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Dumbo and Vinegar Hill

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Dumbo and Vinegar Hill:

Postindustrial, Prepossessing

Above: The Clocktower Building and Empire Stores are neighborhood icons

BOUNDARIES: Brooklyn Bridge Park, Navy Yard, Sands St., Main St.

DISTANCE: 2 miles

SUBWAY: F to York St.

At a community meeting sometime in the late 1970s, the folks who’d started to repopulate a neglected industrial district on the East River came up with a name for their neighborhood: Dumbo, an acronym for “down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass.” Who’s going to want to live in a place called Dumbo? they figured, already sensing that their quiet, boho artists’ colony might attract notice. Ultimately, it proved to be no deterrent. Not only did developers seize on Dumbo, it became the most expensive neighborhood in Brooklyn, with median home prices higher than such Manhattan neighborhoods as Greenwich Village and the Upper East Side. Old warehouses and lofts have been transformed into trendy residential and cultural venues. Luxury high-rises have been built on cobblestoned streets. And Dumbo has become a hub for creative types from muralists to furniture designers to filmmakers to tech entrepreneurs to culinary innovators. You’ll see their influence on this walk, which also ventures into the tiny enclave of Vinegar Hill before wrapping up on the grounds of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Walk Description

Out of the subway, go to your right on York Street. At the end of the block on your right is a beloved factory building. Beloved for the glazed terra cotta ornamentation along the roofline, and beloved because of the treats that were made inside: Eskimo Pies. It’s more identified with the ice cream pops (manufactured here from 1927 to 1966) than with the company that built it in 1909: Thomson Meter, whose monogram is on the corner shields at the top.

Turn left on Bridge Street.

Make a left on Front Street. The brick building on your right was erected in the early 1890s, when 65 shoe factories were operating in Brooklyn. This was the largest, Hanan & Son, whose retail locations extended to Europe and which employed more than 1,100 people at its peak (it went bankrupt in 1935). Down the block, Pedro’s has been brightening this corner with its mural—and its margaritas—as long as anyone can remember. Its ramshackle appearance and inexpensive menu are welcome vestiges of a time before the neighborhood was even known as Dumbo.

Across Jay, the entire square block on the right was once occupied by the Grand Union supermarket chain. From 1896 to 1915, it constructed six buildings here for a warehouse and a factory making teas, coffees, and spices. Visit the Shops at 145 Front, a collection of boutiques, art galleries, and designer showrooms. Of note to your left is Superfine, a Dumbo and foodie pioneer, having opened way back in 2001 with a focus on organic, sustainable ingredients.. It’s in a building designed in 1888 by the Parfitt Brothers, prestigious architects of their day who are responsible for a number of Brooklyn’s great Victorian-era residences and churches. Its original owner was E. W. Bliss, a major figure in Dumbo’s industrial history: the machinery and sheet metal manufacturer, based in the area from 1870 to 1933, employed more than 1,600.

Walk under the Manhattan Bridge, then turn right on Adams Street. Visit the PowerHouse Arena on your left, where you’ll find a bookstore, gift shop, and exhibition and performance space under one roof. The venue grew out of PowerHouse Books, a publishing company founded in Dumbo in 1995 that specializes in art and fashion books.

Turn left on Water Street. Those tracks going down Adams belonged to a rail system that transported goods within Gairville, as this district came to be known. When you reach Washington, look atop the brick building across to your right—a pediment with the Gair company’s name is on the roof. It also shows two years: 1888, the year of the building’s construction, and 1864, the year a Scottish immigrant named Robert Gair started manufacturing paper bags. He went on to invent machines to make corrugated paper and to fold boxes, and launched a cardboard-box factory that operated in this area from 1888 to 1927 with a workforce that reached 1,700—largest in the neighborhood.

A bunch of people are probably standing in the middle of the Washington–Water intersection taking pictures. Join them to behold an awesome view of the Empire State Building between the columns of the Manhattan Bridge.

