The Brooklyn Army Terminal (BAT) is a large warehouse complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York City. The site occupies more than between 58th and 63rd Streets west of 2nd Avenue, on Brooklyn's western shore. The complex was originally used as a United States Army Supply Terminal called the Brooklyn Army Base or Brooklyn Army Supply Base. Subsequently converted for commercial and light industrial purposes, it also includes a ferry stop. The complex was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The Brooklyn Army Terminal was designed by Cass Gilbert. It contains two warehouses, three piers, several smaller administrative buildings, and rail sidings for loading cargo. When built, the warehouses were among the world's largest concrete structures. The Brooklyn Army Terminal adjoins the former Bush Terminal, which was used by the United States Navy.
The Brooklyn Army Terminal's construction was originally approved in 1918, during World War I, and was completed the following year after the conclusion of the war. The terminal was subsequently leased out and used for various purposes, including as a dock, a military prison, and a storage space for drugs and alcohol during Prohibition. During World War II, the terminal was the United States' largest military supply base. The United States Army stopped using the Brooklyn Army Terminal in 1967, and the terminal was briefly used by the United States Postal Service and the Navy. The New York City government purchased the terminal in 1981; since then, the Brooklyn Army Terminal has undergone a series of renovations to make it suitable for commercial and light industrial use.
Description
The Brooklyn Army Terminal covers about . It includes two 8-story warehouses, three 2-story piers, several ancillary buildings, and a train storage yard with capacity for 2,200 cars.
Warehouses A and B are located west of Second Avenue between 59th and 65th Streets, with warehouse A being located to the west of warehouse B. Warehouse A had a footprint of , while warehouse B measured . The 980-foot-long sides of each structure run between 58th Street on the north and 63rd Street on the south. Warehouse B was the world's largest building by floor area when it was completed. Warehouse B contains a central atrium with two railroad tracks, both of which are disused and overgrown, and there are two old train cars permanently parked on the western track of the atrium. The loading balconies in the atrium of warehouse B are staggered diagonally, and a overhead movable crane moved cargo between the balconies.
Three railroad tracks ran through the space between the warehouses. An 8-story administration building measuring was located to the north of warehouse A. The warehouses and piers were connected to each other by footbridges on the third floors of each building. A footbridge also separates the former administration building from the two warehouses. There was also a power house, boiler room, and ash room. Each of the piers measured long; one of the piers was wide while the other two piers measured wide. The piers were double-decked. 58th Street, on the Brooklyn Army Terminal's northern side, separates the Army Terminal from Bush Terminal, which contains warehouses formerly used by the United States Navy.
The railroad tracks connected to four car floats and a large rail yard along the western shore of Bay Ridge, to the south of Brooklyn Army Terminal. The tracks also link to the Long Island Rail Road's Bay Ridge Branch and then to the New York Connecting Railroad, which provides a railroad connection to the rest of the continental United States. The Brooklyn Army Terminal had over of tracks at its peak. Although much of the trackage was abandoned by the 1970s, including the freight yards south of the terminal, a direct track connection from the Brooklyn Army Terminal to the Bay Ridge Branch was established in 1973. Some of the tracks are still used by New York New Jersey Rail (formerly New York Cross Harbor Railroad) to carry freight along the Sunset Park shorefront. To the north, the tracks connected to Bush Terminal.
Buildings A and B are operated by the New York City government as a light manufacturing space. The former administration building was remade into a food-manufacturing complex in 2017.
History
Construction
The complex was also known as the U.S. Army Military Ocean Terminal and the Brooklyn Army Base, and was built as part of the New York Port of Embarkation. The Brooklyn Army Base was one of six United States Army terminals whose construction was approved by United States Congress on May 6, 1918, to accommodate Army activity during World War I.
The base was designed by Cass Gilbert, though Irving T. Bush, who operated the adjacent Bush Terminal to the north, also helped design the complex. Construction started on May 15, 1918. The city set aside $40 million for the completion of the complex. Six thousand workers, employed by Turner Construction, helped build the Brooklyn Army Base. The scope of construction was so large that an additional train was added to subway timetables to transport workers from Manhattan to the future Army Base, and prospective workers would line up outside the construction site every morning. Several smaller contractors also helped build the complex.
To save money and to reduce the use of steel, the structures were built out of reinforced poured in place concrete using wooden forms. The concrete floors were designed to support loads of . The construction process used 7 million linear feet () of wood. The Brooklyn Army Terminal was the world's largest concrete building complex at the time of construction. Ultimately, the government spent $32 million on the terminal's construction.
