Thursday, January 27, 2022 – WHERE THOSE WHO SERVED DEPARTED FOR THE FRONT
FROM THE ARCHIVES
THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 2022
THE 583rd EDITION
BROOKLYN ARMY
TERMINAL:
NEW YORK CITY AT WAR
STEPHEN BLANK
We don’t think of New York City as a giant military base. Other than Fleet Week and the recruitment center in Times Square, active military personnel are fairly rare in the City. We should recall, of course, that several of the most critical battles of the Revolutionary War were fought here, and perhaps we have wondered at the antique forts which ring our harbor. New Yorkers of my parents’ generation, however, adults during World War II, were certainly aware not just of German submarines menacing American shipping outside our door (and the widespread fear of German bombers), but of New York City as one of the largest military facilities in the world.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard is the most famous military instillation in the City, remembered for the many warships constructed there as well as for being an enormous employer during WWII. Another vast miliary installation is not from the Navy Yard and has received much less attention over the years, the Brooklyn Army Terminal.
The Brooklyn Army Terminal is a large warehouse complex on the East River in Sunset Park. It occupies more than 95 acres between 58th and 63rd Streets west of Second Avenue, on Brooklyn’s western shore. The complex was originally used as a United States Army Supply Terminal called the Brooklyn Army Base or Brooklyn Army Supply Base. It is now used for commercial and light industrial purposes.
The Terminal was built during World War I to be a center where incoming trains met outgoing ships, to facilitate the movement of troops and supplies to Europe. Designed by Cass Gilbert, who was responsible for some of the City’s most important buildings – the Woolworth Building, the Supreme Court, and the New York Customs House – it consists of four million square feet of warehouses, offices, piers, and railroads. The whole complex was constructed in just 17 months, completed in September 1919, but 10 months after the war had ended. It was the largest concrete building in the world, said to contain as much building material as the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and longer than the Woolworth Building is tall.
| The central atrium — a massive, four million cubic foot space — is lined with concrete balconies, staggered to allow loading and unloading of goods from rooftop cranes. Covered sky bridges connect the complex’s buildings, and the installation of 96 centrally controlled, push-button elevators was the largest of its time. Freight trains could run directly into the building and unload their cargo onto the loading docks. Two 5-ton traveling electric cranes spanned overhead, each able to move the width and length of the space on a track. Each could lower a cable that would then be attached to items unloaded from the trains. The offset balconies were designed so that this overhead crane can deposit cargo in each level and each sector of the building. Once deposited into the warehouse, cargo could be moved through the buildings by means of a network of connecting skybridges, and eventually moved down onto three enormous waterfront piers and loaded onto ships. |
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/brooklyn-army-terminal-building-b
The Terminal was indispensable during WWII, employing 56,000 military and civilian personnel. It was the headquarters of the New York Port of Embarkation, a vast network of warehouses, piers, supply depots and camps scattered across the region that moved 3.2 million troops and 37 million tons of supplies to army outposts around the globe during the war, more than any other port in the country.
Hundreds of thousands of men passed through the terminal on their way to serve overseas, arriving by trains that dropped them off a few paces from the ramps of outgoing ships. Nearly 5 million then returned home through New York, making it both the largest embarkation and debarkation point in the nation. The Terminal was set up to be a joyous reception, with bands playing to greet returning ships, and the piers and warehouses along the Narrows were painted with signs reading “Welcome Home.”
https://turnstiletours.com/100-years-refuge-brooklyn-army-terminal/
But not all the soldiers came back alive, and the Terminal had an important and solemn duty receiving the remains of those killed in the Western theaters. World War I was the first overseas conflict in which large numbers of American dead were repatriated, and in World War II, the American Graves Registration Service was established to identify and repatriate American remains. Of the 400,000+ Americans killed in the war, the service was able identify and secure the remains of approximately 281,000 (most of the remainder were lost at sea), and the families of 180,000 requested that their bodies be brought back to the US. Of this total, more than 140,000 were shipped through the Brooklyn Army Terminal
After the war, the facility remained active. Supplies and servicemen again passed through the Terminal during the Korean War. In July 1956, survivors of the collision between the ocean liners Andrea Doria and Stockholm were brought to the Terminal, as were thousands of Hungarian Revolution refugees in 1957’s “Operation Mercy.”
