THE TOBACCO WAREHOUSE

a Report on
the History and Vision of
Brooklyn Bridge Park's Tobacco Warehouse as

OPEN SPACE FOR THE PUBLIC

prepared by

NV/da &
for the Brooklyn Bridge Park Community Council

08.04.10
 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
The Brooklyn Bridge Park Community Council
is a forum for neighborhood organizations and individuals
supporting Brooklyn Bridge Park
and collaborating on advocacy and design of the Park.
This report states and supports our position and our vision for
the Tobacco Warehouse
and its future form and usage in
Brooklyn Bridge Park.
The following community and civic organizations
endorse this report:

list as of printing:
the American Institute of Architects - Brooklyn Chapter
the American Institute of Architects - New York Chapter
the American Society of Landscape Architects - New York Chapter
the Atlantic Avenue LDC

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
the Boerum Hill Association
the Brooklyn Heights Association
Concord Village Owners
the DUMBO Neighborhood Alliance
the Fine Arts Federation
the Fulton Ferry Landing Association
JoAnne Simon, NYS Committeewoman, 52nd Assembly District
the Historic Districts Council
the Van Alen Institute
the Vinegar Hill Neighborhood Association

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 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
Contents

01 Position Statement
02 History
03 Present Form and Recent Use
04 Photographs
05 Planned Use: the General Project Plan
06 Uses and Enhancements
07 Diagrammatic Analysis of Objectives and
their Maximization
08 Summary and Conclusions

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
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 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
POSITION STATEMENT 01

The Brooklyn Bridge Park Community Council

cherishes the Tobacco Warehouse as
the architectural ruin that it is today.
In its present form, it is an integral part of the Brooklyn
Bridge Park landscape and an icon of the Park.
We advocate keeping the Tobacco Warehouse in this
form and enhancing it for continued use in ways that are
multiple, seasonal, and temporary.
We are opposed to
any plans for re-construction of
the Tobacco Warehouse that would permanently
eliminate its open-space and open-air character, and we
are opposed to any plans to give it over permanently to a

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
singular use. If a Request for Proposals were to call for
these, we would oppose it.

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 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
HISTORY 02
The Tobacco Inspection Warehouse was built in c. 1860 and was originally a
five-story structure reduced at some point in the 20th century (date as yet unascertained) to a 2-story
structure. (It is important to point out that people frequently refer to "Civil War-era warehouses" in New
York, and that this is one of the very few so referred to that was actually there during the Civil War, as
opposed to being built in the decade or so after the war ended.) It once had an appearance as
imposing as that of the adjacent Empire Stores. For many years the warehouse was operated by the
firm of David Dows & Co. and was known as the Fulton Stores, while the adjacent dock was known as
the Tobacco Dock. At this dock lighters came from New Jersey bearing freights of tobacco from
Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Virginia, and Tennessee that had been sent by train to the western
shore of the Hudson River. The dock was also used for pleasure-boat excursions such as church
picnics. Certainly in the 19th century the warehouse was not used for foreign tobacco imports, though
some of the tobacco it stored was exported to Europe. Much of the tobacco was for local
consumption, as Brooklyn had flourishing industries in the making of chewing tobacco, cigars, and
cigarettes.

David Dows died (and afterward his Brooklyn warehouse properties were
operated by his son, David Dows Jr.) on March 30, 1890, at his residence at Fifth Avenue and 69th
Street in Manhattan. He was 76 years old. His family was of 17th-century Massachusetts stock and he
was raised on a farm in upstate New York. He was an organizer of both the Produce Exchange and the
Corn Exchange Bank, was vice president of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, and a director of
the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, the Chicago, Minneapolis and Omaha Railroad, and the
Delaware and Hudson Railroad. In addition to the tobacco warehouse he also operated grain
warehouses. In 1860 Dows entered into partnership with the Brooklyn Heights merchant Alexander Orr,
and in 1865 "the firm built the mammoth Columbia Stores near Atlantic street… and this was the
beginning of Brooklyn as a great grain storage and shipping center… .The firm also built the Fulton
Stores, used for tobacco inspectors" (Eagle 3/31/1890)
Obituaries NYT 3/31/1890; Eagle 3/31/1890

In 1872 the Fulton Stores housed more than 18,000 hogsheads of tobacco, or
about 20% of the total tobacco coming into New York. (See Daily Eagle, "Brooklyn Interest in
Tobacco," August 28, 1872) By 1890--the year of Dows's death--the city had only the Fulton Stores
and the Stranahan Stores (at Atlantic Dock in Red Hook) in use as inspection warehouses for tobacco. I
do not find any evidence that the Fulton Stores were used by the United States Customs Service for
inspection of imported tobacco, as suggested by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. (See
Fulton Ferry Historic District designation report, pp. 15-16, 1977.)