Military use
The Brooklyn Army Base was completed in September 1919. The base was able to accommodate of outgoing freight per hour as well as of freight storage. As World War I had already ended, this full capacity was not used for some time. However, the Brooklyn Army Base was also designed for light industrial use so that it could be used as a civilian facility after the war ended. As such, in 1920, the federal government began advertising five-year leases for parts of the base. The complex had a combined devoted to storage, which could support loads of up to . The next year, a law passed by Congress gave the United States Shipping Board access to all piers that the Army was not using. In 1923, the federal government paid $2.4 million to the estate of William C. Langley, whose plot between 61st and 63rd Streets had been seized five years earlier to make way for the Brooklyn Army Base. The same year, the Shipping Board started leasing piers 3 and 4 to private commercial tenants. The Atlantic Tidewater Terminal signed two 5-year leases for the upper floors of the warehouses, using them for storage. Under this arrangement, transatlantic liners were able to dock at the Brooklyn Army Base's piers.
Starting in 1920, during Prohibition, two vaults on warehouse A's third and sixth floors were used to stock illicit alcoholic beverages, as well as narcotics. The Army installed an incinerator in 1926 so it could destroy confiscated drinks. In 1929, after a series of thefts, the U.S. Army constructed a heavily fortified vault on the seventh floor of warehouse A. Described by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as the "largest vault built anywhere for the storage of dangerous drugs", the room measured several hundred feet in each direction. The Army also had a lab where it was able to test the chemical makeup of appropriated alcohol. Beverages deemed suitable for future medicinal use were retained, and the rest were dumped into New York Harbor. The lab was closed in 1933 after the end of Prohibition.
An experimental barracks for transient service members was opened at Brooklyn Army Terminal in 1928. The barracks could accommodate 500 residents, and was designed for service members who were on leave or were awaiting discharge or transfer. By the next year, civic leaders were suggesting that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey take over the operations of the piers at Brooklyn Army Base. However, the base commander denied all rumors that the base would be abandoned or sold off.
In March 1930, officials announced that they would construct a military prison with a 125-prisoner capacity at Brooklyn Army Base. The prison, which would be one of three Army prisons in the United States, would house deserters and servicemembers convicted of high crimes. Community members objected to the prison, stating that there had been no prior consultation with the community. Despite protests, the government decided to proceed with plans for the prison.
The Brooklyn Army Terminal was the largest military supply base in the United States through World War II. The complex had its own railroad line as well as dedicated police and fire departments. According to contemporary news articles, the Brooklyn Army Base saw of cargo and was the point of departure for 3.5 million soldiers during World War II, though the Brooklyn Army Terminal's website states that the Brooklyn Army Base handled of cargo and 3.2 million soldiers.New York City Economic Development Corporation (2013). "Brooklyn Army Terminal: History" The terminal employed 20,000 workers and served as the headquarters for the New York Port of Embarkation. In mid-1941, the U.S. Army moved some civilian workers into more than at Bush Terminal, spread across three buildings along First Avenue, because there was no more space at Brooklyn Army Terminal.
A rigorous safety program, enacted after the war, resulted in an 85% decrease in industrial accidents at Brooklyn Army Terminal. The base was among the safest ports of embarkation in the United States, with an average of 0.194 accidents in marine transport operations occurring per 1,000,000 man-hours; by 1947, the port had only three incidents in two years. In the aftermath of World War II, the Brooklyn Army Base received the bodies of several thousand soldiers who had died while fighting the war. The first boat carrying American World War II casualties back to the United States arrived in San Francisco in October 1947, whereupon the bodies were transported cross-country to Brooklyn Army Base. A ship carrying 4,212 soldiers' bodies traveled directly to the Brooklyn Army Terminal the next month. By July 1948, the base was receiving 18,500 soldiers' bodies within a span of two weeks.
In the years after World War II ended, the Brooklyn Army Base was the port of arrival or departure for 200,000 soldiers per year. As per custom, the 328th Army Band would play every time troops arrived or departed from the base. During the late 1950s, the base received Hungarian Revolution refugees, as well as victims of a 1956 crash between the SS Andrea Doria and the MS Stockholm. In 1958, Private Elvis Presley sailed from Brooklyn Army Base to Germany alongside 1,170 other soldiers in the 3rd Armored Division. By 1963, the Brooklyn Army Terminal employed 1,800 civilians and over 200 military personnel, and another 1,600 people lived at the terminal. At that point, the terminal received of cargo every day from trucking operations, and another daily from rail operations.
Closure of military base