Courtesy of John Cloud and NOAA Central Library, below is an image of the Navy Yard and Wallabout Bay in 1845. According to Cloud, “The gap between 1827 and 1900 was a time when the U.S. Coast Survey was most active in mapping New York Bay and Harbor and the Environs, as they put it.”
Below “is a crop from the Survey’s first published charts of New York, Sheets 1 through 4 in 1844, and Sheets 5 and 6 in 1845. We particularly like how the Survey was attempting to differentiate agriculture in Brooklyn down to symbolizing different crops and farming row techniques in different ways.”
Hi Kevin,
Thank you for your question. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find much information about the Wallabout Improvement either. I’d recommend contacting the folks at the Navy Yard. You can tweet your question to @BLDG92 or contact collections@bldg92.org. Best of luck with you research.
Sincerely,
Carolyn
Over the years we have had several maps that identify the Wallabout Improvement – a construction project that was projected in the middle part of the 19th century. Have you heard anything about this project and what it is? Online research yields little useful information.
Best –
Kevin Brown