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
Architecturally the Fulton Stores is one of too-few surviving examples of
classic mid-19th-century timber-framed brick waterfront warehouses. These buildings once defined
Brooklyn's waterfront and gave rise to the term "The Walled City." Eventually (in the first decade of the
20th century) such warehouses began to yield to the new technology of reinforced concrete
construction. But the survivors remind us that these simple brick structures had a real majesty to
them--elegant proportions, rhythmical fenestration, beautiful brickwork--very much like that of old New
England textile mills. This quality is especially apparent in the rare instances where groupings of old
warehouse buildings still exist, and by far the most important instance of this is along Water Street
where the surviving portion of the Fulton Stores stands adjacent to the Empire Stores.

- Francis Morrone

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 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
Some press clippings, mainly detailing the process of tobacco inspection:
Daily Eagle July 16, 1875:
HISTORY 02
"Three of these 'breaks' are made in each hogshead or package, one near the top, one in the middle and
one near the bottom, and from each 'break' a handful of leaves is taken out. The object is to get as near as
possible a fair sample of the tobacco in each cask. The 'hands,' three in number, are then tied together in
the securest manner, and to them is fastened by a tag a card having the number of the hogshead, the
name of the planter, the tobacco inspection, and other marks… .Most of the tobacco inspectors in New
York and Brooklyn are Southern gentlemen, skilled in the business, born upon tobacco plantations,
perchance, and have always been connected with it one way or another. Their kindness and courtesy is
endless, and the visitor who desires to examine the method of inspection will be hospitably received and
have every courtesy shown him… .In the warehouse a curious sight is presented. Floor upon floor is
crowded as full as it can hold with the great casks, some piled tier on tier close to the roof. The air is filled
with the subtle odor of the crude leaf, which, if you are unaccustomed to it, sets you sneezing as though a
malignant catarrh had laid hold of you… .Last year's crop is short in the leaf, the weather would not allow of
a proper curing of it, some of it was frost bitten and it comes into market black and spotted, some of it
upon the ragged edge of rotting… .Now and then, however, the inspector finds a cask of long, light brown
leaves, splendidly cured, and with the fragrant odor of a hickory nut. It remains to be seen what this year
will bring forth, but it does not yet come into market until next year, so the present is a good time to 'swear
off' for twelve months.
Daily Eagle April 4, 1874:
"'Tobacco inspection' consists in the storage of tobacco products in hogsheads, as it comes from the
South and Southwest, and the inspection of each cask by a man who makes it a special business. The
business is conducted in the following manner: When a cask is inspected the staves are taken off, leaving a
compact mass of pressed leaf tobacco, just the shape of the cask. By means of an iron lever, the mass is
'broken' or lifted apart in three or four places, and a handful of the leaves taken from each 'break.' These
bunches are then bound together, the knot of the cord, sealed with sealing wax, stamped, and the card of
the inspectors attached. The cask is then rehooped and stored away, and the tobacco sold by the sample
thus taken from the cask. If, when the tobacco is delivered to the purchasers and the package upon being
opened does not correspond with the sample, the inspector is held reliable."

Daily Eagle July 16, 1875:

"Enter the warehouse of David Dow & Co., yclept the "Brooklyn Tobacco Inspection." Look at the vast five
storied warehouse, covering an entire block, and know that at this moment there is stored therein at the
present moment about SIXTEEN MILLION POUNDS of the crude crop… .The main warehouse stands back
from the water's edge a distance of about 300 feet. The space between, is occupied by an enormous brick
shed; covering the whole space down the centre of this shed are two lines of heavy screw presses, in all

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
about sixty in number. The tobacco casks are rolled into this shed from the dock, and then the inspection
begins.
Daily Eagle June 15, 1876:
"The immediate neighborhood is built up with immense stores, warehouses and manufacturing
establishments … on Water Street, is the great building commonly called the Tobacco Inspection, and
otherwise designated the Fulton stores. The Empire stores… are just across Dock Street."
Daily Eagle June 26, 1877:
"Nearly all of the tobacco that comes to New York - two-thirds of it at least - is stored in Brooklyn, and
Fulton Stores is the point where a large proportion of it comes. Another equally capacious tobacco
warehouse known as Stranahan Stores is located just below the Atlantic Docks."
Daily Eagle April 19, 1879:

