Walkabout: The Wallabout Market

In 1624, the Dutch ship New Netherland sailed into a bay on the East River and dropped anchor. On this ship were a group of French speaking Protestants called Walloons, from what is now a part of Belgium.

They called the area Waal-bogt, Dutch for the Bay of the Walloons. Starting in 1637, the Wallabout became the landing site of the first ferry from lower Manhattan across the East River.

By the late 17th century, most of the land in the area was owned by the Ryerson family, and remained rural, with pastures and farms, and easy access to the waterfront.

During the Revolutionary War, the Wallabout became infamous as the docking area for the British prison ships holding American soldiers and sailors throughout the war.

Over 10,000 prisoners died on those ships, only to be dumped overboard, or buried in shallow graves on the shore. Today, the Prison Ship Martyr’s Monument in Fort Greene Park holds their remains and honors their memories.

After the war, much of the Wallabout area was purchased by a John Jackson. He and his relatives decided to open a shipyard.

In 1801, the United States government bought forty acres of John Jackson’s Wallabout property, including the shipyard, for $40,000.

They would later go on to buy more land, and by the 1850’s, the historic parts of the Navy Yard had been built, including the Commandant’s House, the Naval Hospital and wings, and the first dry dock.

The immediate area near the Navy Yard began to be developed, with wood frame houses, brick houses, and tenements, all of which attracted both families and single workers.

By the 1880’s, the streets nearest the Navy Yard began to become more and more industrial, with warehouses and factories replacing whatever houses had been there before. Wallabout was a great location because of its convenience to the waterfront, and also to surface transportation, as the Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, and the Myrtle Avenue El in 1888.

Perhaps the market brought the warehouses, or maybe the warehouses brought the market, but by 1884, the Wallabout Market was Brooklyn’s major produce market. It stretched just north of Flushing Avenue between Washington Avenue and Ryerson St.

All around it, factories and warehouses producing foodstuffs, including candy and baking firms, as well as grocery supply houses and cold storage warehouses were built on the streets leading to Flushing Avenue.

In 1894-96, architect William Tubby designed permanent buildings for the Wallabout Market. Tubby was one of the favorite architects of Charles Pratt, whose homes were only blocks away.

Tubby designed many of the buildings in the Pratt Institute, as well as homes for prominent businessmen living in nearby Clinton Hill. Perhaps this Pratt connection, as Pratt was the richest man in Brooklyn, helped get Tubby the commission, we don’t know.

We do know that as one of Brooklyn’s finest architects, William Tubby was the perfect man for the job and designed a unique and beautiful complex of buildings for Brooklyn’s largest market.

Taking the national origins of the Wallabout neighborhood as his inspiration, Tubby designed rows of two-story brick buildings with a distinct Netherlandish flavor, with ziggurat peaked roof-lines crowned with spires.

These buildings opened up on a plaza called Farmer’s Square, where stalls were set up. In the center of the square was a tall clock tower, its design echoing and complementing the shapes and materials of the market buildings.

It was brilliant, efficient, unique and distinctive, and further put Brooklyn’s premiere wholesale market on the map.

The Wallabout Market was not a farmer’s market, it was big business. The market was packed with first, wagons, then trucks as the years went by. The businesses that occupied Tubby’s buildings were wholesalers of produce, grains, meat and other foodstuffs.

Their clients were grocers, retailers, restaurants and other buyers of bulk foodstuffs. The stalls that faced the central plaza sold fish, meat, vegetables and fruits, cheeses, dairy and other perishable food items.

Although the center stalls sold retail, like more contemporary NY markets, such as the Hunt’s Point Market, and the South Street Seaport, this was not a place primarily to pick up materials for dinner, this was a mean, often cutthroat, tough place to do business.

The market was humming with activity from midnight until just after dawn, as daily purchases needed to be made and deliveries arranged before the next day’s business.

The rest of the day it was pretty dead. Many farmers came to the market from the farms of outer Brooklyn, from Canarsie, and Flatbush, joining the farmers from areas now part of Queens, as well as further out on Long Island.

It was a long journey across the span of Long Island, and at least one farmer from Queens did not make it back home on night, as he was set upon by robbers and killed not far from his home in Jamaica.

A quick survey of articles in the Brooklyn Eagle shows story upon story of life at the Wallabout Market, with many accounts of violent encounters between feuding factions, theft, assault, organized crime, and lots of allegations of payoffs, kickbacks, bribes and corruption from individual companies on up to the people who ran the market.

There were stories of shakedowns and shop owners getting assaulted. Some of the farmers who brought their produce in from Long Island every day wanted to organize, but accidents befalling them pretty much put an end to much of that sort of thing.

One of the last directors of the Market, George Dressler, was the topic of many stories in the New York Times in the 1930’s, as an investigation of his operation showed misappropriation of funds, with monies gathered for a merchants’ emergency fund disappearing, with Mr. Dressler, the only person with access to it, unable to remember what happened to the money.

The investigations continued, there was a trial, but he was eventually cleared. He died an 80 year old man in 1944 with no mention of the scandal in his obituary.

By the 1940’s, the Market found itself in the way of the war effort. The Navy Yard was expanding outward into Wallabout, as World War II escalated, and more and more shipbuilding and war related activities took place in the Yard.

Since the Navy Yard’s boundaries could be secured against any enemy action, it was necessary for the Navy to reclaim the Wallabout Market space. During the war years, the Navy Yard expanded to seven times the size it had been before the war.

On June 14, 1941, the commandant of the Naval Yard, Captain Harold V. McKittrick joined members of the Department of Markets as well as former tenants of the Wallabout Market in a ceremony to mark the passing of Wallabout, and the opening of a new Brooklyn Terminal Market at Remsen Avenue and E. 87th Street in Canarsie.

The ceremony included a 500 truck and car parade traveling from the old Market to the new. Mayor LaGuardia and other officials opened the new market that Monday. The Wallabout Market was gone. Apparently, they just bulldozed it down.

I could find no record that anything of William Tubby’s market had been saved, not the clocks, nothing. Today, the borders of the Navy Yard still enclose the site of what was once the second largest market in the world.

Research: Wallabout Cultural Research Study by Andrew Dolkart, New York Times, Brooklyn Eagle, Gotham City Insider, Andrew Cusack.com.