These are drawings from the National Grid archives showing the technique of “cribbing”, where interlocked wooden beams were made into enormous baskets on top of the Gowanus tidal marsh soils, and then filled with rocks and soil to create the straightened edge of what became the Gowanus Canal. These wooden bulkheads are much more supportive of tidal ecologies, such as mussel and algae, than the modern steel and concrete versions. One debate to consider will be their historical value as engineering prototypes versus the need to rip them out to create either impermeable barriers to underground upland pollution plumes, or more permeable and natural Canal edges supporting the New York Harbor Estuary Restoration Plan.