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"William McLaughlin, aged 30, of 157 Hudson avenue, while at work at the tobacco inspection dock, foot of

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Dock street, had his left hand badly bruised by being caught between two hogsheads of tobacco. He was
removed to the City Hospital."
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 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
PRESENT FORM & RECENT USE 03
For five years the Brooklyn Bridge
Park Conservancy booked both public
and private events here. Revenues
from private events paid for free public
programming
.
Open-air activities included “ Dancing
in the Streets” in 2005, and “ Circle
“ Round Brooklyn” and “ Brooklyn Ballet
'Caprice'” in 2006. Tented-activities
included “ Sunset Bouzoki” in 2006 and
“ Music at the Bridge” in 2008.
This has accomplished
goals of bringing people to Park and
generating revenues to support free
public programming.
It has proven popular
for private events, such as parties,
weddings and for performances.
Community has
objected to the presence of the party
tent (usually in place from May to

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
November) and the resulting long-term
access restriction. Unfortunately the
difficulty of erecting and taking down
the tent has limited public access to
the warehouse.
With its proximity to the River, its
spectacular views and unique
character as an urban ruin, its
architectural character must be

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preserved while allowing for ease of
public access.
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 PHOTOGRAPHS 04

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between New Dock and Dock Streets TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
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Brooklyn, New York

 PHOTOGRAPHS 04

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between New Dock and Dock Streets TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
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Brooklyn, New York

 PHOTOGRAPHS 04

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between New Dock and Dock Streets TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
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Brooklyn, New York

 PHOTOGRAPHS 04

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Brooklyn, New York

 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
PLANNED USE: THE GENERAL PROJECT PLAN 05
"Only two of the original five-stories of the Tobacco Inspection
Warehouse remain", reads the Final Environmental Impact
Statement for Brooklyn Bridge Park.  "It is not anticipated that the
historic integrity of the Tobacco Warehouse would be adversely
affected [as this] resource is located within the Empire Fulton Ferry
State Park and the proposed park would not alter this resource's
setting within a park."  "[T]he exterior shell of the former Tobacco
Warehouse would be restored, along with other possible
improvements."  "Nearby, the restored exterior shell of the former
Tobacco Warehouse, which may require other improvements, could
house a walled garden, cafe, or space for arts groups."
 
     "The restored exterior shell of the former Tobacoo Warehouse
may be used to house a walled garden, cafe, or space for arts
groups," states the General Project Plan, as amended December
18, 2006.
 
     In its Letter of Resolution of January 18, 2006, New York
State's Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation stated
that "the EIS identified historic resources on the Project site that
may be affected during construction of the Project, such as
[the Bridge's stone piers] and the Tobacco Inspection
Warehouse..." and required that construction plans "avoid any

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
construction-related damage to the Tobacco Inspection Warehouse
and any other historic resources..."

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 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
USE AND ENHANCEMENTS 06
ADA compliance - address discontinuity of floor level within the TW and
grade level in the surrounding park & sidewalks.
Address any structural issues with current concrete floor slab and add
appropriate drainage, electrical supply, and lighting systems.
Identify appropriate entry/exit points with the goal of eliminating iron gates at
open archways and establishing means of controlling access in a visually
unobtrusive and flexible manner.
Install exhibit / interpretive history of the TW, Brooklyn's working waterfront,
the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, etc.
Identify design solutions that allow for segregated, flexible, temporary spaces
for performances and events, including rational mechanics for ticketing and
crowd control.
Features should be portable enough to allow quick changes in uses from day
to day, additional features should be attractive yet secondary to the existing
structure.

Examples of appropriate use:

picnics
performances
mini museum
education programs
private events

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
public art
food carts or outdoor café
markets
revenue-generating events, although not exclusively for this
purpose

Tobacco Warehouse should remain a stabilized, architectural ruin,

activated with enhancements that allow it to be a flexible, public,
multi-purpose outdoor space accommodating a wide variety of
activities and not dominated by one use or group. No historic

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material should be removed.

