Dredging the Past and Present of the Gowanus Canal | Episode 31

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PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

Best known today for its pollution and gentrification, the Gowanus Canal is an historic waterway that has seen war, industry, innovation, and reinvention play out along its banks. We will speak with poet, preservationist, and paddler Brad Vogel, captain of the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club and executive director of the New York Preservation Archive, about the history of the Gowanus Canal over the past 300 years, as well as initiatives today to help the Gowanus small business community weather the current crisis.

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Exploring the Naval Cemetery Landscape | Episode 6

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landscape with wood board and grass

PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

Join us for a conversation with the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, which has transformed a 1.7-acre former Naval Cemetery into a public green space and an oasis for plants, animals, and humans alike on the eastern edge of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We will discuss the history of this burial ground, the innovative design of the landscaping, and BGI’s programming and efforts to complete a continuous 26-mile bicycle and pedestrian pathway along Brooklyn’s waterfront.

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Jane’s Walk Around the Brooklyn Navy Yard, May 4

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landscape with wood board and grass

We are hosting a special experience for Jane’s Walks around the perimeter of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. For 165 years, the Yard was a leading naval shipyard, and today it is a city-owned industrial park and a center of manufacturing, technology, and craft, home to over 400 industrial and creative businesses, providing 9,000 jobs for New Yorkers. This walk will trace the Yard’s perimeter, starting at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92, and ending at the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative’s Naval Cemetery Landscape for a celebration of the park’s opening day. Along the way, we will discuss current development and adaptive reuse projects that are boosting the Yard’s workforce to levels not seen since the shipyard’s closure in 1966, and examine what remains of the rich historic landscape of the Yard.

Brooklyn Navy Yard Jane’s Walk

icon-calendar  SAT, May 4, 10am
  1 hour
  Walking tour (approx. 1 mile)
  BLDG 92, Fort Greene, Brooklyn 

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