Gowanus, Brooklyn: A Canal, a Cleanup, a Power Station

The Butler Street Pumping Station and its flushing tunnel opened on June 21, 1911 to move water through a channel that had become notorious. It did not last. The Army Corps dredged for the last time in 1955; the flushing tunnel's intake fan broke and the tunnel closed in 1963; the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opened the following year and removed much of the remaining need for canal shipping. The canal sat derelict for close to three decades.

The federal cleanup is the defining fact of modern Gowanus. The EPA proposed Superfund listing in March 2009 and placed the canal on the National Priorities List on March 4, 2010. A $506 million cleanup plan was approved on September 27, 2013, work began in October 2017, and on June 27, 2024 the EPA amended its order to start a second phase under a $369 million contract.

The neighborhood around it is changing on a parallel schedule. In November 2021 the city rezoned Gowanus to permit roughly 8,500 new apartments, about 3,000 of them designated affordable. Earlier housing arrived by demolition: NYCHA announced clearance for the Gowanus Houses in 1944, the site was cleared by 1946, ground was broken in January 1948, and the sixteen towers, designed by William T. McCarthy, Rosario Candela and Ely Jacques Kahn, were finished by June 1949.

An area north of the canal was known as Little Caughnawaga, a Mohawk community that peaked at roughly 700 residents in the 1950s. Many of the men were ironworkers with Brooklyn Local 361, and the Doray Tavern on Nevins Street, known as the Wigwam, was a gathering place.

The Carroll Street Bridge over the canal opened in 1889 at a cost of $29,600, designed by chief engineer Robert Van Buren with George Ingram as engineer-in-charge. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated it a city landmark in 1987. A 1971 city attempt to close it permanently was reversed within weeks after resident protests. It closed indefinitely in 2021 for cleanup-related repairs and reopened on June 15, 2026, restricted now to pedestrians, bicycles and emergency vehicles.

The Union Street Bridge is a double-leaf Scherzer rolling-lift bascule that opened on March 4, 1905 at a cost of $85,206.85. It still carries two lanes of Union Street traffic plus pedestrians and cyclists, toll-free, maintained by the city's Department of Transportation.

The building now called Powerhouse Arts went up between 1901 and 1904 as the Central Power Station of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, feeding the subway's Fourth Avenue Line until it stopped operating in 1972. It stood empty for two decades and, from around 2001, was known as the Gowanus Batcave, an informal home for homeless and runaway youth. Philanthropist Joshua Rechnitz bought it for $7 million in 2012, and a $180 million renovation by Herzog & de Meuron opened it as Powerhouse Arts in May 2023.

Gowanus had an art scene well before that. In 1981 and 1982 the artist-organised Gowanus Memorial Artyard, founded by Michael Keene, Frank Shifreen and George Moore, staged shows at a former nineteenth-century munitions factory at 230 3rd Street. The Monumental Show opened on May 16, 1981 and drew over 4,000 visitors its first weekend, with 150 artists including Carl Andre and Keith Haring.

Smith-Ninth Streets is located in Gowanus, at the intersection of Smith and Ninth Streets over the canal, and is served by the F and G.

Fourth Avenue-Ninth Street, at Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street, is served by the D, N, R and W. The R runs there at all times; D, N and W service is limited.