Historical Context:

https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2018/03/history-dumbo-brooklyn-neighborhood-built-coffee-cardboard-boxes.html

https://blogs.shu.edu/nyc-history/dumbo-2/

Dating back to the 1600s. It had many names before DUMBO such as Olympia, Gairville, Fulton Landing, and Walentasville.

The Olympia name was given in 1787 by the brotherly duo of Joshua and Comfort Sands, one of the founding families of Sands Point, New York. This area originally was never the main attraction because it was part of the much larger Vinegar Hill. At this time, Vinegar Hill was an extremely busy shipyard that included warehouses as well as the houses of the workers there. The Sands brother attempted to build a utopian society here, making this land a summer getaway for all New Yorkers

In the 1890s, the western portion of the neighborhood was known as Fulton Landing, after the ferry stop that connected it to Manhattan before the Brooklyn Bridge opened. Many of the inhabitants were farmers and travelers. Ferry Landing also became the home of many factories that produced anything from machinery to Brillo soap pads.

At that time this was also the site of the cardboard box invention by Robert Gair, who eventually got a building and a whole section of Ferry Landing named after him in his honor. The cardboard-box titan Robert Gair was so dominant in this region that his many buildings were collectively referred to as “Gairville”.

A large number of the buildings in Dumbo were bought by developer David Walentas and his company Two Trees Management in the late 20th century, and remade into an upscale residential and commercial community—first becoming a haven for art galleries, and currently a center for technology startups.

So, before the Brooklyn Bridge, the main industry of this area was the warehouses, shops, and the booming ferry business. The bridge was the first major challenge that this area had to undertake. This was because they were always able to rely so heavily on being supported by travelers being ferried over to Manhattan. Once the Brooklyn bridge came along, they needed to find new ways to sustain themselves in the hostile environment that is New York City.

The bridge was completed in 1883 and the neighborhood started to see the ramifications immediately. By the mid-1900s the shipbuilding industry was no longer profitable, and the area became ravaged. It stayed this way until the mid-to-late twentieth century when city planners knew something had to be done. It was at this moment that they took inspiration from the booming neighborhood of Soho. New York City had decided earlier to allow established artists to move into abandoned industrial lofts. It was these artists that came up with the name DUMBO as a sort of playful and marketable name.

Pictures:

This painting by Francis Guy depicts the area of downtown Brooklyn as it looked during the area’s ‘Olympia period’.

The waterfront in 1974 — the Empire Stores, the former Gair building (1 Main Street) and Sweeney Manufacturing (the kitchenware company)

John Street, east from Jay Street, 1938