Dry Dock District

Entry in progress—B.P.
   
Off the Grid (Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation)
The Decline of the Dry Dock District: 143-145 Avenue D, Part 3
BY ILANA – MARCH 29, 2011
POSTED IN: EAST VILLAGE
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By this time, however, the Dry Dock District had ultimately begun its decline.  After the Civil War and the construction of the Erie Canal, wooden ships had begun the downward spiral towards obsolescence in favor of iron hulled ships.  The bustling shipbuilding neighborhood came to be dominated by waves of immigrants from Germany and Eastern Europe.  Tenements quickly replaced many of the previous single-family homes.
 
Ephemeral New York
The remains of two streets no longer on the map
October 6, 2014
Imagine the East River from 12th Street down to Grand Street lined with great ships in various stages of construction.
 
That was the reality along the river from the 1820s through the end of the 19th century, when today’s far East Village was known as the Dry Dock District (a dry dock is a narrow basin where ships would be built).
 
Thousands of New Yorkers who made their homes along Avenues B, C, and D were employed by the neighborhood industry as dock workers, mechanics, and shipbuilders.
 
Ephemeral New York
5 houses from the East Village’s shipbuilding era
November 7, 2016
If you traveled back in time to the far East Village of the mid-19th century, you would see a neighborhood sustained mainly by one industry: shipbuilding.
 
Along the East River, thousands of iron workers, mechanics, and dock men—many who were recent Irish and German immigrants—toiled in shipyards and iron works in what was then called the Dry Dock District, east of Avenue B.