We are standing at one of the greatest seaports on the East Coast. In 1646, when the Dutch first settled here, this was part of the town of Breukelen, now Brooklyn. This busy area contained ships carrying imported goods and exporting produce and other commodities to neighboring New Amsterdam (now Lower Manhattan), other colonies in the Americas, and Europe. Now look across the river at the sailing ships at the South Street Seaport and imagine them unloading their cargo. That was the bustling town of New Amsterdam – the commercial and financial center of Dutch and later English colonial operations. Ferries carried goods and people back and forth. It was a busy, noisy place, strange and frightening to many of the enslaved people arriving here. By the end of the American Revolution, in 1783, Brooklyn stretched from the DUMBO area up the hill to present-day Brooklyn Heights.

The Sands family owned most of this area. Brothers Comfort and Joshua Sands were in the mercantile business, specializing in foreign trade. They also engaged in land speculation and were politically well connected. Like many other wealthy men of their day, both men were slave holders. The Sands name is important to local history, and we’ll revisit them later in the tour. Water Street was a mix of small clapboard houses, wooden warehouses, and stores. Houses lined the surrounding streets as well. Now look down Main Street, with your back to the water. Along this street stood Thomas Kirk’s Print Shop and Brooklyn’s district school, which opened in 1816. The school stated explicitly that “no colored children would be received.”

Picture nothing here but wood-framed houses, taverns, and shops. Main Street once extended all the way up the hill to Old Fulton Street. But many buildings were demolished during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, which began in 1870. This parking lot was the location of Mill’s Tavern. In 1818, it was the starting place for a procession organized by the Brooklyn African Woolman Benevolent Society, a group of free black Brooklynites who came together to assist one another. They took the “Woolman” name in honor of Quaker abolitionist John Woolman. The march ended at the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Brooklyn’s first African American denomination, in Downtown Brooklyn.

South of this corner was Henry C. Thompson’s boot blacking business. Thompson was an African American businessman with a busy shoe shine and repair shop. Most people during this period only owned one or two pairs of shoes. They would have relied on Thompson’s crucial business to repair their shoes until they were totally worn out. As an activist, Thompson was a member of the Brooklyn African Woolman Benevolent Society, and later became an early investor in Weeksville, the African American community founded in 1838, in what is now Crown Heights.

Use your imagination: instead of this modern parking lot, picture a street with small clapboard houses. This was the approximate site of Peter Croger’s home, where he operated a private African School (opened in 1815). His home was originally located on James Street, which was razed when construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began.

Before the Jehovah’s Witnesses built these 20th-century factories to house their printing presses, this area was residential. Peter Croger moved here from James Street some time after 1820. He and his family lived only two doors away from his brother, Benjamin Croger. The Croger brothers were listed in city directories as “preacher,” “cleric”, and “class leader.” They were among the pillars of the African American community.

In 1784, brothers Comfort and Joshua Sands bought 160 acres along the Brooklyn waterfront for $12,000. As a result, the Sands family once owned most of the DUMBO and Vinegar Hill area. Joshua Sands was a congressman and president of the Board of Trustees of the Village of Brooklyn. He also owned a ropewalk, where he manufactured shipping, rigging, and various kinds of rope. His brother Comfort was a founder and director of the Bank of New York and president of the New York Chamber of Commerce. In this area, now a barren entryway to two bridges once stood homes and shops. Sands Street was an important thoroughfare between the town of Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Navy Yard (established by the federal government in 1801). Now it runs through the neighborhood of Vinegar Hill, named after a battlefield in Ireland by the Irish immigrants who settled here after 1820. Early Brooklynites included people of Dutch, German, English, French, Scandinavian, Belgian, Irish, and African descent.