Turn and walk away from the river on Washington. See Gair’s name inscribed in the doorway on your left—this was the first of roughly 10 reinforced-concrete facilities he built. Another is to your right. Where did it fit in the company’s chronology? He tells you at the corner with Front Street, along with the year of construction on the shield to the right above the door.

Turn right on Front, then make a right on Main Street. The Sweeney Building at #30 was a nickelware factory when it opened in 1911; now it’s condos. Across Water Street on your left, the Stable Building was built by Gair for just that purpose in the 1880s and currently houses several art galleries. Check ’em out—some have entrances on Water.

On the other side of Main Street stands Dumbo’s most recognizable landmark, the Clocktower Building. Completed in 1914, it was the final—and tallest—Gair building but now bears the name Walentas, after the developer who converted it to condos. Its triplex penthouse, which includes 14-foot clocks (you can see out of them) and a glass elevator, sold for $18 million in 2016. Walentas bought the whole building in the 1990s for a million.

From Main Street, go right on Plymouth Street—but look down Plymouth in the other direction at the Brooklyn Bridge, designed by John Roebling. Esteemed architecture critic Lewis Mumford once commented that the only person who had a bigger influence on the Brooklyn waterfront than Roebling was Robert Gair. At the Washington Street corner, visit the Smack Mellon gallery. In this building—an 1891 extension of Gair’s first building that adjoins it—Smack Mellon has studios and production labs for artists in addition to its exhibition space. Across Plymouth, ascend the steps in Brooklyn Bridge Park to a terrace with stone slabs from which you can gain an even better view. The rest of this section of Brooklyn Bridge Park is covered in Walk 1.

From Plymouth, turn left on Adams Street. Bliss’s factory occupied the entire block to your right.

Cross John Street and enter another section of Brooklyn Bridge Park via the path beside the new condo (which contains only 42 apartments, 4 of them penthouses). Follow the path to the left, crossing footbridges over a salt marsh and tidal channel. Look for the ziggurat-shaped metal relics arrayed in a sunken area with rocks. These were the footings of a demolished building of the Arbuckle Brothers’ sugar refinery. A surviving structure from the refinery is now the other residential building on the park. As part of its recent conversion, the brick building is getting a new glass-and-steel facade on the water side—a look inspired by sugar crystals. Continue around that building and exit the park at Jay Street. The building to your right across Plymouth was erected in 1909 for the Arbuckles, following Robert Gair’s lead regarding reinforced-concrete construction.

The Arbuckle Brothers employed 670-plus people in the sugar refinery, but their business actually revolved around coffee. They were pioneers in the packaging of roasted ground coffee—before their Ariosa brand was introduced, people had to roast their own coffee beans at home. The Arbuckles started producing sugar because they needed it as an ingredient in the glaze that was applied to the roasted coffee beans as a preservative. Their company grew into the world’s largest coffee roaster and shipper, with its own fleet of vessels sailing to South America to get the raw materials.

On Jay Street at the left corner, in a building previously inhabited by the Arbuckles, Brooklyn Roasting Company has brought their discipline into the 21st century, roasting organic, fair-trade beans from places as far-flung as Bali, Peru, and Ethiopia in small batches—and also providing a spacious café–cum–reading room for customers.

Continuing up Jay, you next reach GK Arts Center, home to the ballet school and performing company run by Gelsey Kirkland, the onetime prima ballerina. Other dance and theater productions also take the stage in its 310-seat theater. At Plymouth Street, to the right are the art galleries A.I.R., which is dedicated to female artists, and Usagi, which contains a café serving Japanese teas and food.

Before turning left on Plymouth Street, look across the Jay–Plymouth intersection (to your right) to the redbrick building with an arched doorway on Jay. It was built in 1891 for Masury Paint, which patented the can with a thin pryable lid that we think of as a standard paint can. Masury’s invention made it possible to sell ready-made paint, and the company maintained an exclusive patent on it for 21 years. Follow the old rail tracks from Jay to the left on Plymouth. #185, built for the Arbuckle Brothers in 1900, was used in the ’40s and ’50s for offices of Brillo (its scouring-pad factory was on John Street). The tall building at #195 was erected in 1892 as the metal spinning and plating plant of S. Sternau & Co., which invented a small burner called a Sternau—eventually spelled Sterno.

