Red Hook residents know David Sharps as the founder, owner and full-time resident of the Waterfront Museum. Housed on Lehigh Valley Barge #79, docked at the end of Conover Street, the museum celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.
What they may not know is that his years on the Red Hook waterfront are just the most recent chapter in an eclectic career. Sharps began his love affair with shipboard living while performing as a juggler and clown on cruise ships in the late ‘70s. He then lived aboard a barge on the river Seine in Paris while studying theater at the prestigious École Jacques LeCoq.
We sat down with Sharps to look back at his time in Red Hook and talk about the shows coming up at the Museum during its anniversary season.
This year is your 25th anniversary in Red Hook, but you bought this barge and started converting it into a home and museum even earlier than that.
I floated it off of a mud flat in Edgewater, New Jersey, in 1985. It took two years to get the mud out and another two years to do the carpentry so that it was seaworthy and didn’t leak too much and the doors opened, which isn’t too bad.
You’ve carved out quite a unique career for yourself. It seems like this place lets you marry your background as a performer to a role as a local and maritime historian. You also get to help nurture a sense of community.
It’s the blend where education and entertainment might meet. When you have a cultural… let’s call it a “happening,” it brings people together that might not have otherwise been together. You know, I’m from a small town and the cliques and whatnot, that was always difficult for me. I feel like this is the place where we bring all of the neighborhood people together so they can enjoy what they have.
How has the audience that you draw to this place changed over the years?
I think we put on our first show in Red Hook in ‘95 or ‘96. And of course, we’d ask how many people here to Red Hook for the first time, and you could see, you know, dozens of people raising their hands. So, culture and the arts and the funky old barge was something that really did attract folks to help create a cultural destination in Red Hook.
How do you go about picking which shows and events you’re going to put on at the museum?
People find me. They’ll say, “Oh, I have a great program or a band or story,” and I like to find the connection with water, or shipping or, or boats or maritime.
With kids’ entertainment, I had my career started by that. So the museum produces what we’re calling our “Circus Afloat.” These are folks that have wonderful programs that travel to South Jersey or Connecticut, or, you know, go on tour. New York City doesn’t have many school assemblies that include entertainment. The barge is a great venue for local families to enjoy great performers.
You really light up talking about people coming to Waterfront.
The barge comes alive when there’s activity. Seaports, the coming and the going and the constant change as a natural state — that’s what makes the waterfront really amazing.
Waterfront Museum President David Sharps. All photos by Ben Masten for the Red Hook Star-Revue.
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