Red Hook graving dock

In 1864, William Beard built Erie Basin, an artificially enclosed harbor with ship working facilities lining the shore. The same year he sold a plot of land inside the Basin to the Anglo-American Dry Dock Company. The buyers would build the first solid or "graving" dock in the United States. It opened in October 1866 to much fanfare, although during the next quarter century it saw only light usage with wooden ships; business picked up when steam powered metal hulled ships came into their own. The docks were taken over by Handren and Robins, later succeeded by John N. Robins and the Robbins Dry Dock and Repair Company. By 1916, William H. Todd became President of Robbins Dry Dock, and he would later acquire the docks, renaming them under the Todd Shipworks umbrella. Todd died in the 1930s, but his company continued to use the docks until 1986, when they were leased to a succession of other companies, until 2005. The last lease was held for 8 years, by Stevens Technical Services.^[4][5][6][7]

Around the time of the lease's expiration, IKEA expressed their intent to purchase the property and turn it into a parking lot for the store.^[8] Conservationists argued against the purchase, stating that the dock had been created at the end of the American Civil War and would be considered eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.^[9] In 2006 a comptroller for the city also noted that paving over the dock would be "premature".^[10] Efforts to salvage the property included protests and a lawsuit against the United States Army.^[11] These efforts were unsuccessful, and by 2008 the graving dock had been filled in and paved over to create a parking lot.^[12] An outline of the original graving dock was added to the parking lot using pavers, which are visible in person, or with a digital map satellite view.^[9]