Fascinating Brooklyn stories from our local history archivists.
A Class Sister Act
During the period between the 1930's and 1950's the entertainment field was filled with many talented sister vocal groups. There were the McGuire Sisters from Ohio, the King Sisters from Utah, the DeCastro Sisters all the way from Havana, Cuba, and the Andrew Sisters from Minnesota. Not to be outdone, the borough of Kings was represented in song by the Five DeMarco Sisters who began their career in the 1940's as teenagers. The sisters got their start when their father…
Celebrate Forefathers Day!
My favorite holiday of the year is nearly upon us, and I think the time is right for a celebratory BHS blog post! Sure, while there are many holidays populating the month of December, I think we can all agree that there is one that obviously outshines all the others. That day, of course, comes on December 22nd, when we unite in celebration of Forefathers Day, the anniversary of the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620!
Irving Herzberg and the Plane Crash of 1960
New York City accomodates all juxtapositions. Spend enough time here and no two things paired together, however odd, will seem unusual. This is the city where nothing can be out of place however willy-nilly the arrangement may be: from the gently surreal sight of a coyote cowering beneath a SUV in Manhattan, to the more terrible and spectral image of ash covered workers wandering the daytime streets of the Financial District. Whether it is welcome or not, the city will make room for it. But for all this open-armed receptiveness -- allowing this or that to suddenly and irrevocably appear and…
A Brooklyn Child's Christmas List, 1953
In November 1953, Abraham & Straus Department Store opened its annual holiday Toyland with a party for children from the Brooklyn School Settlement. Activities included visits with Santa, music by an accordion quartet, a doll fashion show, and an appearance by local child "movie star" Richie Andrusco at a "Coke-Tail" party in the store's restaurant. But the biggest moment of the day was when the children took a first look at Toyland intself. As the Eagle reported, the children from the Settlement "lost themselves." Even a movie star like…
Brooklyn Air Disaster, December 16, 1960
I remember first coming across a box with the label "Brooklyn Air Disaster, December 16, 1960, Scrapbook" a couple of years ago. Of course with a title like that I had to open and view the contents. I was shocked then to learn that there had been a plane crash on Seventh Avenue and Sterling Place, right in the middle of Park Slope Brooklyn. Since then we have from time to time gotten reference questions asking about the exact location of the crash. Now that the 50th anniversary is approaching this Thursday, the questions have increased.…
A Movement Grows In Brooklyn. The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. Wed Dec 15 2010, 7:00 p.m.
Brooklyn was the location of one of the most important northern urban civil rights movements of the 1960s. Brian Purnell will describe the activities and impact of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) in Brooklyn, where protesters and activists demanded jobs, improved schools, clean neighborhoods and citizenship rights. Brian Purnell is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Bowdoin College. Refreshments will be served from 6:30 to 7 p.m. Brooklyn Collection, 2nd floor, Central Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn NY 11238.
Gimme Coffee!
Listed in the 1900 Trow Business Directory for Brooklyn and Queens between Coal Miners & Shippers and Coffin Dealers (which listing precedes the now-connotatively-complicated Coke Dealers) you'll find listings for the cleaners, polishers, purveyors, importers, and roasters of coffee. At this time in Brooklyn there were 6 Coffee Cleaners and Polishers; 2 dealers in or makers of Essence of Coffee; 7 Coffee Importers; 9 Coffee Roasters; and 1 dealer in Coffee Pots, Tea Pots & Urns. Not yet listed among these caffeinated capitalists was the name of Edward Dannemiller, a Canton, Ohio…
Church of the Saviour
Patricia had a great post recently discussing Brooklyn architecture and architects materials among the Historical Society’s collections. Brooklyn was once characterized as “the city of homes and churches” and while Patricia’s post certainly pointed out some examples of homes and commercial buildings exemplifying a portion of the range of Brooklyn’s architecture, I wanted to focus on a specific instance of the latter half of that characterization with a great example of Brooklyn’s church architecture in our collections. While working on the records of the First Unitarian Congregational Society…
The Night the Lights Went Out in Brooklyn
It was February of 1946. Brooklynites were recovering from years of privation and separation brought on by the only recently ended World War II. Servicemen and women were readjusting to civilian life in the warm bosom of their families just as winter was seizing the borough in its usual icy grip. And then, on February 7th, Mayor William O'Dwyer declared a state of emergency in the city, ordering strict rationing of coal and fuel oil. Four days later, another proclamation from O'Dwyer ordered all "motion picture houses, theaters, night clubs, bars and grills,…
Calling Fort Greene / Clinton Hill
In Search of the Brooklyn Gridiron
Having watched a lot of football in my formative years, particularly as a college student, I am always in search of local football stories. Yes, we have two professional teams to root for here in New York. Yet, sometimes the distance to New Jersey takes away that "hometown" feel - hence my desire to search for traces of actual Brooklyn ball in our collection. (I should take a moment to note that not everyone feels as I do. For my neighbors who honor every Giants game with a party and backyard BBQ, the NJ/NY divide is no such hurdle.) The early…
Repeal Day is this Sunday!
