In 1636, Gowanus Bay – named after Gauwane (Gouwane, lit. "the sleeper"), a Canarsee Indian^[2][3] – was the site of the first settlement by Dutch farmers in what is now Brooklyn.^[4] The ponds of Gowanus meadowlands served to drive early settlers' tide-powered gristmills which were situated along the Gowanus Creek. During the American Revolutionary War, Gowanus was the scene of fighting in the Battle of Long Island and American soldiers positioned themselves in Gowanus Heights (now Park Slope), where they had full view of the British ships as they made landfall in the Bay.^[5][6]

 

View of the house of Simon Aertsen De Hart, still standing on Gowanus Bay in 1867

In the 1860s the Gowanus Creek was turned into the Gowanus Canal, and the area became a hub for manufacturing and shipping. As a result of the industry along the canal and the establishment of a combined sewer system that dumped waste water directly into a designated outflow at the head of the canal, the neighborhood came to be defined by the polluted canal.^[7] After World War II, the decline of shipping at the port of Red Hook and of manufacturing around New York City prompted large industry to leave and changed the vibrancy of industry in Gowanus. In the late 1940s, the neighborhood became the site of several NYCHA housing projects, which were built in part to house returning WWII veterans.^[8]

The water and much of the land along the banks of the Gowanus Canal have been severely polluted by combined sewer outflows (CSOs) along the canal designed to relieve sewage and storm water when the sewer treatment plant is overwhelmed, as well as by decades of industrial use and extensive coal gas manufacturing during the late 19th century. The Gowanus Canal was also an alleged Mafia dumping ground.^[9] Even so, in the early 1980s, alongside the canal, an old 19th-century munitions factory at 230 3rd Street in Gowanus became the site of the massive Gowanus Memorial Artyard, whose remains are still visible.^[10] After decades of industrial pollution combined with sewage contamination, the Environmental Protection Agency designated the Gowanus Canal a Superfund site in 2010, allocating $506 million for the cleanup.^[11] The completion date for the cleanup is set for 2022