Berg's Ship Yard

William P. Chappel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

By the 1820s, New York City controlled more than thirty percent of the nation’s import trade. With the port’s rise came the revitalization of the shipbuilding industry. Corlear’s Hook, where Christian Bergh established his business, was the center of the industry that stretched from Stanton to Catherine Streets along the East River. The surrounding neighborhood would have buzzed with the activity of hundreds of riggers, rope and sail makers, and joiners. The wooden-hulled ships, as Chappel depicts, were constructed waterside near workrooms and blacksmith shops. In 1806, a local paper noted the launch from Bergh’s yard of the 350-ton "Galloway" bound for the "India trade."

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art