Continental Iron Works
Continental Iron Works was a commercial ironworks in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that built boilers, engines, and iron structures. In late 1861, the Navy contracted Swedish-born inventor John Ericsson to build a radical new warship, and Ericsson chose Continental Iron Works to fabricate and assemble the hull. USS Monitor was built in approximately 100 days, an extraordinary pace driven by wartime urgency and Ericsson's relentless oversight. The ship that emerged was unlike anything afloat. A flat iron raft with a rotating gun turret, Monitor looked more like a floating factory than a warship. Continental Iron Works built the hull and assembled the components, while subcontractors produced the turret, engines, and armor plate. The whole project was a bet on industrial capacity over naval tradition, and it paid off at Hampton Roads in March 1862. Continental Iron Works was not a shipyard in any traditional sense. They were metalworkers who happened to build the most consequential warship of the 19th century. The yard continued commercial operations after the war but never again produced anything with that kind of historical weight.
Heritage
The Monitor project demonstrated that American industrial shops could produce advanced warships faster than purpose-built naval yards. Continental Iron Works proved that innovation in naval construction didn't require centuries of shipbuilding tradition. It required engineering talent, metalworking skill, and the willingness to build something nobody had ever seen before. The Greenpoint waterfront where Monitor took shape is now residential, with little to mark the spot where ironclad warfare began.
