South Brooklyn Freight Terminal, 29th Street Pier, Opposite end of Twenty-ninth Street on upper New York Bay, Brooklyn, Kings County, NY

Significance: The South Brooklyn Freight Terminal, built 1909-16 by the New York City Department of Docks and Ferries, was of a municipal attempt to reorganize shipping in the Port of New York, by providing separate freight facilities away from the congested West Side of Manhattan. Selection of South Brooklyn for this effort followed the successful development of the private Bush Terminal, with its warehouse facilities and rail links with other parts of the port. The five piers built by the department represented most of the city's construction efforts in this program, which remained essentially undeveloped. The program was important in influencing other large Brooklyn waterfront projects, and the municipal piers included innovative design features on which some other piers were modeled c1910-18. The department never fully developed the South Brooklyn Freight Terminal, and this name passed out of use as the five piers were leased to individual shipping companies. The Isbrantsen Company, a tenant at the 29th Street Pier in the 1950s, was the last firm using the pier to have a prominently-displayed corporate name on the piershed; the name became a vernacular designation for the pier. As the most intact of the original five piers, the 29th Street Pier is significant for best representing both the freight terminal plan and the advances in pier substructure engineering. It is also significant as one of a small and dwindling number of surviving general cargo piers with piersheds in the Port of New York predating World War I. Such structures reflect the last important period of regional waterfront development in the era of traditional break-bulk cargo handling.
Survey number: HAER NY-203
Building/structure dates: 1916 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1959 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1980