Presidential Visits to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Part II

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Three years ago, in celebration of Presidents Day, we wrote about the handful of times that sitting US presidents had paid visits to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. At that time, we only mentioned two such visits – by William Howard Taft, once as president-elect on November 13, 1908, and as soon-to-be-ousted-president on October 30, 1912, and by Woodrow Wilson,  on May 11, 1914. But we have since done considerably more historical digging, and we would like to share a few more notable presidential visits.>> Continue reading

Brooklyn Greenway Initiative’s Naval Cemetery Landscape

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With all the major development projects underway at the Brooklyn Navy Yard (the Green Manufacturing Center, Wegman’s, Building 77, Steiner Studios expansion – the list goes on …), it is easy to forget a very exciting, if comparatively modest, project in a quiet corner of the Yard.

For the last several years, the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative has been working to transform a portion of the Yard into a publicly-accessible greenspace. After years of planning, construction is now well underway of the Naval Cemetery Landscape, built on the site of the former Brooklyn Naval Hospital Cemetery. Located at the corner of Williamsburg St West and Kent Ave, this park will be a beautiful pocket of nature and civic history along the planned Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway, a 14-mile bicycle and pedestrian path which will run from Greenpoint all the way to Bay Ridge.>> Continue reading

From Perry To MacArthur: Flag Links Historic US Visits to Japan, in Peace and War

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September 2 marks the 70th anniversary of the official end of the Second World War, when Japan signed the Instrument of Surrender in Tokyo Bay in 1945. While we are marking the event today, the actual anniversary took place at around 8pm on September 1, Eastern Standard Time. The largest celebration of the event in the world was held in Beijing, and has long since finished; the major commemoration of the event in the US will take place at 3pm EST in Hawaii, aboard the USS Missouri, where the original surrender took place.>> Continue reading

Brooklyn Navy Yard: Tour Brochure and Map

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Design of brochure and map for tour programs at the Brooklyn Navy Yard // 2015

In the summer of 2015, Turnstile Studio was contracted by the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation to create a new visitor brochure for tour programs at the Yard. This brochure was designed to improve wayfinding for visitors, and to encapsulate the wide variety of tour programs and experiences available at the Yard, including tours for the general public, school tours, private group tours, and exhibits and programs at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92.

>> Continue reading

Highlights of the Harbor: Shipyards

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For more than 150 years, shipbuilding was a pre-eminent industry in New York City. Shipyards building clipper ships, steamboats, and naval frigates once engulfed the shoreline of Lower Manhattan in the early 19th century, bearing names like Brown, Bergh, Westervelt, and Webb, eventually spilling onto the Brooklyn side to form a massive shipbuilding complex on the East River. As the industry – and the city – grew, major shipyards could be found in all five boroughs and across the Hudson in New Jersey.
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From the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Mars: Honeybee Robotics

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The Brooklyn Navy Yard has a long tradition of exploration. For 165 years, the Yard built, outfitted, and repaired ships that traveled millions of miles around the world, including building the first US Navy ship to circumnavigate the globe (USS Vincennes, 1826-30), dispatching the groundbreaking US Exploring Expedition (1838-42), and receiving the Navy’s first nuclear submarine USS Nautilus after it passed underneath the ice of the North Pole (1958). But none of these ships went as far or as deep into uncharted territory as systems developed by Brooklyn Navy Yard tenant Honeybee Robotics.>> Continue reading

Carrier Catapult Tests Once a Common Sight at Brooklyn Navy Yard

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Last month, the US Navy began testing of its new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS, aboard the first ship that will deploy the system, the carrier USS Gerald Ford, currently under construction at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

EMALS is the latest innovation in aircraft carrier catapult systems, which are designed to assist aircraft in taking off over short distances. On June 5, 2015, crewmembers of the Ford launched test “sleds” – meant to mimic the weight of the carrier’s aircraft – off the end of the flight deck and into the James River.>> Continue reading

Fleet Week Ships Carry Strong NYC Connections

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USCGC Sturgeon Bay. Credit: US Coast Guard

On Wednesday, May 20, a small flotilla of US Navy and Coast Guard ships will steam under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to mark the beginning of a week-long, city-wide celebration of our country’s Sea Services. The ships will be coming from different commands and homeports, but many of them have strong historic and contemporary connections to New York and the nautical history of this region.

The ships will be berthed along Manhattan’s West Side (at Piers 86 and 92) and at The Sullivans Pier in Stapleton, Staten Island. All will be open for public visiting hours (see here), but if you want to get a waterside view of them, join our Fleet Week Harbor Tours, May 22-25, with Classic Harbor Line. >> Continue reading

Gothamist: Behind The Scenes At The Brooklyn Navy Yard

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Gothamist, May 6, 2015

by Emma Whitford / Photos by Tod Seelie

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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Explore Traditional Letterpress Printing at Woodside Press on an Inside Industry Tour

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Mergenthaler Linotype Machine at Woodside Press at the Brooklyn Navy Yard

Woodside Press is one of our featured Brooklyn Navy Yard tenants on our Making It In NYC: Inside Industry at the Brooklyn Navy Yard tour series. This past winter, we visited the letterpress printshop to learn about their company and the unique services they offer. Woodside was founded back in 1993 by Andy Birsh in Woodside, Queens (hence the name), and in 1998 moved into their space in Building 3 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We were shown around the print shop by Davin Kuntze, who has been with the company for more than 10 years.>> Continue reading