Coney Events: Charles Denson Shares The Secrets Of Coney's Creek

Image by Charles Denson

The mostly overlooked creek in Coney Island has been undergoing a major cleanup, costing over $114 million dollars. The creek is an inlet that separates the western areas of Coney Island from the mainland of Brooklyn. Up until the 1940's the Coney Island Creek ran directly through Gravesend Bay and into the Sheepshead Bay opening up out the Atlantic ocean on either ends. The strip of water was going to be widened and used as the Gravesend Ship Canal, but plans fell through and it was never created. When Robert Moses had the Belt Parkway built, parts of the expressway's foundation rested on the creek and therefore it was filled in and closed off at Shell Road, leaving Coney Island no longer an island. For the past 5o years the creek lay filthy, polluted, and of no use. But its history has more hidden secrets yet to surface.

Coney Island native and director of the Coney Island History Project, Charles Denson will share some of these stories of the place he's been capturing in photographs throughout the 60's and 70's and today. This, at a time when the waterway was going through its lowest points.

The photographs in “Secrets of Coney Island Creek” document those early decades and offer a fascinating and comprehensive portrait of the creek today and its relationship to the Coney Island community, from the people of diverse cultures who visit the creek and its new parks to the environmental challenges that lie ahead.

“Secrets of Coney Island Creek,” an exhibit of photographs byphotographer and author Charles Denson, opens at the BrooklynCollege Library on Thursday, October 18. A reception held at 6 p.m. in the library’s first-floor Archives and Special Collections ReadingRoom will be followed by Charles Denson’s lecture, “Coney Island Creek: The Future of the Past,” at 7:15 p.m. in the Brooklyn CollegeLibrary Woody Tanger Auditorium.

"Secrets Of Coney Island Creek" Lecture and Photograph Exhibit by Charles Denson
Brooklyn College Library
October 18 to November 2, 2007
2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
(718) 951-5346


Secrets of Coney Creek: Exhibit at Brooklyn College Library [Green Brooklyn]
Upcoming: Secrets of Coney Island Creek [The Gowanus Lounge]