This is one of the views from my studio windows.

In February I moved my studio to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I'm on the third floor of a 1903 structure, Building 131, which my friend John Bartelstone told me was a former riggers shop. Four large east-facing windows look out on enormous sky reflected in the water in my pre-World War I dry dock #4, and on Wallabout Bay. Buildings large and small, new and historic, some in close view, some miles away and outside the Navy Yard. Bright green tug boats push oil tankers in and out. The shiny new red and white FDNY fire ship sits at its Fire Department dock ready to address a water emergency. Six dry dock cranes on very high legs creep back and forth on dry docks #5 and #6. Two hulking and rusted 1935 diesel-electric dry dock cranes stand waiting in their tracks for some future duty on my dry dock. Ducks and geese swim in my dry dock, loons dive for food. A scrubby butterfly bush with lavender flowers and a vigorous Mimosa bloom profusely from cracks in the asphalt, the Mimosa flowers' fragrance lasting literally for months. Workers at the Sweet 'n Low plant wear hair nets and eat breakfast at a quilted silver coffee truck at 8:30. In the blistering July sun Lucy and Arantxa pant heavily in the hot and dusty parking lot hoping to find something exciting to sniff and are then ecstatic to come upon evidence of canine existence (usually their own.)

A former U.S. Navy shipyard (1801-1966) where in its early days warships with sails like the 1831 Enterprise, a 10-gun schooner, or the Civil War era Kalamazoo, a 1863 double-turreted monitor, were launched. However, it wasn't until after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 when the country entered WW II that the Navy Yard really went into high gear:

. . . Although two battleships, two aircraft carriers, eight tank-landling ships, and floating workshops were launched and commissioned at BNY [Brooklyn Navy Yard] during the war, BNY's primary responsibility was ship repair. More than 5,000 bomb- and torpedo-damaged ships from many Allied nations steamed into New York Harbor for repairs, and an additional 240 ships were converted from civilian to wartime use. By the end of the war, BNY was the largest shipyard in the world employing over 75,000 workers, with a monthly payroll of between $15 million and $16 million.

After the WW II, ship repair and buildling continued (several aircraft carriers and other smaller ships) at a far more modest rate. Newer ships couldn't reach the Navy Yard because they were too high to pass under the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. This and the lack of other upgrades like the ability to build nuclear powered ships caused the Navy Yard to be rated "non-core" by the Johnson administration in the 1960's when budget cuts and politics doomed it and other Defense Department shipyards.

Now a New York Clty chartered industrial park, the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation leases space to businesses such as Sweet 'n Low, Duggal, Scott Jordan Furniture, B&H Photo, and Steiner Studios. These, as well as numerous plumbers, architects, wood-workers, electricians, and visual artists co-exist in a lively landscape that still includes a ship repair company, GMD Shipyard, which makes good use of dry docks #1, #5, and #6.

My studio is on the third floor of this building, Williamsburg Bridge is in the background.

If you want to see some real photography of the Navy Yard, see the new book by photographer John Bartelstone, The Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The italicized paragraph above is quoted from: The Brooklyn Navy Yard, Images of America, by Thomas F. Berner, Arcadia Publishing, 1999, page 83. This and other information from Mr. Berner's and Mr. Bartelstone's excellent books are also referenced here.