Red Hook was always known as a tough section of Brooklyn. Al Capone got his start as a small time criminal there, along with his wound that led to his nickname, "Scarface". In 1950, at the peak of the era of longshoremen 21,000 people lived in the neighborhood, many of them in row houses second only in age to those in Brooklyn Heights. Most people lived in the Red Hook Houses, built in 1936 for the growing number of dockworkers.
Today the East and West Houses are home to the great majority of the neighborhood: an estimated 8,000 people or 73 percent of Red Hook’s total population. But after the peak of the 1950s Red Hook suffered a loss of jobs, population and geographical isolation. Over the next decade or so, the neighborhood bled jobs as shipping underwent a dramatic change. Shipping lines began moving goods in long metal containers, rather than the traditional break-bulk shipping of barrels and bales, which were gathered into large nets and hoisted out of a ship’s hold. Containerized shipping required greater upland space and fewer hands to load and unload. The waterfront jobs moved to New Jersey, and the economy of the neighborhood changed drastically.
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Waterfront Museum History	Red Hook History	Brooklyn Books