GrptWGazSiteDedAwdCer26Oct06. GptWGazSiteDed19Oct04. GreenpointWilliamsburgGazette30December2003. New York Daily News - Boroughs - Monitor's ship finally comes in. For seven years, the Greenpoint Monitor Museum has existed largely in the hearts and minds of a Brooklyn couple - but all that may change soon. The museum, which has only a Web site and two fervent founders, made a huge leap closer to reality yesterday when a Texas-based oil company announced it would donate a waterfront plot in Greenpoint for the museum's future site. "We were a museum without a home, but not without a purpose," said co-founder Janice Lauletta-Weinmann. Since New York State officially recognized the museum in 1996, Janice and husband George Weinmann have traveled to schools to teach children the history of the famed Civil War ironclad Monitor. But all along they've pined for a piece of land on the Bushwick inlet in Greenpoint - near where the Monitor was constructed and launched in 1862 - to be the permanent home for a Monitor museum.
"This is a Christmas miracle; who would think we'd get this waterfront property for free? " Museum%20-%20NY%20-%20Bushwick%20Donation%20Notice.
Brooklyn on Line - Brooklyn History - The USS Monitor. The USS Monitor Constructed in 1861-1862 at the Continental Ship Yard in Greepoint Brooklyn in 101 days John Ericsson, a New York resident in the 1860's, was one of the unsung inventors of his day. He invented air compressors, boilers, engines, locomotives, naval guns and a prototype for the screw propeller...and was a wraith to Naval Brass for much of his life. He designed a Man of War class naval vessel called the Princeton with partner John S Stockton. The Princeton sported a prototype twelve caliber gun, the biggest ever used up to this time, designed by Ericsson, but altered by his partner's in the prototype.
So when Ericsson described his invention of a revolutionary new boat designed for Napoleon the 3rd with a revolving turret holding eleven inch guns...no one was listening. Intelligence in Washington warned of the impending rebuilding of the Merrimac. The Navy was forced to consider Ericsson, and offered $275,000 if the government received delivery in 100 days. The Greenpoint Monitor Museum.