On September 22, 1958, the most famous soldier-in-transit, Elvis Presley, shipped out from the Brooklyn Army Terminal with other members of the Third Armored Division to begin an 18-month duty in Germany. Elvis was the only army private who scored a press conference at the Terminal before he embarked.
https://www.elvispresleyphotos.com/elvis-sails-brooklyn-army-terminal-1958.html
In 1964, US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara identified the Brooklyn Army Terminal as one of 95 military bases now unnecessary for national defense and thus should be closed to cut costs. By the end of 1966, all cargo and passenger traffic had been diverted to Bayonne, New Jersey.
During much of the 1960s and ‘70s, the facility decayed. The terminal was briefly used by the United States Postal Service and the Navy and then in 1981, New York City bought the complex from the federal government. The idea was to find a developer to refurbish it for commercial and light industrial use. When that collapsed, the City began its own renovation under the management of the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The final phase was completed in 2003, making a total of 2.6 million square feet available for use. Now, the Brooklyn Army Terminal houses over 70 tenants from the arts, sciences, finance and technology.
This legacy of the site, providing safe passage to survivors of disaster, was revisited when the Terminal’s sole remaining pier was opened to help ferry people out of Manhattan on September 11, 2011.
The Brooklyn Army Terminal has used for many tasks beyond the military. One of particular note: During Prohibition, the terminal was used to house a sea of confiscated liquor. When the spirits ban passed in 1920, federal agents began seizing booze and brews across the country. They ultimately confiscated millions of gallons. Construction of the Brooklyn Army Terminal had been completed in 1919, and in 1922, the Bureau of Prohibition began using Building A to stash some of the appropriated alcohol. At any given time, it is estimated that it held around $20 million worth of contraband – well over a quarter billion dollars in today’s money. And much of it, to the chagrin of drinkers everywhere, was dumped—some right over the railroad tracks in the atrium, but most of it straight into New York Harbor.
We read that a New York judge ordered the destruction of 980,000 bottles of liquor held at the Army Terminal, but Prohibition officers complained that they lacked the manpower to carry out the order; that is, until one officer suggested placing the bottles into a mechanical rock crusher that could easily pulverize 100 cases per day (never mind the fact that it would still take 27 months to destroy all of this liquor with the rock crusher).
There were, however, loopholes to Prohibition’s alcohol ban. For instance, it was still legal to drink what you already owned. And another loophole allowed spirits to be sold pharmaceutically: like many states’ current stance on marijuana, it was acceptable to use alcohol for medicinal purposes, but not recreational ones. In line with this policy, the Brooklyn Army Terminal actually had a large testing lab to determine the purity and quality of seized spirits. If the alcohol passed muster, it was reserved for future medicinal use by the military. The rest? Into the harbor.
Perhaps you would like to have been in on the testing?
Happy New Year!
Stephen Blank
RIHS
January 8, 2022
ADDENDUMThe Brooklyn Army Terminal is alive and well. In recent years the Terminal has attracted all kinds of manufacturers, large kitchens and start up businesses. To see the Terminal and its great architecture take the NYC Ferry South Brooklyn route from Pier 11 and you will be at the Terminal. Enjoy visiting history in a new neighborhood!
FEBRUARY PROGRAM WITH NYPL
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2022/02/15/clone-rihs-lecture-footsteps-nellie-bly
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455 CENTRAL PARK WEST AT 105 ST.
THE ORIGINAL HOME OF MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, NOW
CONDOMINIUMS
LAURA HUSSEY GOT IT RIGHT!
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c)
Sources
https://www.nycurbanism.com/blog/2019/10/2/brooklyn-army-terminal-1949
https://turnstiletours.com/100-years-refuge-brooklyn-army-terminal/
https://edc.nyc/article/raising-glass-brooklyn-army-terminal-past
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/brooklyn-army-terminal-building-b
https://urbanomnibus.net/2011/09/from-the-archives-brooklyn-army-terminal
https://turnstiletours.com/brooklyn-army-terminal-fortress-of-prohibition/
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