This is digital composite of 5 pages covering the Gowanus Canal from the 1874 City of Brooklyn Farm Line Atlas drawn by Henry Fulton and published by J.B. Beers & Company. The pages were downloaded from the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (www.davidrumsey.com) and assembled by Eymund Diegel. The map shows now buried streams and ponds and old farm roads. Remnants of these still exist in the current landscape. Brouwer’s Spring, visible on the map as a shoreline indentation of the Gowanus Canal at Degraw street, still bubbles through the mud at low tide. A remnant of the road to the old Bergen Farm House at Sackett and Hoyt Street can be seen in the angled wall at the back of the Chocolate Room, next to the Cobble Hill Cinemas at Court Street and Warren Street. The farm lines are useful for environmental analysis in that they reflect long gone topographic and historical features, such as streams, ridges, and Indian maize fields.