For those of you who are unaware, let me tell you that Sunday is an important date in United States history. Sunday is Repeal Day. 77 years ago on December 7, 1933 the 21st Amendment reversed the 18th Amendment enforced by the Volstead Act and referred to as the Noble Experiment, the Great Illusion, and possibly some other names I should not list here. The 21st Amendment ended 13 years of illegal activity related to the sale, distribution, and public consumption of alcohol. If the culture of New York City was anything like it is today, how could our pickled residents of yore have…
Apple Pie
Of all the wonderful foods that are made for Thanksgiving, apple pie is my favorite. New York State produces about 29 million bushels annually, and some of that harvest winds up at the Green Market here at Grand Army Plaza. At other markets too, New York's farmers proudly advertise mouth-watering varieties such as…
152 Henry Street
152 Henry Street, a four story red-bricked Greek Revival multiple dwelling, could be the last Single Room Occupancy in Brooklyn Heights from the 19th century.
Floyd, the Tippling Turtle at the Toddy Inn
In 1954 when this photograph was taken, Floyd the turtle had been making annual springtime visits to the Toddy Inn at 7913 Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge for over twenty years, since 1933. The turtle migrated annually from his hibernation spot in a nearby back yard to the floor under a particular booth in the tavern, where he stayed for a week, taking naps and short walks around the bar. Then out he went, not to be seen again until the next year. According to tavern legend, it all began when a customer brought Floyd into the bar in 1933 along with two other pet turtles. At…
Other Brooklyns--a Postscript
Brooklynology readers may not remember a post about other Brooklyns written in September 2009 that has so far drawn zero comments except for the daily computer-generated spamming from a shoe company I will not name, because that is what they want. "Cheers for sharing these helpful content material! Hope that you simply just just will carry on accomplishing advantageous file this type of as this." Or, more thought-provokingly: "We've got loved searching the content material." The end of that post described the "Brooklyn Adopts Breuckelen Project" which…
Artist and Artifact exhibit - artists interpret Brooklyn's history
BHS is really excited about our new exhibit, Artist & Artifact: Re|Visioning Brooklyn's Past, presented in partnership with our neighbor BRIC Rotunda Gallery, the contemporary art space of BRIC Arts|Media|Bklyn.
Of Hair Pins and Independents: Brooklyn's Lady Bowlers
As the days grow colder in autumn's inexorable march toward winter, a lady's fancy turns to... bowling. Or mine does, anyway, because my bowling league's season is winding down, and I'll have just a few more chances to hurl my trusty ten pound ball before we adjourn for the holidays. Ours is a co-ed league, and every week I'm impressed at the grace and skill of my fellow female pin-toppers. It leads me to wonder: How long have women been bowling? A trip to our Brooklyn Daily Eagle clippings files turned up some interesting answers. Lady of the lanes -- …
Tourist maps
First off, let me admit that I am new to New York. I've been in the city for almost a year, and while I've learned to navigate the streets pretty well, sometimes I still turn a corner and find myself hopelessly lost. So I am very sympathetic to all the tourists wandering around BHS and Brooklyn Heights, struggling to find their way. Unfortunately for tourists, Brooklyn Heights does not have a great deal of signage to help them find the neighborhood's landmarks, or even the way to the Promenade or the Brooklyn Bridge. In response to this, a professor from Parsons the New School of Design gave…
VETERANS DAY: BROOKLYN IN KOREA
From the Battle of Brooklyn to the building of battleships at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklynites are no strangers to the demands of war. And as any soldier deployed abroad can surely attest, one of the most familiar feelings brought on by military service is one of homesickness. Looking for some sign of home while stationed in Japan in 1951, one Brooklyn-bred soldier, Private Justin Grishman, took it upon himself to write a letter to the Eagle requesting just that -- a sign -- a street sign to be exact. Says Pvt. Justin Grishman, 45 Martense St., who is now in Korea, 'I would like a street…
Brooklyn Life Magazine, 1890-1931
= WHAT DID SHE MEAN? -- MR DE BOER: Miss Emma, perhaps I ought not to call during Lent, for I understand you deny yourself all amusement. MISS E: Yes, I do Mr. de Boer. Come as often as you like. Genealogists and others who come to the Brooklyn Collection are often familiar with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in its various forms--online, microfilm, morgue. But the Brooklyn Collection carries many other serials on microfilm, including 63 local newspapers. Lacking an index, these are of little use unless researchers know the date of the article they are seeking. But Brooklyn Life…
