It took more than two centuries, but the Brooklyn Navy Yard is finally giving up the secrets behind one of the city’s most historic sites.
A former 19th century Marine commandant’s house at the 300-acre shipyard-turned-city-owned-industrial-park has been restored and incorporated into a stunning $27 million, 33,300-square-foot museum.
The center, which opens on Friday, Veterans Day, celebrates the yard’s vast history dating back to 1801 through a series of exhibits.
Among the more than 80 ships commissioned or built there were the USS Monitor (1862), America’s first ironclad warship; and the USS Arizona (1915), sunk at Pearl Harbor. Among the medical breakthroughs at the site was E.R. Squibb’s introduction of anesthetic ether in 1854.
The artifacts include an 1814-15 log book from shipyard staffers who worked on vessels sent out to combat pirates, and construction plans for the USS Maine, which was sunk in Havana Harbor in 1898, precipitating the Spanish-American War.