COLUMBIA STREET

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Civil War era founding and its dissolution as the Great Depression began. In addition to residential buildings in South Brooklyn, they erected a Bush Terminal warehouse, City schools, the Pioneer movie theater on Richards Street across from Coffey Park (now a medical building), most of the structures in the old Todd Shipyards, as well as many projects big and small ranging from midtown Manhattan to Far Rockaway.

The business was created by an Irish immigrant, Michael Gibbons. When he got sick in 1894 and died two years later at the age of 60, his son Richard took the reins, inheriting a half a million dollars of construction contracts to manage. Richard Gibbons was a visionary, an innovator and very generous, especially with other people’s money. Since Excel spreadsheets wouldn’t be invented for eighty years, he failed to factor in the delay between accounts receivable and payable. So to buy the supplies his company needed, he started forging checks, using the names of three elderly friends of his recently departed father, to the tune of about $150,000. He would restore their accounts immediately so his “borrowing” went undetected for years until an economic slowdown led to his ruin. Tried in Brooklyn Supreme Court and found incredibly guilty, he was sent up the Hudson to Sing Sing prison for 30 months. There the story should have ended… except it didn’t because I need 500 more words to get to airplanes on Red Hook rooftops. Upon his release, Richard resumed control of the “Gibbons Company” and built the business back up again. It didn’t hurt that he was a cousin of the most powerful and famous Catholic in America, James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, a fierce defender of the working man and his right to unionize. This undoubtedly helped him land jobs building rectories, many new parochial schools and even an elevator for the new Cardinal John Murphy Farley in his Madison Avenue residence across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Both Cardinals were supporters of the World War in 1917 and the Gibbons Company won some lucrative construction contracts from the War Department. That’s when Gibbons got interested in aviation.

The Wright Brothers pioneered motorized flight in 1903, while Gibbons did his time at Sing Sing, and less than ten years later seaplanes were being lowered and retrieved from the water via cranes on large naval ships for reconnaissance flights. But it wasn’t until 1917 that the British successfully landed a wheeled aircraft on a moving warship. Perhaps Gibbons work in the Hook’s shipyards and building electric elevators got him to thinking about such things but somehow he got the idea to build a device that would create a platform for planes to launch and land on rooftops, boats and even rocky coasts.

He imagined a steel runway mounted on a large electro-mechanical turntable that would require a clearance of 200x60 feet to operate, so he envisioned it being deployed on top of large factories and skyscrapers. But first he needed one of his company’s engineers to help him draw up the plans and get it patented. And so on August 15, 1919, the Feast of the Assumption (a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics), less than a year after the War ended, Richard Gibbons filed an application for an “Airplane Receiving Apparatus…so as to produce sudden changes in velocity within a limited space to enable a plane to land upon a building or ship.” Gibbons went on to write that “it will be obvious that reversed movements between the apparatus and airplane would assist in starting an airplane within a limited space.” But his application does not describe that reverse process for launching a plane, noting that “the invention is therefore to be considered merely as illustrative of its principle.”

Perhaps to create buzz for his invention, Gibbons issued an elaborate press release two months before his filing. In it he boldly claimed that although he had only fabricated a model, he had just broken ground to build a five story factory measuring 175x175 feet, replacing all his shops along Columbia Street, and on that roof he would install the first Airplane Receiving (and launching) Apparatus. Included in his release was an artist’s rendering of his plan. The press ate it up.

To Be Continued

Softball

(continued from page 1) the permit for that one was huge for us. We’re mostly at ‘Dovey Diamond’ on Thursdays but on Mondays, our permit is for Field 8 or Field 5.”

B61 defending champs

Despite the sizable gap in the standings, last season is proof that big upsets are possible in the postseason. Bait & Tackle upset the Record Shop in the semifinals after the Record Shop finished with the best record in the regular season.

B61 knocked out the Wobblies in the semifinals and then beat Bait & Tackle 29-7 to win the championship. They popped champagne to celebrate and were presented with a championship trophy. After lead contamination was found in the soil at the ballfields, some of the ballfields were closed in 2012, and more were closed in 2015. Now, many of the fields are open once again and they have turf instead of grass.

It would have been understandable for a lot of the longtime players to show some rust last year after the layoff but the games were still competitive, and everyone was happy to once again be able to play games in Red Hook.

“This whole league has been so much improved from last year,” Fischer said. “Every team is a threat. We’ve won four more games than we won at this point last year and it’s going to be very tight this year.”

Gear up, Red Hook. It’s time for playoff softball!

Slow progress on temporary library

by Brian Abate

With both the Red Hook Library and Carroll Gardens Library closed for renovations, the search is on for a temporary library location in Red Hook. Imre Kovacs, a Red Hook resident, and one of the leaders of the new Civic Association stepped up and found a possible location at Red Hook Pentecostal Holiness Church. The church is located at 110 Wolcott St., just off Van Brunt St. The church is also a possible location for a market.

“At first I thought wheelchair accessibility wouldn’t be possible here, but then it dawned on me that we could put in a ramp,” Kovacs said. “The library needs a location and we’re taking the first step toward seeing if this can work.”

Kovacs tried reaching out to librarian Joyce Kowpak to join a tour of the church but was not able to get in touch with her. Ricardo Razuri from the Record Shop, located at 360 Van Brunt St., and local artist Matias Kalwill did show up to meet Reverend Donald Gray.

There is a nice outdoor backyard with grass behind the church where people could potentially gather, especial-