Emma Toedteberg, Librarian Extraordinaire
Part of what I love about working as an archivist is getting to peek in at lives of the past, and getting to know the Brooklynites who walked the streets decades, and centuries, before us. What’s even better (and yes, even nerdier) is learning about a woman who helped build the collections at BHS that we use today. A few months ago, my teammate Patricia and I surveyed a collection from BHS’s third librarian, Emma Toedteberg. If you’re a regular patron of the archives, then you may have already heard of Emma—she’s the namesake of our catablog. Her collection is slim, but it gives us some…
Wild About Maison Foffe
Venison, anyone? How about some wild pheasant? No, this ghastly tableau doesn't depict a horrible roadkill incident but, rather, an invitation to dinner. Decades ahead of the current trends of locally-sourced food and organic meats, Alfred Foffe was serving wild game in his tony Brooklyn Heights restaurant, Maison Foffe. These suspended carcasses signal to those in the know that Foffe is back from his annual hunting trip with a menu of fresh-from-the-wild animals to serve his customers. The story of the Foffe family's establishment as Brooklyn restaurant…
Everything Bagel
When I began to write this post, it was going to be just about bagels. It will still be about bagels, dear reader, however, I've added something very special to the end. It's worth the wait, I promise! The Brooklyn Collection must be thinking about food lately -- specifically round breads with a hole in the middle. Tara wrote a fantastic post about the doughnut and now I'm writing about the bagel. While the bagel was not an original Brooklyn creation, we're close enough to the Lower East Side to practically have a mirrored history. Immigrants who moved…
So Long, Brooklyn.....Hello, Brooklyn. A Farewell post from Tara.
It feels bittersweet that my time in Brooklyn is coming to an end, as I am moving to Australia with my husband to have a child and begin a new life chapter. I will certainly miss my job as the Research Assistant in the Brooklyn Collection, and the pleasures of discovering fascinating Little-Known Brooklyn Residents in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Morgue. My days of unearthing photos of cats dressed up in princess outfits, pipe-organs in apartments, and youthful treasure hunters are behind me, and I will remember these days fondly. Happy days working in the morgue Although there is…
Tonight! October 27th at 6:30pm BUSHWICK FARMS: Imagined Genealogies and Conceptual History.
What happens when art meets history and genealogy? Tara Cuthbert and Stuart Solzberg, creators of the Bushwick Farms project, will describe their ongoing art project as it nears the end of one phase and enters another, in an illustrated talk at 7 p.m. on Wednesday October 27th in the Brooklyn Collection, Central Library. Click here to learn more and prepare to be surprised and delighted. As usual, we will ply you with astonishingly good cheese and wine starting at 6:30 p.m. before you take your seat.
And They're Off! - Part 2
In this second part of And They're Off we look at the role that the racing industry played in establishing the Sheepshead Bay African-American community and the First Baptist Church of Sheepshead Bay. …
Brooklyn Architecture and Architects
As part of the CLIR team surveying the archival, manuscript, and photography collections at BHS, we’ve come across several collections that document either iconic Brooklyn architecture or local Brooklyn architects. With the recent conclusion of the 8th annual Open House New York, I’ve been thinking about architecture, the multitude of buildings I encounter everyday, and my relationship with them. From the Hotel St. George where the subway lets me out in the morning, to the George B. Post landmarked building I work in at BHS, to the sprawling Concord Village I walk past everyday on my way to…
Project CHART - Digitizing Brooklyn History
Brooklynology is pleased to welcome Micah Vandegrift for this guest post. Micah is the Coordinator for Project CHART (Cultural Heritage Access Research and Technology) at Brooklyn Public Library where he will be supervising interns in the digitization of historic photographs, and co-managing CHART's development as a cultural heritage curriculum. Looks like Bedford these days too! View this image in our catalog. It is not difficult to imagine what Brooklyn would have looked like in the recent past. Many of the buildings, landmarks and neighborhoods retain the characteristics of…
Centenarian Faity Tuttle!
