Power Station Arts Centre

Powerhouse Arts is a nonprofit manufacturing space located in the Gowanus and Red Hook areas of Brooklyn, dedicated to creating a solid platform for art production and generating employment in the arts sector. This redevelopment project comprises 16,270 square meters of workshop space for woodworking, metalworking, ceramics, textiles, and printmaking, transforming an abandoned and contaminated industrial structure into a production center for artists, fabricators, and skilled tradespeople while ensuring the site's industrial heritage continues to thrive for the next century. The project reimagines a 115-year-old power station as a modern production facility that sustains Brooklyn's longstanding manufacturing legacy. Through the preservation, restoration, and reconstruction of the original power station's essential elements, the project reinforces the building's industrial character and its relationship with the surrounding urban environment. The site is located along the Gowanus Canal, a natural low point between the Red Hook and Carroll Gardens neighborhoods to the west and Park Slope to the east. In 1904, the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Power Station, designed by Thomas Edward Murray, was completed on this site as a critical support system for Brooklyn's expanding transit network. After the power station was decommissioned in the 1950s, only half of the original structure, known as the boiler house, remained intact, while the other portion was demolished, leaving the turbine hall open to the elements. The adaptive reuse project honors this industrial past while creating a vibrant new center for artistic production, proving that historic industrial infrastructure can be transformed into a thriving community asset.