How Buttermilk Channel got its lovely name

New York City neighborhoods and waterways have some wonderfully descriptive names—such as Hell Gate, Rat Island, and Dead Horse Bay.

But there’s something especially poetic about Buttermilk Channel, the narrow tidal strait that separates Governors Island from Brooklyn (at right, in a 1766 British map).

So how did such a lovely name stick?

One theory has it that the waters were so choppy, liquid being ferried from Brooklyn to Manhattan turned to butter in transit.

In the 19th century, Brooklynite Walt Whitman referenced the channel, stating that it was once so shallow, cows could walk across it at low tide to graze on Governors Island.

But a letter submitted to The New York Times in 1906 may have the most credibility. The writer mentions an 1832 book called Historic Tales of Olden Time and explains:

“As late as 1786, Buttermilk Channel was used for a boat channel, through which boats with milk and buttermilk, going to New York market from Long Island, usually made their passage.” 

[Governors Island, with Buttermilk Channel separating it from Brooklyn, above, in 1918]

Walkin’ about Wallabout

Wallabout is either a dressed-up name for the gritty area abutting the Brooklyn Navy Yard and sliced by the BQE. Or it’s a true neighborhood with a vibe distinct from Fort Greene and Clinton Hill to the south.

Whatever your take, Wallabout is a stronghold of Brooklyn history that’s worth a look. The name comes from the Dutch word Waal-bogt, which means a bend in the river. This bend is Wallabout Bay. Here, the British docked 12 prison ships holding captured Revolutionary War soldiers.

More than 11,000 men died on ships like the one in the engraving above. Some of their remains are entombed in the haunting Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in nearby Fort Greene Park.

Wallabout grew into a residential district in the mid-19th century, housing workers who toiled along Brooklyn’s thriving waterfront. These workers lived in wood frame houses, some of which still stand.

These 2- and 3-story houses, with lovely porches, are modest and charming—especially compared to the mansions up the hill closer to the Pratt campus.

In fact, historic Wallabout, which the Historic District Council defines as eight blocks roughly between Myrtle and Park Avenues, has the largest concentration of pre-Civil War wood frame homes in the city.

Wallabout has literary cred as well. Walt Whitman is believed to have lived in the nabe; his former home is supposedly 99 Ryerson Street (not pictured, since it’s covered in cheap siding).

Meet the 19th Century Hipster Queen

That would be Ada Clare, a writer and actress who came to New York in the 1850s as a single mother espousing free love. One of the few female regulars at Pfaff’s, the 19th century literary “beer cellar” on Broadway near Bleecker, she was known citywide as the “Queen of Bohemia.” 

Witty and attractive, she regularly contributed to literary journals of the day and remained tight with Walt Whitman until she died in 1874, at age 38, after being bitten by a rabid dog.

 

Manhattan’s first hipster bar

Looks like just another Korean deli in an old, broken-down 1800s building near the corner of Bleecker and Broadway. But in 1856, this was the site of Pfaff’s, the city’s first bohemian hangout—a basement bar which attracted writers and actors like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edwin Booth. From a 1933 New York Times article:

“Thackeray brought the word ‘Bohemianism’ into the English Language and then an organized group, with Walt Whitman as kind of an associate member, set up headquarters in Pfaff’s beer cellar.”