"I know in my heart we're not going back to Red Hook, and I don't want to be sad about it because I'm not," Alicia Degener, president of the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, told Brooklyn Paper this month. "We're still together. We're still doing BWAC. BWAC is still BWAC. That's just somewhere else in Sunset Park."
Red Hook Open Studios returns on Saturday and Sunday, October 10 and 11, from 1 to 6 p.m. It is free. Last October the event went ahead weeks after the fire, and everyone involved treated it as an emergency workaround. This year the workaround is the format. The warehouse that anchored the weekend for decades is no longer part of the plan, and the coalition that filled it is showing its work in another neighborhood during the same afternoon hours. The 2026 map is spread across smaller hosts, and the event's press materials say little about that.
What 481 Van Brunt held, and what is now settled
The building is the Beard and Robinson Warehouse Stores at 481 Van Brunt Street. A five-alarm fire broke out there around 11:30 p.m. on September 17, 2025. It burned through the night and collapsed part of the roof and the fourth floor. According to Red Hook Open Studios, the building held more than 100 artist and maker studios, galleries, recording studios and small businesses. BWAC had been there for 35 years.
Water did much of the damage. Degener said the millions of gallons pumped in to put out the flames destroyed BWAC. In November 2025 the owner described working with demolition and remediation experts to make the warehouse safe. By December, BWAC had been told the building would likely be uninhabitable for years, and its lease was terminated. The public reporting reviewed for this piece has nothing newer on demolition or rebuilding. The question that has been answered is whether BWAC comes back to the building, and the answer is no.
The money came quickly. The Red Hook Business Alliance's community fundraiser passed $99,000 by September 19, 2025. Brooklyn Eagle reported that tenant fundraisers together had raised more than $200,000 by September 22. A federal disaster declaration later made affected businesses and nonprofits eligible for SBA disaster loans of up to $2 million. Those are loans, not grants. Fundraising and loans can replace equipment. They can't replace a building that put a hundred studios under one roof.
Last year's workaround became this year's format
In October 2025, organizer Deborah Ugoretz pushed back on rumors that the event had been canceled. About 40 artists who had signed up were not affected by the fire. Some, Ugoretz included, worked in parts of the Van Brunt warehouse that the blaze spared. Many others had studios elsewhere in the neighborhood, between the waterfront and the BQE. Sean Moore offered space at The Swan Club, his waterfront yoga studio, which was about to open, and it became the Rebuild Gallery for work by artists affected by the fire. Some of that work was collected from artists' homes. Volunteer conservators were treating other pieces for mold.
The 2026 plan keeps that distributed shape. Printed maps will be available at Pioneer Works, Food Bazaar and other locations around Red Hook, and the organizers say a list of events leading up to the weekend is coming. A sculpture exhibition at Red Hook Distillery, 185 Van Dyke Street, runs October 8 through 18. The opening reception is October 8, from 6 to 9 p.m. In December 2025, BWAC held a fundraiser at 184 Van Dyke Street. That stretch of Van Dyke Street now hosts some of the neighborhood's arts events, but none of it is replacement studio space.
Hook Studios at 161 Dikeman Street has taken on a similar role. On September 19 and 20 it hosted a BWAC and Brooklyn Pop-Up makers market with more than 60 artists, many of them affected by the fire. It was a two-day market. It didn't give anyone a permanent studio, and that pattern holds across the past year. Red Hook has kept finding rooms for artists to show work. Finding them rooms to make work has been much harder.
The same afternoon hours, in Sunset Park
BWAC's fall exhibitions, "One Year Later: New Work, New Perspectives" and the national juried show "Exclaim!", opened September 17 at The Whale, 15 43rd Street in Sunset Park. They are open weekends from 1 to 6 p.m. through October 18. That covers the Open Studios weekend, at the same hours. A Red Hook resident who wants to see both the studios that stayed and the coalition that left can't do it in one afternoon without a trip across the borough.
BWAC got to The Whale in stages. Powerhouse Arts in Gowanus gave it free space for its first show after the fire. It now uses The Whale for what Degener called a "nominal fee." Degener describes the space as 21,000 square feet with 15-foot ceilings, almost as large as the old Red Hook home. She also says it isn't permanent, and the search for one continues.
The fire’s effects on individual artists have persisted. Six months after the fire, the Star-Revue covered Hot Wood Arts founder Megan Suttles. Degener told Brooklyn Paper that some people who had studios in the warehouse stopped making work altogether. The Open Studios map can only include artists who still have studios to open, so this year's map is shaped by who has stayed and found space.
The fall dates around the weekend
The Open Studios weekend falls inside a busy few weeks of free and low-cost programming, most of it at institutions that were never in the Van Brunt warehouse:
- October 6: Green Lung Studio's free community film series screens "Birth."
- October 7 through November 1: Pioneer Works features Joselia Rebekah Hughes in the rotating installation "There's no me without you," after Ariana Martinez's presentation closes October 4. Alex Dolores Salerno follows, November 4 through December 20.
- October 8 through 18: The Open Studios sculpture exhibition at Red Hook Distillery, with the opening reception October 8, 6 to 9 p.m.
- October 10 and 11: Red Hook Open Studios, 1 to 6 p.m. BWAC's shows at The Whale are open during the same hours.
- October 11: Pioneer Works' free Second Sundays open house, with open studios, exhibitions, workshops, live music and food. Open Studios Sunday and Second Sunday fall on the same day, and Pioneer Works is also a map pickup point.
- November 8: Second Sundays returns at Pioneer Works.
- November 14: The NY Cider Festival at Red Hook Cidery, 185 Van Dyke Street, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The Barnacle Parade is missing from this list for a reason. The only listing available is the 2025 one, and no 2026 date had been posted when this went to publish.
Van Brunt between studios
Van Brunt Street now has several new places to stop between studio visits, and some of them trace back to the street's own history. Val's Diner & Bar opened at 347 Van Brunt, at Wolcott Street, in the former Pitt's space. The kitchen is open until 10 p.m. and the bar until midnight. Victoria Viscusi, chef Allie Gassaway and Laine Pelka run it. Gassaway and Pelka both worked at the address when it was the revived Fort Defiance, and the name is partly a nod to Valentino Pier. Draft cocktails are $12 and well drinks about $7 to $8. A "Wait List" special pairs a small martini with fries for people waiting in line at Red Hook Tavern. Pitt's closed permanently on March 4.
Further down the street, Red Hook Focacceria opened at 421 Van Brunt on July 11. It sells weekend focaccia from 9 a.m. until it sells out. On Coffey Street, Red Hook Books opened July 1 at number 123. It sells new and used books, is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and plans bookbinding, book clubs and plein-air painting this fall. A bookstore running outdoor painting sessions is a small addition to the arts calendar, and it comes from a business that opened after the fire.
For visitors coming by water, the NYC Ferry fall schedule runs September 14 through November 1, and the South Brooklyn route's weekend service stops at Red Hook. The Governors Island ferry from Atlantic Basin runs weekends and holidays through November 1. Bike riders can use the new Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway segment, which opened in early May and connects Red Hook to Sunset Park for the first time. It doesn't yet link directly to the existing Red Hook greenway terminus at Smith Street.
Red Hook's old warehouses are the backdrop for this weekend, and several of them are also the reason it had to change. Owners of a converted industrial building, a studio property or a mixed-use building near the waterfront can look to DE Advisory Team for construction-informed, appraisal-grade analysis of what the building is worth today and what it could become. Request a Home Valuation, and we'll start with the building itself.
