A Brooklyn Mystery, Solved: Lafayette Island

I seriously doubt that anyone was more excited about the New York City GIS server including aerial photography from 1924 than me. Look at the arms of the Gowanus Canal that aren't there now! Look at Sunset park with no Gowanus Expressway! Find where Newtown Creek used to go. Look at Meadowmere before JFK. No bridge to the Rockaways. Or Jersey.

But as I was poking around, I saw something off the coast of Bay Ridge which gave me pause. A little island, completely built out, where there is no island now.

To add to the mystery, the island was in almost the exact same location as the Brooklyn foot of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

Some research indicates that in addition to Fort Wadsworth and Fort Hamilton, there was also a Fort Lafayette in the Narrows, which was not originally an island, but was constructed on a reef in the narrows called Hendrick's Reef. Used as a munitions depot through World War II, it met an ignominious end in 1960. As usual, it was John Waldman's Heartbeats in the Muck to the rescue to solve the mystery.

"Lafayette Island, former home to seventy-three-gun Fort Lafayette, is now the Brooklyn-side base of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge."

Think of the history next time you drive over the bridge. Of course, try not to get too much of the Staten Island stank on you while you're over there.