Guided Tour Series Offers Insider’s View of Factories, Workshops, and Tech Hubs (Brooklyn, NY) — Have you ever wondered what’s made at the Brooklyn Navy Yard? Now you can find …
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Turnstile Tours & Essex Street Market Vendors Association launch weekly 90-minute tasting tours of the market, every Sunday beginning September 25 Tours include 5–7 tastings and opportunities to meet the …
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For many years, the Brooklyn Navy Yard has been a forbidding presence along the East River waterfront, hidden from the surrounding neighborhood behind walls and fences, with warning signs along its perimeter … This month, however, several new projects are cracking open these barriers and granting the public access to parts of the Navy Yard that have been unseen for decades.
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“The introduction of the shipping container in the late 1950s really dramatically transformed the industry,” said Andrew Gustafson, who leads historical tours of the Brooklyn Army Terminal for his company, Turnstile Tours. “Basically, these enormous facilities like the Bush Terminal and the Brooklyn Army Terminal became totally obsolete for their original use. … And then you also have the decline of manufacturing spaces,” said Gustafson.
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During World War II, the Administration Building at the Brooklyn Army Terminal directed a hive of activity. Supply depots and barracks down the East Coast were all controlled by staff in the Sunset Park neighborhood. “You had literally an army of people managing all the soldiers passing through every supply depot and every camp within a couple hundred miles of New York City,” said Andrew Gustafson, vice president of Turnstile Tours.
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The federal government sold the terminal to New York City in 1981, and a few years later, a wholesale renovation began. It’s come a long way since then—notable tenants now include such diverse neighbors as the NYPD’s intelligence division, the chocolatier Jacques Torres, the New York City Bioscience initiative center and the Museum of Natural History.
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Makansutra, September 20, 2015 by KF Seetoh I was taken on a food and heritage spin around Brooklyn, “to places where tourist would look out of place” ironically by Cindy …
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For the past seven years, the staff at Turnstile Tours has been offering two-hour bus and bicycle tours of the typically off-limits Brooklyn Navy Yard, a sprawling 300-acre property that includes a whole lot more than woodworking studios and the Brooklyn Grange. For starters, there’s an 1856 eagle-topped monument tucked away there, commemorating the Battle of the Barrier Forts, an assault led by the U.S. Navy against Qing Dynasty citadels on China’s Pearl River, during the Second Opium War. Who could forget!
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Earlier this month, the New York Obscura Society embarked on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard to explore the rich history of the vast 300-acre property. Led by Andrew Gustafson of Turnstile Tours, the tour chronicled the Yard’s evolution, which originally served as a shipyard from 1776 to 1965 and is now an industrial park with thriving manufacturing and commercial activity where over 200 businesses employ more than 5,000 people.
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“Drive slow — 8 M.P.H.,” the signs say along the South Brooklyn waterfront, between 59th and 63rd Streets. Nothing exceptional about them, except that they are posted on the sixth floor.
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Research and content development for STEM-based K–12 programs // 2014 Turnstile was commissioned by the Brooklyn Historical Society (now known as the Center for Brooklyn History at the Brooklyn Public …
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“We’re especially proud of the fact that the Brooklyn Navy Yard built the USS Arizona, which was sunk on December 7, 1941, with the loss of 1,177 sailors aboard. We also built the USS Missouri, which is where the peace treaty that ended World War II was signed, so we have the bookends of the war that were built here at the Navy Yard.”
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Four million square feet of indoor space. Thirty-two elevators. Ninety-five years old. Sunset Park’s Brooklyn Army Terminal is massive, unusual, and wholly unexpected. Originally built in 1919 to transfer copious quantities of manpower and supplies from land to sea and back again, these days parts of the complex have been converted into office space. But its architecture—with arches everywhere and one awesome atrium, designed by Cass Gilbert of Woolworth Building fame—remains a marvel.
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Father’s Day is often a time when people gather with their families, maybe have a cookout, and often sit inside watching sports or old war movies on cable with their …
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Celebrate Fleet Week NYC 2014 with these tours, parades, public programs, and other special events around New York City. Don’t forget to check out our special Fleet Week Harbor Tours, …
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What do Elvis, Prohibition-era bootleggers and dinosaur bones all have in common? They’ve all spent their fair share of time at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park. And now you can, too. For the first time, the city is offering regular tours of the 95-year-old former military depot on the waterfront in Sunset Park.
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Guided Tour Consulting for the Attractions and Experience Development Series in Singapore // 2013 Staff from Turnstile Tours and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum were invited to Singapore by the country’s …
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The Brooklyn Navy Yard is known for its muscular collection of industrial architecture. Here, the battleship Missouri and other warships were built and repaired until the yard closed five decades ago. The regular weekend tours of the Navy Yard cover that and more, but at the end comes an unexpected treat: the magnificent, slightly sagging Naval Hospital, a ghostly marble temple built in 1838 and empty for two decades. A new plan may sweep away the cobwebs.
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