The Gowanus Canal: Butler Street
The "headwaters" of the Gowanus Canal are a pumping station built in 1911 to pump seawater through a tunnel that brings water from Buttermilk Channel in upper New York Bay to the west and creates a waterflow out of the canal into Gowanus Bay. The facility features a single 7-foot-diameter propeller driven by a 600 horsepower (500 kW) electric motor that can move 200 million gallons of water per day.
Across the street from the pumping station is the Brooklyn chapter of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). Note the unused horse trough in front of the building "Presented to the ASPCA by Edith Bowdoin 1913" that is similar to a pair of troughs she placed in Central Park and Flushing.
Just to the northeast of the pumping station is Wyckoff Gardens, a 527-unit NYC housing authority development that opened on December 31, 1966.
Gowanus Canal Pumping Station (Butler Street side)
Gowanus Canal Pumping Station
Gowanus Canal Pumping Station
Looking south at the Gowanus Canal from the pumping station
Gowanus Canal Pumping Station (Douglass Street side)
Gowanus Canal Pumping Station
Swirling water from the pumping station
Brooklyn ASPCA - 233 Butler St
Brooklyn ASPCA
Bowdoin horse trough
Brooklyn ASPCA (Rogers Memorial)
Wyckoff Gardens - Baltic at Nevins St
Wyckoff Gardens
Wyckoff Gardens