not Enter” sign, so . . .

It took me a long time to find out what this building and machines were. I was able to identify it was Building 991, but the Navy Yard Building Survey just listed it as “Pump House,” under a list of buildings “which do not appear to have sufficient historical significance to warrant individual historical review write-up.”

Eventually, I found a photo of these things in John Bartelstone’s photography book with a caption that said they were Salt Water Fire Pumps. I then found a brief write up from American Manufacturer and Iron World, dated 1900:

A new system of fighting fires is being perfected in the Brooklyn navy yard. It was found that salt water not only saves supply of fresh water, but will put out a fire much more quickly than fresh water will. The plant now being constructed will follow, on a larger scale, the plan of the one placed in the Norfolk navy yard some two years ago. At the Brooklyn yard the supply of water will be taken from the river at a point three feet below low water mark and will be carried by gravity through a main thirty inches in diameter to a new electric power house, where the reservoir and two driving pumps will be situated. Each of these pumps will be able to deliver, from 3,000 to 4,000 gallons a minute, through 14 or 15 streams of water, which can be thrown almost immediately upon receipt of the fire signal. This salt water method, where conditions permit, diminishes the chance of frozen fire hydrants in winter.

I found further information in Harry Granick’s Underneath New York. He explains that in 1908, New York City’s Department of Water Supply, Gas and Electricity constructed a series of high-pressure water systems to supply the city’s fire hydrant system. Manhattan and Brooklyn were covered in three zones, and 

There is a fourth zone which covers the Brooklyn Navy Yard. This was built by the United States Government. It too is complete with high pressure mains and a pumping station. The system is connected to the Brooklyn high pressure main, so that, should the station break down, the valve separating the two systems can be lifted to permit the Brooklyn station to furnish water at high pressure.

The pump house is still something of a mystery to me, because the Navy Yard Building Survey has it being built in 1961, just a few years before the U.S. Government shut down the Navy Yard, and almost six decades after the initial high-pressure hydrant system was built. So, was this an entirely new structure, or were the machines relocated to the new pump house, or was it built around the existing pumps? 

It does, however, answer the mystery of this post, another building I’d sketched that was a FDNY pump house, but at the time I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was pumping. I love it when things circle around like this. Eventually, all mysteries can be solved!

Jaquelyn

Back to life drawing. I can't remember the last time I went. It felt great to be back at it. The model's name was Jaquelyn. I was back at Minerva's Studio. This place has been around forever, and is a great place to draw. But like many small outfits in this city, it's struggling to survive, financially. They have a Go Fund Me page which is a very worthwhile cause.

Kittery Maine Wharf

I recently spent a weekend in Kittery, Maine, working with the dance company The Bang Group. In my downtime, I spent some time down on the wharf doing some drawings. I've spent most of the year at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which was great, but I was excited to work someplace different. Of course, it turned out to be more boats and maritime stuff, including another Navy Yard!

Evening Light

The tugboat Evening Light being serviced in Dry Dock 1 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

From tugboatinformation.com:

Built in 1975, by Halter Marine Incorporated of New Orleans, Louisiana (hull #437) as the Frederick E. Bouchard for the Bouchard Transportation Company of Melville, New York. In 2015, the Bouchard Transportation Company renamed the tug as the Evening Light. Powered by two, sixteen cylinder, General Motors EMD diesel engines. She is a twin screw tug, rated at 3,900 horsepower. Her electrical serviced is provided by two, 99kW generator sets. The tug's capacities are 79,515 gallons of fuel.

Railroad Transfer Bridge

At the northeast edge of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, at the edge of Wallabout Basin, stands this hulking, rusting ruin, Structure 713. It's a railroad transfer bridge, or float bridge.

These structures were used for transporting freight trains across rivers. There would be a floating pontoon bridge - secured to land on one end, and floating on the other - with train tracks on it. A barge carrying freight cars would be ferried across the water where they could be lifted or roll directly onto the tracks. This system was developed in the mid 1800s in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and soon spread to other cities along the Eastern Seaboard.

It may seem labor-intensive to load a railroad car onto a barge and then back onto land, but consider that in New York, a freight train in Hoboken, NJ would have to travel north along the Hudson River nearly to Albany to cross a bridge to the east side to get to New York City. It could take anywhere from 12 to 36 hours to make a journey that modern commuter trains make in 20 minutes. This route was known as "The Selkirk Hurdle," Selkirk being the location of the nearest Hudson River rail crossing, some 130 miles north of NYC. Float bridges significantly reduced this time, being especially useful for transporting perishable products like fruit and vegetables.

The Williamsburg Bridge in the background

The Navy Yard Transfer Bridge was built in 1941. After the Navy Yard was demilitarized, a private company called Seatrain Lines took over use of the bridge and operated it from 1969 until it went out of business in 1983. It was last used in 1995 by a subway car rebuilder.

The pontoons holding the railroad tracks have long sunk and the whole structure is in decay. Float bridges are not in common use any more, though there is one still operating near the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park. Another one very similar to the Navy Yard bridge sits on the Hudson River at 69th St., protected by Landmark Status but similarly rusting away. And there is one in Long Island City, also inactive but preserved and refurbished at Gantry State Park.

One of the things I've discovered since starting to write and research for this blog is that no matter how particular or obscure the subject matter, there is almost always someone out there who has done obsessively detailed research on the subject and built a website or message board devoted to it. The Trainweb site has an extensive history of the BNY rail system here, a list of all NYC-area float bridges here, and a glossary of terms that explains all the technical elements of these systems here.

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.