BHS is happy to see Brooklynite Esther Leeming "Faity" Tuttle celebrated in The New York Times among fellow centenarians! Hear Faity talk about John's Group, a playgroup for children in Prospect Park, Brooklyn accents, and how John narrowly avoided being struck by the 1960 plane crash in Park Slope: Faity was born in 1911 and she grew up in Brooklyn Heights, on Henry Street. She became a professional actress, appearing on Broadway with Humphrey Bogart, among others. In 1944, she moved to Park Slope with her husband, Ben, and their three children. She's a longtime supporter of the Brooklyn…
Pictorial Maps
I love a good pictorial map. When maps use pictures, rather than symbols or text, to show points of interest, it always adds a little something for me. Sometimes the "something" is humor, sometimes it's a better sense of the map's time and place. Below, a few examples from our collection.
Drama on the High Seas
A colleague here at BHS recently informed me that the National Archives of the UK has made its collection of Royal Navy surgeons' journals entirely accessible online. This immediately reminded me of a small collection of nautical journals that the CLIR team recently uncovered, in which a ship's surgeon is also featured, only not quite in the way you'd think. The journals were kept by Henry W. Dodge, a New Yorker who served on a number of highly-publicized expeditions to explore the Arctic before passing away suddenly in a saloon on Fulton Street in 1874. His journal kept aboard the…
Move over Costco
Stores like BJ's and Costco have brought to many present-day Brooklynites an irresistible combination of consumer emotions, making us feel simultaneously rich and frugal by allowing us to cram our tiny New York City dwellings with discounted consumer goods. For maybe seventy percent of the regular price, plus the price of your annual membership, you can lay up industrial quantities of frozen cod fillets, kitchen towels, and bottles of detergent so large you can barely lift them. You can buy two dozen eggs at once and watch them ageing in the…
Little-Known Brooklyn Residents: Birthday Dancers Joseph Notarfrancesco and Laura Louise Ottomanelli
On October 12, 1951, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that the family of 89 year-old Joseph Notarfrancesco caught him climbing onto his garage roof with the intent of making repairs with a hammer. His family urged him down in a hurry, concerned that he should not be doing such activities at his age. "Pop can't stand still," his granddaughter said, "...he always has a hammer in his hand." The Eagle reported "...for a nonagenarian the elderly man is indeed active. He reads avidly, writes letters, goes to church every Sunday, and even dances the rhumba." Just two days later on his 90th birthday…
Map Scam?
Here at BHS, my job is to catalog maps. We have a wonderful collection of Brooklyn maps from the 1700s to the present; however, when I first started looking at the collection, I noticed that some of the maps were very similar to each other. So similar, in fact, that if you were just casually glancing at them, you'd think they were duplicates. In particular, I became interested in a group of maps of Brooklyn published by A. Brown in the 1860s and 1870s; 3 maps, with virtually identical content...what was going on? Turns out, producing maps in the 1800s was very expensive, and map publishers…
Found in the Morgue: Efforts to Elevate the Humble Doughnut
The humble doughnut is often considered lowly food in the landscape of American snacks. During the 1940s and 1950s several efforts were made to elevate the status of the doughnut, and the Morgue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle records these efforts well. Following are three examples found in the Morgue photo files. In 1955, Miss America's Wanda Jennings was the spokesperson for a nationwide campaign to "encourage housewives to serve families more nutritious snacks." Doughnuts and milk were promoted as "Wholesome Pals" -- "a good nutritious food and all important mid-morning or…
Delicious: The Event
Last night BHS' trivia event whipped more than 120 trivia buffs into a frenzy. We covered the gamut from Biggie Smalls to shuttle stops and team "Culver Express" proved unstoppable. Congrats to our winners and thanks to everyone who came. Perhaps you'll all want to swing by BPL tonight for an encore? From trivia to delectable local food, BHS isn't stopping anytime soon. If you are a fan of the borough's amazing fare, you'll want to join us this coming Thursday, October 7 for Brooklyn Bounty, our fall fundraiser that celebrates local food makers. Red Hook Winery, Brooklyn Brewery, Madiba…
Vanquish your neighbors, win prizes: The Brooklyn Trivia Challenge
TONIGHT! Wednesday, September 29th 7:00 p.m., 6:30 for wine and cheese Something must be in the air, some twin wind blowing and doubling everything up; in another instance of eerie coincidence, it looks like we have, unbeknownst to us, planned a trivia night the evening after a similar event is slated to be held at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Oh well. I guess good things come in pairs, especially if you love rattling your brain trying to answer questions about Brooklyn history. And besides, anyone who knows Brooklyn knows that one trivia night could never get at all of the strange…
The Atlantic Antic
The Atlantic Antic, Brooklyn's largest street fair, stretches along Atlantic Avenue from Hicks Street to Fourth Avenue. This Sunday (the 26th) will be the 36th year of the event. Some photos in our collection show the table that BHS had at the Antic in 1977 - the fourth year of the fair. BHS was still called the Long Island Historical Society, because we didn't change our name until the mid-1980s. Our display that year was in front of the old Independence Savings Bank building, which is now Trader Joe's. These days, the event draws crowds of more than a million people, with all kinds of food…
Little-Known Brooklyn Businesses. S. Gumpert & Co.
