Review by Choice Review
Gowanus, a smelly, sludge-filled, 1.8-mile canal and a district of southern Brooklyn, is the geographic and spiritual core of this book that is at once a history and a collage. Journalist Alexiou has merged a mass of personal accounts, letters, municipal records, maps, interviews, scholarly research, and more into an engaging narrative that conveys unbridled enthusiasm for its subject while never taking itself too seriously. There are unexpectedly colloquial phrases that jolt readers who might be otherwise lulled by pastoral descriptions of Gowanus in the early days of New Amsterdam. Community action against developers Toll Brothers' proposed development along the canal's bank is rendered with intimacy and empathy; readers will cheer when the EPA declares the targeted lots a Superfund site. This vast span of history emphasizes the cycles of "discovery" that have drawn new attention to the region and fresh anxieties about its evolution. And thus, this is at once a very specific story as well as one that could be told about other urban spaces subjected to the incursions of outsiders and of a neighborhood whose residents struggle to "control their environment." Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. --Anne Babette Audant, CUNY Kingsborough Community College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Alexiou begins this, the first full account of the Gowanus Canal's history, with Thomas Wolfe's ode to wafting scents of "melted glue, burned rubber, and smoldering rags, the odors of a boneyard horse, long dead, the incense of putrefying offal, the fragrance of deceased, decaying cats, old tomatoes, rotten cabbage, and prehistoric eggs." How did the residents of South Brooklyn stand it? Wolfe asked. "Well, one gets used to it." Before it was the Gowanus Canal, it was Gowanus Creek, a tidal estuary known for its oysters. In the mid-19th century, Brooklynites turned the quiet inlet into a bustling shipping canal - as well as a "conduit for sewage and storm water." The Gowanus served as such into the mid-20th century, when the displacement of shipping by automotive transport cut deeply into its use. The nadir came in the mid-1960s when, for mysterious reasons, the Gowanus flushing tunnel - which pumped fresh water into the canal - broke down, rendering the canal entirely stagnant. By the end of the 20th century, mercifully, the city installed a new flushing tunnel, relieving the worst of the stench. ("Prior to the flushing tunnel, a dead dog would just float back and forth with the tides between Third Street and Carroll for maybe a week," a man told The Times.) Alexiou ends with the fascinating struggle for control of the continuing cleanup effort. This is a loving and skillfully rendered portrait of an important and oddly charming part of New York.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 13, 2015]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Alexiou, associate editor at Time Out New York, takes a figurative dive into the infamously polluted Gowanus Creek in this engrossing narrative of Brooklyn's development amid shifting economic cycles, waves of immigration, urban decay, and its current renewal. Much of Alexiou's meticulous research is derived from the archives of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the Brooklyn Historical Society, and his chronological account runs from the waterway's early days as an inlet for ships transporting goods to Dutch settlers through its heavy manufacturing period and into its later classification as a national Superfund site. The canal itself becomes a character in the story, and Alexiou resurrects nearly forgotten figures such as Edwin Litchfield, the man who turned the creek into a canal, while exhuming incredible details of their personal lives. Among the other notable points of discussion are the shantytowns that grew along the canal, the mid-19th-century gang turf wars between Pointers and Creekers, and the arrival in the mid-1970s of artists and activists who precipitated the area's renewal. Alexiou draws profound and amusing comparisons between the historical Gowanus and the Brooklyn of today as he looks at population, city politics, and the ways humans both rely upon and shortsightedly destroy nature. Photos. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Journalist Alexiou presents an extensively researched history of South Brooklyn, beginning with the Dutch settlement of Breuckelen and ending with the current real estate bubble and neighborhood activists trying to preserve its unique cultural mix and heritage. The early history is told through vignettes pulled from journals, historical documents, letters, land use records, historical bills of sale, and other records and is populated with such familiar names to New Yorkers as Cortelyou, Bennet, and Utrecht. The author introduces less known but instrumental individuals, including Daniel Richards, Julius W. Adams, and Simon Aertson De Hart. Because Alexiou includes many of the anecdotes he discovered, the early portion of his narrative can be dense. It streamlines as he moves into the 19th and early 20th centuries with the Brooklyn Eagle and the New York Times rounding out his essays. Explored is the industrial heyday of the canal, how it served as a focal point for waves of immigrants, how it functioned during the flush 1920s and throughout Prohibition, how it suffered during the Great Depression, and its short-lived comeback during World War II. Verdict Highly recommended for academic and public libraries, fans of New York history, early colonial historians, and those interested in the history of Brooklyn real estate. All will find this account exceptionally well researched.-Candice Kail, Columbia Univ. Libs., New York © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The history of a Brooklyn neighborhood and its fetid canal. The Gowanus Canal was created in the mid-1800s by enlarging an existing creek, creating a passageway nearly 2 miles long from the Upper Bay into Brooklyn for commercial shipping. Because the city has always tried to handle drainage of the surrounding marshy areas and local sewage disposal on the cheap, it has also been an open sewer for more than 150 years. In this debut history, Time Out New York associate editor Alexiou claims, "the Gowanus is a microcosma lens through which to view the passage of history, and in particular the growth of Brooklyn and its unique identity in relation to its environs." He accordingly recounts the entire history of the creek, canal, and neighborhood from its earliest settlement by the Dutch to the present day, including the development of the canal and industrial Brooklyn in the 19th century and the neighborhood's decline in the postindustrial second half of the 20th century. The canal was designated a Superfund site in 2010, and the neighborhood is enjoying a renaissance of small-scale development and gentrification. Alexiou's narrative is well-researched and moves along in a confident and lively manner, but it suffers from a lack of focus. The author presents an unusually well-defined case history of the interaction of the private and public sectors generating growth and prosperity through a unique piece of urban infrastructure at a terrible environmental cost that still has not been fully addressed. However, Alexiou makes room for extensive sections on the Battle of Brooklyn in the Revolutionary War, the personal struggles of developer Edwin Litchfield with the city, amateur baseball, and organized crime wars in Brooklyn, all colorful and legitimate topics for a local history but distractions from a central theme that the author leaves largely implicit. This thorough, overdue, rambling history reaches for special significance but fails to grasp it. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
