This week, heading to the subway, we were stopped at the Carroll Street Bridge, waiting for it to slide back into place. It had swung open for a small boat that was making its way up the canal. Easy to forget this is still a working canal. We also watched a building on Third Street climb another story right in front of us. That's the pace of things around here lately.

Now Open / Coming Soon —  A second Ven Space location on President Street, plus this week's Curated Picks

The Big Story — Part Four: What the Battle Left Behind

Things to Do — Emil Wakim, a reggae night that runs till 4am, and a Sunday dance party, and oh yeah, Michael Che…

The Local — Three Neighbors Walked Into a Bar. Now They Run One.

Development Watch — A canal-front building on 3rd Street keeps climbing, and Anagram Gowanus finally sheds its wrapping

Quick Hits — Just one more thing to share.

Ven Space has a Second Location
Ven Archive
163 President Street
Coming Soon
Chris Green built Ven Space into one of the most talked-about menswear shops in the city from a single room on Court Street, no web store, no compromise on the curation. Now he's opening a second location a few blocks over on President Street. No word yet on whether Archive splits off the vintage and archival pieces or runs as a full second store.

Where a Tuesday Night Feels Like an Occasion
levantonsmith.com
223 Smith Street
Curated Pick
The French bistro delivers nightly, the kind of service that makes a Tuesday feel like an occasion. Get the duck confit or the steak frites, and let the servers steer the wine list; it holds its own against places twice the price.

Dolce Brooklyn’s Gelato Is Worth the Detour
204 Sackett Street
Curated Pick
Handcrafted gelato, small batch, family-run since 2016. Mint stracciatella and pistachio stracciatella are the ones worth the trip. They run a full espresso bar too; order the affogato and get both in one cup.

This summer we are telling the story of what happened in this neighborhood 250 years ago. In Part Two, we told you about the battle itself-the British column slipping through Jamaica Pass, the Maryland 400 charging the Cortelyou farmhouse six times to buy their fellow soldiers time to cross the Gowanus Creek. In Part Three, we told you about the escape-nine thousand men, every cannon, every horse, every sack of supplies, vanishing into the fog on the night of August 29th. The 250th anniversary of the battle falls on August 27. We are telling this story now, ahead of that date, so that when August 27 arrives, you will know exactly what happened here. Next issue, August 22, we preview the anniversary weekend itself. Read the full series at thegowanaut.com. Walk the battlefield at battle.thegowanaut.com.

When the fog lifted on the morning of August 30, the farms along Gowanus Creek were still there. The stone farmhouse on Third Street still stood. The tidal marsh still ran to the harbor. The peach trees that a Dutch traveler had written about a century earlier, calling them the finest he had ever seen, may well have still been in fruit.

But almost everything else had changed.

During the battle, it had been ordered that Brouwer's mill and stores were to be burned so as not to fall into the hands of the British. The mill that Adam Brouwer had built on the banks of the Gowanus Creek in 1645, the first gristmill in all of New Netherland, the one that had been grinding grain for 130 years through Dutch and then English rule, was gone. The Brouwer family had set it on fire themselves, then fled. They would spend the years of occupation scattered across New Jersey and upstate New York, waiting for a war to end that would last seven more years. In 1818, the widow and heirs of Abraham Brouwer petitioned the United States Congress asking for compensation for losses incurred during the Battle of Brooklyn in 1776. By then, Abraham Brouwer had been gone for years. The family never rebuilt the mill.

The Vechte family, whose stone farmhouse had just served as a British artillery position during the battle's most savage fighting, stayed on their land through the occupation. They lived at the farm until after the Revolutionary War, when they sold it to the Cortelyou family. What those years were like inside that house is not recorded. The soldiers who had died charging its walls were buried somewhere nearby in ground that has never been conclusively identified. The Gowanus farms that had been among the most productive in the colony now sat at the center of a military occupation that would last until 1783.

From the beginning of the occupation in late August 1776, the British imposed martial law. Soldiers relied on Long Islanders for provisions and housing for an indefinite amount of time. People from all walks of life were robbed, abused, and sometimes murdered by marauders who took advantage of wartime situations. The Dutch farmers who remained on their land did so under conditions that bore little resemblance to the orderly, prosperous life they had known. Soldiers were quartered in their homes. Crops were requisitioned. Fences were torn down for firewood. The victory at the Battle of Brooklyn also changed the lives of thousands of enslaved New Yorkers, who were offered emancipation in exchange for fighting for the Loyalist cause. The enslaved people who had worked the Gowanus farms for generations now faced a different and complicated calculus entirely.

The worst of it happened on the water. As British jails on land filled beyond capacity, the army began housing prisoners aboard decommissioned warships anchored in Wallabout Bay, just off the Brooklyn shore near what is now the Navy Yard. The most notorious of these was the HMS Jersey, a rotting hulk the prisoners called simply "Hell." Disease, starvation, and overcrowding killed an estimated 11,000 Americans aboard the prison ships over the course of the seven-year occupation. That is more deaths than occurred in combat during the entire Revolutionary War. Their remains were buried in the mud along the Brooklyn shoreline. The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument stands in Fort Greene Park today in their memory.

Seven years is a long time. The British held Brooklyn and Manhattan from the fall of 1776 until November 25, 1783, the day American troops finally marched back into New York City, a date still celebrated in some quarters as Evacuation Day. During those seven years, the battlefield was farmed over, built over, and slowly absorbed into the landscape of a growing city. The millponds were filled in. The creek was straightened, then dredged, then industrialized into something the Dutch farmers who burned their mill on the morning of August 27 would not have recognized.