When first I pulled this recipe booklet from S. Gumpert & Co. out of its file, the synthetic orange and pink sherbert colors of the cover illustration suggested a company that manufactured cheap water ices. But to open the booklet at any page was to realize that in this instance, Gumpert's interest was less in the ices themselves but in their ingredients. A glance at a recipe shows that this sorbet is destined for no puny domestic freezer. The secret to fine water ices, it turns out, is a substance produced by the Gumpert Company called "Textor."…
Little-Known Brooklyn Residents: Parrot Fanciers Jeremiah O'Shea and William Musella
Jeremiah O'Shea, a 1950 Red Hook resident, owned a parrot with a special talent -- the ability to swear in four languages. When Jeremiah made a trip to the pet store for birdseed one morning, he returned to find his front door open and his parrot Polly missing from her cage. He searched the neighborhood and the police investigated too, with no success. Almost a month later two teens were pulled up for causing a disturbance and after police questioning, the teens admitted that they had broken into Jeremiah's home and sold Polly to another local bird fancier. To O'Shea's delight Polly was…
School days of Brooklyn's past
The passing of Labor Day is always a sign that fall is near and school is back in session. All of the excited students—and the not-so-excited students—I’ve seen with backpacks and books this week got me thinking about school items the CLIR team has found during the survey of archival, manuscript, and photography collections. While you can browse yearbooks from Brooklyn schools in the Othmer Library, family papers and manuscript collections also have photographs, homework, and ephemera that give us an idea of what school was like in Brooklyn way-back-when. The James Atkins Noyes collection…
Ephemera #2: All hail the fastener, that master of combination and order.
Not being a part of the things which it binds, a fastener is neither here nor there. Unless it's not there but needs to be, or it's breaking down and shouldn't be, a fastener usually goes unnoticed. It's an entirely forgettable little piece of hardware in this world, but not in the least is a fastener inconsequential. On the contrary, it can be the very thing upon which consequence depends. After all, if it weren't for those two staples punched into the 12 months of your wall calendar, would October really follow September? We should pause to thank those puny, bendable wickets for they…
Four Must-See Exhibits
Time Out New York has named BHS' exhibit Painting Brooklyn Stories of Immigration & Survival as one of Four Must-See Exhibits this Fall! Opening Reception: Thursday, September 16. 5:30 - 7:30 pm. Exhibit dates: September 17 – February 27, 2011
Mystery surrounds Society's second librarian...
Reading Brooklynology's great post on our first librarian, Henry R. Stiles, inspired us to post about our second librarian, George Hannah. From 1863 to 1889 George served as head librarian of the Society.
Brooklyn Weddings
Sometimes you can't ignore a good coincidence. Around the time that I was planning my own wedding, I opened a drawer in the Eagle morgue labeled "unsorted." Inside I found lovely ladies smiling up at me, some in wedding gowns and some who looked as if they were posing for school photos. Reading through them, I found that they were all wedding and engagement photos! We have since rehoused the images in folders and will be listing them so that anyone wanting to add to their family photo album may be able to find an image or two here at the Brooklyn…
Seen from Brooklyn, September 11, 2001. Photographs by Anders Goldfarb.
From 1072 Lorimer St, Brooklyn, 9:10 a.m. Near Flatbush Ave, crowds walking home. Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Bedford Ave northside Corner of Calyer St and Manhattan Ave, Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Un-hiding our Collections
I am beyond thrilled to be writing a post to tell you about a grant the BHS library received a few months back from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant, awarded as a part of the CLIR Hidden Collections program and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will make possible a project called Uncovering the Secrets of Brooklyn's 19th Century Past: Creation to Consolidation. It is a big and exciting project for us to undertake. Over the next two years, we will be working to catalog many, many maps and survey and catalog a huge array of materials in our archival,…
Little-Known Brooklyn Businesses. The Bilnor Corporation
In the 1950’s the Bilnor Corporation was a leading manufacturer of swimming pools and water toys. From their location at 300 Morgan Avenue in East Williamsburg, they turned out summertime recreational products made from plastic. In 1954 they expanded upon their seasonal merchandise by creating portable ice rinks. Made of Krene, (a popular plastic developed in the 1940's) these winter weather contraptions required only water and freezing temperatures. "Ice Rink In a Package -- A new portable ice…