A Trip Through Red Hook's Bloody Past

There's an interesting exhibit up now at the Art Lot, an open-air art space at Columbia Street and Sackett Street in Brooklyn. The lot's chain-line fence is plastered with copies of old newspaper accounts of the goings-on in the neighborhood dating from a hundred years ago to the present day.

You learn a lot from reading these stories. One thing, the area that the realty robots now call the Columbia Heights Waterfront District used to be called Red Hook Flats, a way of distinguishing it from Red Hook proper, which lied to the south. Another thing, the street were crawling with mobsters and rife with raw violence. Every article is about how someone got shot, killed, arrested, assaulted, etc.

At the four-story tenement at 122 President Street (seen above, the door on the left), on July 4, 1922, one Vincent Manella or Minella (depending on the article) answered a knock on the door and found one Anthony "Red" Somma, described as a "gunman and killer." Instead of saying hello, Somma began the visit by firing a couple bullets into Minella's stomach. Minella recovered enough to fire back, hitting Somma in the chest. Happy Fourth of July! They both went to Long Island Hospital. When they recoved consciousness, they refused to discuss the incident.


A few weeks later, Minella was standing in front of the pool room he owned at 53 President Street (since torn down, it would have stood at the above location) when he was shot again by a passing vehicle. At this point, an article states, Somma had been murdered. Just another day on President Street, it seems.

Other tasty news items: a carload of Italians got out of a car and assaulted a group of "Porto Ricans" standing on the corner of Sackett and Van Brunt; and a drunken Irish laborer, living at the corner of Van Brunt and Commerce, dragged his wife off the street and into the apartment, where he proceeded to beat and kick her until she was dead. Feeling remorse, he then fled into the night.

And, my favorite: In 1922, during Prohibition, at least 13 Red Hook residents died from wood alcohol poisoning after drinking some bad bootleg whisky, including Mrs. Anna Morris of 187 Conover Street, Peter McDermott of 70 Summit Street and Edward Burke of 142 Pioneer Street. (The complete list is below.) It was later discovered that the villianous brew was cooked up at 115 Wolcott Street.



These days, all the news is about the construction and rerouted bus lines on Columbia Street.