The Brooklyn Navy Yard sits on 300 waterfront acres along the East River, occupying a stretch of land that has shaped American industrial history for more than two centuries. Once one of the most productive shipbuilding facilities in the world, the site has been reinvented as a working hub for manufacturing, film production, design studios, food businesses, and creative enterprises. The Yard now hosts more than 550 businesses employing approximately 11,000 people, making it one of the country’s largest active industrial parks and a destination for visitors looking to understand how a piece of New York’s industrial past has been turned into a working future.
A Brief Industrial History
The U.S. Navy purchased the original 40 acres of land from John Jackson in 1801, establishing what would become one of the country’s primary shipyards. Across roughly 165 years of military operation, the Brooklyn Navy Yard built, repaired, and outfitted some of the most consequential vessels in U.S. naval history. The USS Monitor was outfitted there during the Civil War. The USS Maine, whose sinking helped trigger the Spanish-American War, was constructed there. The USS Arizona, sunk at Pearl Harbor in 1941, was built at the Yard in 1916. The USS Missouri, on whose deck the Japanese surrender ended World War II, was launched there in 1944.
The Yard reached peak operations during World War II, when its workforce exceeded 70,000 people working around the clock. Women entered the workforce in significant numbers during the war years, joining the Yard as welders, electricians, and mechanics. The labor force was also notable for its racial integration during a period when most American industry remained segregated.
The Navy decommissioned the Yard in 1966 as shipbuilding consolidated to other facilities. The City of New York acquired the site in 1969, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation that operates the Yard on behalf of the city, took over management.
The Reinvention
Through the 1970s and 1980s, the Yard struggled to find a stable economic model. The turnaround began in earnest in the 2000s, as the Development Corporation invested in restoring historic buildings, attracting new tenants, and positioning the Yard as a destination for manufacturers and creative businesses unable to afford Manhattan real estate.
By the mid-2010s, the Yard had become a working showcase for what observers sometimes call “the new urban manufacturing.” Today’s tenant roster spans furniture makers, fashion designers, food producers, robotics firms, biotechnology startups, architectural fabricators, and film production stages.
Steiner Studios and the Film Industry
Steiner Studios, located within the Yard, is the largest film and television production facility on the East Coast, with more than 30 soundstages across its expanded campus. The studio has hosted productions including “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “Sesame Street,” and numerous feature films. The presence of Steiner anchors a film and media cluster at the Yard that includes post-production houses, equipment rental companies, and crew services.
Food, Furniture, and Fabrication
The Yard’s food businesses include Brooklyn Roasting Company, Russ & Daughters’ production facility, and the chocolate maker Mast. Furniture and design tenants include Crye Precision and a roster of independent craft furniture makers. The fabrication cluster covers companies producing everything from architectural metalwork to custom robotics components.
Industry City and the Yard together represent a significant share of Brooklyn’s manufacturing employment, which has grown over the past decade against the broader national decline in industrial jobs.
Building 92: The Public-Facing Gateway
For visitors, the most accessible point of entry is Building 92, which houses the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center. The center serves as both a museum documenting the Yard’s history and a public information hub for the broader campus. Permanent exhibitions cover the Yard’s industrial past, the wartime workforce, and the ongoing reinvention.
The center offers guided tours that bring visitors onto the active campus, including a Past, Present, and Future bus tour that covers the Yard’s full timeline; a Hidden Treasures walking tour focused on historic architecture; and the WWII Yard tour, which examines the wartime workforce in detail.
Building 92 itself is a renovated Marine Commandant’s residence built in 1858. The structure, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was joined to a modern glass and steel addition during its 2011 renovation.
The Architectural Stock
The Yard contains some of the most significant industrial architecture in New York City. Dry Dock 1, completed in 1851, was the second dry dock built in the United States and remains operational. The Surgeon’s House, the Commandant’s House (designed by Charles Bulfinch, architect of the U.S. Capitol), and several officers’ quarters survive from the 19th-century military period.
The post-industrial period has added contemporary architecture to the mix. Dock 72, a 16-story office and amenity building completed in 2019, was designed by S9 Architecture and brought a contemporary commercial presence to the waterfront. Building 77, a 16-story former World War II-era warehouse, was renovated in 2017 to house a ground-floor food hall along with manufacturing and office tenants on the upper floors.
Public Programming and Events
The Yard runs a public programming calendar that includes farmers markets, public art installations, and seasonal events. The Brooklyn Navy Yard Open House, typically held annually, opens portions of the campus to visitors who can tour tenant spaces, meet manufacturers and makers, and see active production floors. The event has grown into one of Brooklyn’s larger public-facing industrial showcases.
The waterfront itself is increasingly accessible. NYC Ferry service stops at the Yard’s Brooklyn Navy Yard landing, connecting the site to Manhattan, Queens, and other parts of Brooklyn. The Yard sits adjacent to Wallabout Bay and within walking distance of Vinegar Hill, DUMBO, and the southern edge of Williamsburg.
What the Yard Represents
For New York, the Brooklyn Navy Yard occupies a particular role in the city’s economic geography. It is one of the few places in the five boroughs where active manufacturing happens at scale alongside creative industries, where 19th-century dry docks operate next to 21st-century soundstages, and where the same waterfront that built warships now houses chocolate makers and robotics firms.
For visitors, the Yard offers a working answer to a question that hangs over much of postindustrial America: what becomes of the places that built the country once the building stops? The Brooklyn Navy Yard’s answer, still being written, is that they can be rebuilt for what comes next.
