Mapping the Pungent History of 'Brooklyn's Curious Canal'

For more than two centuries, the Gowanus Canal has been an essential — and frequently controversial — part of Brooklyn's history. That history is the subject of a new book, Gowanus: Brooklyn's Curious Canal, from licensed New York City tour guide Joseph Alexiou.

Alexiou notes that while today, most New Yorkers are familiar with the canal as a large, foul-smelling pit of toxic refuse, when the earliest European settlers arrived from the Netherlands in the 1630s, Gowanus was a tidal estuary teeming with life.  Early missionaries wrote rave reviews about the delicious oysters they harvested from its waters. The Dutch soon turned the area into a busy hub of activity, building mills to grind grain, ginger, chickpeas, or corn, and establishing New Amsterdam as a global trading post. The region would remain a vital economic artery for the next several centuries.   

All that commercial activity, however, brought some less-than-welcome side effects: overpowering smells, the result of years of accumulated industrial waste and sewage.

“The first-ever evidence I’ve found of someone complaining about the stink of Gowanus Canal comes from 1864,” Alexiou noted. “This man claimed the smell was so bad it killed his father-in-law and injured the health of his wife.”

While the canal is no longer the singular, workaday artery it was for so many years, its stench, locals can attest, is no less pungent. Now designated as a federal Superfund site, the canal is an environmental hazard-zone — a shared problem no one can quite agree on how to fix.  

That hasn't stopped a recent boom in real estate development in the area, however. In keeping with its history, the Gowanus Canal continues to occupy an important place at the heart of economic life in Brooklyn.