Early settlement The local
Lenape Native Americans originally inhabited the area. They referred to the surrounding area, including Mill and Barren Islands, as "Equendito" or "Equindito", a name that probably means "Broken Lands". In 1624, the
Dutch Republic incorporated much of the current New York City area into the colony of
New Netherland. who built
a house on the land A
tide mill had been built on the land by that time, By 1794, John Schenck was renting the property from Joris's widow. At the time, the mill was called "the mill of Martensen". Additionally, construction of an extension of
Flatbush Avenue to the
Rockaway Inlet started in 1913. Work on dredging a , main ship channel started in 1912 and was completed the next year, but lawsuits delayed progress until the 1920s. The channel ran along the western and northern shores of Jamaica Bay. This new channel would allow a proposed extension of the
Flatbush Avenue Streetcar from Avenue N to the Mill Basin shoreline. Mill Basin was eventually wide and deep. The project was completed by the late 1930s, eliminating many small islands in the bay and causing the expansion of another island,
Canarsie Pol. In June of that year, a municipally owned pier was opened at Mill Basin. At the time, there were proposals to fill in between Mill and Barren Islands so 14 more piers could be built. By 1919, Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific was building three large
dry docks on Mill Island. It was also constructing seven
barges for the
United States Navy. The fill for the docks came from as far away as Europe. As of that year, Mill Island was the site of at least six manufacturing and commercial concerns. A contract for building concrete piers was awarded in 1921 and completed the next year. providing an additional of dock facilities and a strip of land for a road across the marshes. During the late 1920s and 1930s, the
New York City Department of Docks rented the docks to a number of small industrial firms. Planners wanted to create a spur of the
Bay Ridge Branch south to
Flatlands, with two branches to Canarsie and Mill Basin. but Mill Basin's further development was hindered when plans for rail service to the rest of Brooklyn went unrealized. Industrial activity continued through the 1960s. The
New York City Chamber of Commerce approved the site in September of that year. Originally, real-estate developers suggested that in Mill Basin could be used for the new airport, which would allow the airfield to open before the end of 1928. Ultimately, New York City's aeronautical engineer
Clarence Chamberlin selected nearby Barren Island as the site for the new airport, which later became
Floyd Bennett Field. The
Belt Parkway was built through the neighborhood in the 1930s, and it opened in 1940. The construction of a
drawbridge along the parkway, traversing Mill Basin, was approved in 1939 and completed the next year.
Residential development Old Mill Basin, north of the Mill Basin peninsula, was developed beginning in the 1920s. Residential development on the peninsula began after
World War II, when Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific sold a large plot of land to the firm of Flatbush Park Homes. The land was bounded to the north by
Avenue U, to the east by East 68th Street and East Mill Basin/Mill Island, to the south by Basset Avenue, and to the west by Strickland Avenue and Mill Avenue. As late as the 1960s, parts of the area were still a
swamp. Some of these streets were poorly maintained: a newspaper article from 1954 described houses that flooded after heavy rains because there were no sewage pipes. In 1963, the city government asked the developers to fix these streets, which were already breaking down. The city argued that the streets would remain private roads until they were upgraded to city standards, but the developers made the opposite argument, saying that the streets were not up to city standards because they were private roads. After a controversy over the paving of the streets, the city ultimately dropped its requests for private builders to pave the streets, instead deciding that the city's Department of Highways would do the paving. The
New York City Department of Buildings agreed not to grant any certificates of occupancy to any new building unless the street in front of it was paved. In 1964, a federal judge signed an order that transferred these private streets to city ownership, allowing the city to pave these streets. The area gained residential popularity by the end of the 1960s. By 1963, the
South Shore High School in Canarsie was being constructed to accommodate the growing population. Due to a large number of new residents moving in, temporary classrooms were built on the playground of P.S. 236. The neighborhood had some of the most expensive houses in Brooklyn by 1972. Several controversies arose during the development of Mill Basin as a residential neighborhood. In 1954, the city indefinitely postponed the construction of a garbage incinerator that had been planned for the area. Another controversy in 1966 surrounded a "boatel", or motel with boating docks, that had been planned for the site of a marsh south of the Mill Basin waterway. The boatel site, at the intersection of Belt Parkway and Flatbush Avenue, was supposed to contain a shopping mall with docks for up to 300 boats. Residents opposed plans for the shopping center since it would have been on a wildlife sanctuary. Plans for the mall were scrapped the next year after the city denied a rezoning plan for Mill Basin that would have allowed its construction. Another mall,
Kings Plaza, had been dedicated in 1968 at a site further north, on Avenue U. ==Community==