What remains of the original landscape is surprisingly specific, if you know where to look. The Old Stone House in Washington Park is a reconstruction, but it sits on the exact ground where the Marylanders charged. The American Legion Post on 9th Street, Post 1636, named for the year the first Dutch settlers arrived in Gowanus, still meets a few blocks from where those soldiers fell. The marker on the building reads: "In Honored Memory of Maryland's 400. Forever Remembered." The Cortelyou name is on a road in Flatbush. And the canal itself, Brouwer's route to the harbor, is still there, running south toward the bay, waiting to be clean again.

The battle lasted one day. The occupation lasted seven years. The neighborhood that emerged from it was the same land, farmed by some of the same families, but nothing about it was quite the same.

Next time: 250 years later, what the neighborhood is doing to remember. Coming in Issue 29, August 22.

Walk the ground where all of this happened. Our self-guided Battle of Brooklyn walking tour covers four sites in the Gowanus area, from Prospect Park to the Old Stone House to the corner where Washington watched: battle.thegowanaut.com

Emil Wakim at Bell House
149 7th Street
Sat Aug 15 · 7:30pm
Former Colbert writer, now doing his own thing, and it turns out the thing is being very funny about being a first-generation American with unreasonably high expectations placed on him. Worth the trip.

Reggae Rewind at Littlefield
635 Sackett Street
Sat Aug 15 · 11pm–4am
A full night of roots reggae and dancehall built around Buju Banton, Sizzla, and Beres Hammond, three names that carry actual weight in the genre. Runs until 4am, so pace yourself.

The Nursery: Love Injection, Kamma & Masalo at Public Records
233 Butler Street
Sun Aug 16 · 3pm
Love Injection built their name on a radio show and a record label before the parties, disco and boogie with a house music backbone. This is a daytime version, which means you can dance for a few hours and still make it home for dinner.

10 Years a Baller: Officially a New Yorker at Union Hall
702 Union Street
Sun Aug 16
A milestone show marking ten years in the city, which in New York years is basically a native. Union Hall's basement stage is the right size for this kind of thing.

Ben Palmer at Bell House
149 7th Street
Sat Aug 22 · 7:30pm
Stand-up from a comic who's been steadily building a following on the road. Another solid weekend for Bell House's calendar.

Michael Che at Bell House
149 7th Street
Sat Aug 22 · 10pm
SNL's Weekend Update co-anchor, just announced for a late Saturday set. Back-to-back shows that night, an early one and this late one, so it's a real double feature at Bell House if you're up for it.

Son Lux Listening Party at Public Records
233 Butler Street
Wed Aug 19
Son Lux built the score for Everything Everywhere All At Once, so they know how to make a room feel like something is happening. This one's hosted by Rafiq Bhatia, one of the band's own members, playing the record on a serious sound system before it's out in the world.

Battle of Brooklyn 250th Commemoration Weekend
Old Stone House, Prospect Park, Green-Wood
Fri–Sun Aug 21–23
A quarter millennium since British troops came through this exact stretch of Brooklyn. Full coverage next issue.

The Ark at Powerhouse Arts
322 3rd Avenue
Through August 30
Powerhouse Arts just launched its first major public exhibition. The Ark brings together 90 animal sculptures and installations by Kiki Smith, Maurizio Cattelan, Wangechi Mutu, and dozens of others, curated by Eric Fischl. The canal context makes it land differently here. A serious show in a neighborhood that's earned it.

Gowanus Gardens
256 4th Avenue
gowanusgardensbk.com

Kelly Hayes was a soon-to-be-retired teacher who knew how to make a space feel welcoming. Her son Liam O'Brien had trained at Danny Meyer's Daily Provisions and could run a kitchen. Gary Giddens, a bartender from London who moved to Park Slope in 1984, had been dreaming of opening his own bar for years. They all met at a neighborhood bar. They all lived within walking distance. They all agreed: this corner of Fourth Avenue needed something.

In September 2019, they opened Gowanus Gardens on an otherwise sleepy block between Carroll and President Streets. The name came naturally: they built a rainbow-colored patio in the back, covered the ceiling in faux flowers, and made the whole place feel like a garden party that never ends. There's a jukebox. The cocktails are solid. The food, overseen by Liam, punches above its weight.

What makes Gowanus Gardens work isn't the concept. It's the ownership. These are people who genuinely live here, who met each other in this neighborhood, who built something for the block rather than for Instagram. The regulars know it. The staff knows it. Walk in on a quiet weeknight, and you'll feel it too.

Anagram Gowanus Sheds Its Wrapping
The scaffolding scrim is starting to come down at 450 Union Street, revealing the tan brick facade underneath for the first time. The building topped out in January; this is the next visible milestone. It's 158 units from Tankhouse and MacArthur Holdings, with a dramatic cutout on the canal-facing side that's been a talking point since the renderings first came out.

155 3rd Street Is Rising on the Canal
We caught it ourselves this week: the canal-front site at 155 3rd Street is now at least a story above grade. It's a 301-unit building with close to 35,000 square feet of retail planned, right along the water between 3rd Street and Bond. Worth watching for what actually fills that retail space once it tops out.

444 Carroll Street Is Climbing Fast
The site we watched go from foundation to excavation back in the spring is now up around four stories, just east of the completed building at 420 Carroll. It's a 99-unit project from GW Infinity LLC, targeting an April 2027 finish. At this pace, that timeline looks realistic.

Carroll Gardens is now NYC's fourth most expensive neighborhood, Q2 2026 data has the median sale price at $899,000.

Between gelato at Dolce, duck confit at Levant, and a reggae show that runs past sunrise, this is shaping up to be a very full weekend. See you out there.

If something's happening out there, we want to know about it. Email, photo, neighborhood gossip — we'll take it.
[email protected].

Exploring Gowanus · Every Saturday