NY LOFT covers five parts of Brooklyn — DUMBO, Brighton Beach, Sunset Park, Flatbush and Red Hook — and the things that were built in them.
The five were chosen because they have almost nothing in common except the borough. One is a bridge landing that emptied out and refilled with lofts. One is a resort that became a Russian-speaking high street. One is a Chinatown that formed after Manhattan’s had run out of room. One is a Dutch village that turned Caribbean. One was severed by an expressway and preserved by the same act.
Each section holds pieces about specific things: the cables the Brooklyn Bridge hangs on, the caissons that crippled the men who dug them, the eleven years Emily Warren Roebling ran the works, the Bush Terminal, the Red Hook grain elevator, Ebbets Field, the Labor Day parade on Eastern Parkway. Where a piece names a building, a person or a year, it names them because they can be looked up.
The site is independent and unaffiliated with any of the institutions it writes about. It is written in English throughout.