Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 of this story.

On September 22nd, 1958, America’s favorite soldier, and the idol of screaming millions, strode up the gangplank of the USS General Randall, a transport ship at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, bound for Bremerhaven, Germany. After boot camp in Texas, this was the second leg of his two year tour of duty in Germany. Elvis was in the house, but not for long. He would find himself in Europe for two years, answering the call of his draft board, and the publicity machine that enveloped his life. It wasn’t all mess halls and guard duty; he was, after all, Elvis Presley, the biggest star in the entertainment firmament, but when he left Brooklyn that fall day, he put Sunset Park’s Brooklyn Army Terminal on the map, something that Irving T. Bush, the man who commissioned the Terminal for the U.S. military, might have loved.

The huge military installation, designed by architect Cass Gilbert, in 1918-19, was the smaller of the two terminals built by Irving T. Bush, a visionary businessman whose business sense was years ahead of his time. Bush Terminal, begun in 1902, was the first Brooklyn port facility to combine piers, warehouses, factories and railways together in a one-stop manufacturing and shipping facility. By the time Bush had architect William Higginson design the now-iconic factory buildings that define the structure, in the years between 1905 and 1925, the Terminal was well on its way to becoming the largest employer in Brooklyn.

The story of the Terminals, Irving T. Bush and his family, as well as the long history of civilian and military use of the facilities can be found below in the links. Irving and his third wife, artist Marian Spore Bush, were fascinating characters. However, the largest characters in our story are the terminals. Most have us have seen these buildings, stretching from 28th through 65th Streets along the seaward side of Third Avenue. They go on forever, with only short breaks between the facilities; they are huge factory and warehouse buildings; reinforced concrete behemoths, many of which are now empty, or were recently so. How can such great spaces, so perfect for so many different kinds of industry, go permanently dark?

After World War II, Brooklyn’s industries looked at a post war economy, and like the rest of the country, life had changed. Large scale production in war related goods was over, and companies geared only for war had to either adapt to a civilian marketplace, or die. Brooklyn was lucky, because unlike many other industrial parks, the uniqueness of Bush Terminal, especially with its shipping facilities, made it possible for new industry to thrive. For many of the companies in Bush Terminal, life would go on. The Topps Candy Company, home of Topp’s chewing gum and baseball cards, moved to the Terminal in the 1950s, producing their trading cards that made them famous, here in their factory. They stayed until 1965, when they moved to Pennsylvania. Their offices stayed in Manhattan until 1994.

But big changes were afoot. We can best see the buildings of Bush Terminal and the Brooklyn Army Terminal from the Gowanus Expressway. This highway rose on the old pylons of the elevated 3rd Avenue line, beginning in 1939. Hundreds of buildings on 3rd Avenue were destroyed in order to widen the highway in 1941, as Robert Moses succeeded in connecting the city in a ring of highways, most of which soared above neighborhoods, cutting them off from one another as they made the moving of goods and people possible. Sunset Park found itself cut in two, the Terminals no longer a part of the neighborhood, but isolated by the physical presence of the highway.

As shipping by truck replaced shipping by rail, the Terminal saw the underpinnings of its core transportation system undermined. The piers and railroads in the terminal were becoming less and less important to the life of the businesses in the terminals. Container shipping was replacing old fashioned cargo shipping, and the new container harbor at Port Newark – Elizabeth, NJ became the new place to ship goods, a move that affected every shipping pier in Brooklyn, not just the ones at the Terminals. The port continued to operate until the 1970’s.

In 1978 it was discovered that a private company hired by the city to fill in the space between piers 1 and 4, had dumped toxic wastes at the site, making it a huge polluted brownfield. Construction had to be halted, and the plan to build a huge containment lot for shipping containers was ended. The site would not be cleaned up until 2006, when Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki were able to obtain $17.8 million to clean up the site, and redevelop the area. It was the largest amount of state money ever spent on one brownfield site.

The Terminal’s railroad system was also becoming obsolete. The Bush Terminal Railway, as a business entity, went out of commission in the 1970s. Very limited parts of the railway are still operated by the New York Dock Railroad, and the car floats, those barges that once carried the train cars across the river, and were the most important part of the railway, are still occasionally used to transport NYC subway cars back and forth. The old tracks that joined the factory buildings can still be seen in the pavement and roads of the terminal.

In spite of the loss of industry in New York City, in general, white flight to the suburbs, and the loss of the terminal’s sea and rail shipping facilities, the Bush Terminal survived. In 1961, the company sold its headquarters in lower Manhattan, and brought its offices back to the Terminal. Their building was torn down almost immediately and replaced by a tall office building. In 1963, a group of real estate investors, led by Harry Helmsley, bought Bush Terminal. Until the late 1970s, it remained over 95% occupied, and still employed thousands of people. By the end of the 1980’s and early 90s, the Terminal had become the new garment center, with the highest concentration of garment center related businesses outside of Manhattan’s Garment Center district.

Over at the Army Terminal, the military was now gone, having decommissioned the facility in 1960. For almost twenty years, the facility was almost empty, its streets becoming empty canyons, the loss of jobs within the facility tremendous, as was the hit to the community businesses that depended on the Army Terminal for their own success. In 1981, the City bought the huge complex of warehouses to operate as a commercial industrial park like the Bush Terminal.

By the turn of the 21st century, the majority of the terminal buildings were either empty or only in partial use. Big box stores like Costco had moved into the area, along with a small resurgence of new businesses. Renewed interest in Brooklyn’s waterfront and the real estate boom had developers and others looking at this enormous collection of underutilized buildings and saying, “Hmmmm.” Could luxury condos be far away? Fortunately, that doesn’t seem likely.

In the mid 1980’s Bush Terminal was rechristened Industry City. It is now owned by Industry City Associates, and has been marked to the new industries that its investors would like to see thrive in Brooklyn; fashion, the arts, data centers, warehousing and other small manufacturers. The Marian Spore Gallery was developed to show the works of avant-garde artists, named for Marian Spore Bush, who was herself a controversial and avant-garde artist. New offices and spaces specifically geared towards small creative companies were developed and marketed. There is new life in the Terminal. Over at the Army Terminal, similar work is underway, transforming that amazing space.

However, on any early morning, one can still go down to the terminals and be as alone as it is possible here in NY. The wind whistles between the buildings, and tumbleweeds wouldn’t be out of place. It’s still eerie, and a bit sad. What a place this was, what a dream was born, through the hard work and vision of so many. What will these great terminals be like in the next fifty years? Will the seeds of creativity take root here, will fortunes be made, or will they be replaced by a new residential DUMBO? We shall see.

Bush Terminal, Part One

Bush Terminal, Part Two
Bush Terminal, Part Three
Bush Terminal, Part Four
Bush Terminal, Part Five

(Above photo: Daily News, 1958)

ELvis Presley goes to Germany. 1958. Photo: Alfred Worthheimer
Photo: Bridge and Tunnel Club
Photo: Bridge and Tunnel Club
Photo: Bridge and Tunnel Club
Today's Brooklyn Army Terminal. Photo: Foursquare.com

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