Gowanus: Brooklyn's Curious Canal

Journalist Alexiou presents an extensively researched history of South Brooklyn, beginning with the Dutch settlement of Breuckelen and ending with the current real estate bubble and neighborhood activists trying to preserve its unique cultural mix and heritage. The early history is told through vignettes pulled from journals, historical documents, letters, land use records, historical bills of sale, and other records and is populated with such familiar names to New Yorkers as Cortelyou, Bennet, and Utrecht. The author introduces less known but instrumental individuals, including Daniel Richards, Julius W. Adams, and Simon Aertson De Hart. Because Alexiou includes many of the anecdotes he discovered, the early portion of his narrative can be dense. It streamlines as he moves into the 19th and early 20th centuries with the Brooklyn Eagle and the New York Times rounding out his essays. Explored is the industrial heyday of the canal, how it served as a focal point for waves of immigrants, how it functioned during the flush 1920s and throughout Prohibition, how it suffered during the Great Depression, and its short-lived comeback during World War II.