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 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
DIAGRAMATIC ANALYSIS 07

HISTORY

OP
SS

EN
CE
AC

ES
Y S
US

OG
EF

OL
LE

EC
X

REVENUE

MAXIMIZED & EQUIVALENT POTENTIAL

Based upon 25 years of community concensus,

6 GOALS for the Tobacco Warehouse
have been identified:

1. OPENNESS maintain a roofless open space

2. HISTORY preserve the historic structure as "a stabilized ruin"

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
3. ECOLOGY create an environmentally sustainable space
4. REVENUE create the potential for generation of revenue for program and facility support
5. ACCESS provide year-round public access
6. USE FLEX allow use of the space for a large variety of things throughout the year

To illustrate these goals, a diagram was developed to graph and compare the merits of
appropriate proposals. The figure above represents the six goals as six colored nodes
radiating from a center. With each goal maximized to its equivalent and full potential, the
resulting "flower" balances each of the potentially conflicting goals.

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DIAGRAMATIC ANALYSIS 07

HISTORY
A Sculpture Garden
Scenario

OP
S

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
S

EN
CE

The landscape of the park

AC

ES
to the north is extended to

S
the interior of the
warehouse, creating a Potential Programs:
microclimate capable of
sustaining a unique set of Y • Gardening
US

OG
EF

• Passive Recreation
OL

plant types. Openness,

LE

EC

• Historic Interpretation
X

Access, Ecology, and

History goals are possibly • Environmental Learning
REVENUE
met, the potential for

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Revenue and Use Flex A - TW AS GARDEN
are compromised.
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 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
DIAGRAMATIC ANALYSIS 07

HISTORY
A Water Scenario

OP
S

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
S

The interior of the

EN
CE
AC

ES
warehouse is flooded to

S
provide a cool environment
in Summer and recreation in Potential Programs:
Winter. Openness, Access,
Revenue, and History goals • Summer Recreation
Y
US

OG
EF

are possibly met, the • Skating Rink

OL
LE

EC

potential for Ecology and • Historic Interpretation

X

Use Flex are compromised.

REVENUE

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B - TW FLOODED

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 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
DIAGRAMATIC ANALYSIS 07

Another Tent Scenario HISTORY

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
Installing a retractable,

OP
S S

inflatable, or otherwise

EN
CE
AC

ES
temporary tented area allows

S
for inceased potential for
activities that require cover, Potential Programs:
while maintaining a sense of
openness. The ability to • Performances
Y
US

OG
EF

retract, deflate, or • Market

OL
LE

EC

disassemble the tented area • Historic Interpretation

X

within the course of 24 hours • Environmental Learning

REVENUE

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is critical to balancing goals.

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C - TW TENTED
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 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
DIAGRAMATIC ANALYSIS 07

HISTORY

A Composite Scenario

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
OP
S S

EN
CE

By combining aspects of the three previous scenarios

AC

ES
S

(and potentially many more), a sensible program and

design can be developed that incorporates, balances
and maximizes each of the goals.
Y
US

The resulting "Flower" illustrates a programming

OG
EF

OL

strategy that balances the community goals for the

LE

EC
X

warehouse and enhances the existing qualities of the

REVENUE space.

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A + B + C = COMPOSITE

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 TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
SUMMARY & CONCLUSION 08
The Tobacco Warehouse, in its present form, is an architectural ruin that is an integral
part of the Brooklyn Bridge Park landscape and an icon of the Park.
The Tobacco Warehouse is an historic structure, built during the Civil War to house
tobacco products sent by train and boat for local consumption.
The Tobacco Warehouse, as an architectural ruin, today offers uniquely framed spaces
and views that inspire the imagination while accommodating a wide variety of public and
private uses.
The Tobacco Warehouse has in recent years successfully served as the setting for uses
of many kinds, including highly-regarded theater productions such as TR Warszawa's
Macbeth, local productions by the Brooklyn Ballet and the Festival of Emerging
Photographers hosted by the New York gallery Art + Commerce. The success of these
and many other events have proven the existing space to be conducive with a variety of
open-air programming.
The General Project Plan for Brooklyn Bridge Park states that the proposed park would
not alter this resource's (the Tobacco Warehouse) setting within a park.
Potential uses of the Tobacco Warehouse include; picnics, performances, mini museum,
education programs, private events, public art, food carts or outdoor café , markets, and
other revenue-generating events.
A diagrammatic analysis shows that the Tobacco Warehouse can easily incorporate,

between New Dock and Dock Streets

Brooklyn, New York
Water Street, north side
balance, and maximize the community-based goals of openness, history, ecology,
revenue, public access, and flexible use.

We conclude that the Tobacco Warehouse should remain a

stabilized, architectural ruin, activated with enhancements that
allow it to be a flexible, public, multipurpose outdoor space
accommodating a wide variety of activities, and not dominated
by one use or group.

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 NV/da

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between New Dock and Dock Streets TOBACCO WAREHOUSE REPORT
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Brooklyn, New York