This is truly dumbo—down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass—on Pearl Street

Turn right on Bridge Street, as the rail tracks do. They go all the way into the lobby of the residential conversion at #37—originally built for Kirkman & Son’s fat storage. They were soap makers, and the adjacent building was their glycerin plant. These were 1910s additions to their main facility across the street, #50, which was designed in 1894 by William Tubby, a leading residential architect of the late 19th century.

Turn left at Front Street, entering Vinegar Hill. The red garage door on the left is on a former firehouse, now a residence, built around 1855. #231–233 dates to 1908 and was designed by Tubby for a Benjamin Moore paint factory. It’s followed by a row of Greek Revival brick townhouses. Most of them date to the 1840s; the second pair may have been built as early as the 1830s.

Vinegar Hill originated as a working-class community of Navy Yard employees and people who served as domestics in Brooklyn Heights. Today it’s a 19th-century village scrunched between a power plant, a highway, and a housing project. Vinegar Hill’s residents were predominately Irish throughout the 1800s, and local landowner John Jackson named it after a battle of Irish independence.

Turn left on Gold Street. These Greek Revival brick rowhouses on the right, including those at each end with street-level storefronts, are from the 1840s.

Turn right on Water Street. Go left at Hudson Avenue, then promptly right on Evans Street. At the end on your right is a gated property with a lawn and a pretty white mansion—looks more like a Hamptons estate than something you’d find in the city. This now privately owned house was built in 1806 for the Brooklyn Navy Yard commandant and designed by the same architect as the United States Capitol.

Go left on Little Street, which abuts the decommissioned but once mightily important Navy Yard. Shipbuilder John Jackson, who’s considered the founder of Vinegar Hill, sold land to the US government in 1801 that was developed into the Navy Yard—which operated until 1966 and still has a few active dry docks (see page 140 for more about it). Vinegar Hill turned into a red-light district during the Navy Yard’s tenure, earning the nickname Hell’s Half Acre.

Turn left on Plymouth, then left on Hudson, the main drag of Vinegar Hill. Original ownership of both corner buildings has been traced to John Jackson’s family: #49 may have been built as early as 1801. On the next block, Vinegar Hill House (#72) was the only retail business in the neighborhood when it opened in 2008—all these other storefronts were vacant or converted to residential. Opposite it, the three buildings between vacant lots have stood since 1817 and were originally Jackson property.

Continue on Hudson as it turns into Navy Street. A wonderful mural on your left illustrates neighborhood and Navy Yard history. Enter the Navy Yard after one more block, opposite Sands Street. Inside the gatehouse on your right is the tasting room of the Kings County Distillery, which has won awards for its bourbons, corn-based “moonshine,” single-malt whiskey, and chocolate whiskey. The distillery itself is located inside the 1917 paymaster’s building—straight ahead when you enter the Navy Yard grounds (tours are offered). From there, go to your right to the four-story building with a gazebo-type structure on its roof. Inside, ascend to Rooftop Reds, the world’s first commercial urban rooftop vineyard—and also a delightful place to hang out. I mean, a hammock with this view . . . doesn’t get much better than that! The vines grow in specially cultivated soil in custom-designed planters.

Go back on Navy to York, make a left, and return to the F train at Jay Street.

Points of Interest

Powerhouse Arena 28 Adams St.; 718-666-3049, powerhousearena.com

Smack Mellon 92 Plymouth St.; 718-834-8761, smackmellon.org

Brooklyn Roasting Company 25 Jay St.; 718-514-2874, brooklynroasting.com

GK Arts Center 29 Jay St.; 212-600-0047, gkartscenter.org

Kings County Distillery Brooklyn Navy Yard gatehouse, 299 Sands St.; 347-689-4180, kingscountydistillery.com

Rooftop Reds Brooklyn Navy Yard, Building 275; 571-327-3578, rooftopreds.com