DUMBO Industrial District

Along the Brooklyn waterfront, between the Manhattan Bridge and the Fulton Ferry area, sits a group of 95 contributing industrial buildings on twenty-four blocks. Most are factories and warehouses from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many on streets still paved with Belgian block and fitted with rail tracks that once served the waterfront. Early factories used slow-burning mill construction with brick facades and wood framing. Later buildings adopted terra-cotta floor arches, steel frames and, from 1905-06, tall reinforced-concrete construction, as at the Bliss, Gair, Arbuckle and Kirkman buildings. Companies such as E.W. Bliss, Arbuckle Brothers, John Masury & Son and Miller & Van Winkle shaped the area. Architects included William Tubby and William Higginson. Despite conversions to lofts, residences and offices, the buildings retain integrity to a high degree. A few early Greek Revival houses also survive.