Fascinating Brooklyn stories from our local history archivists.
Brooklyn-Long Island Cat Club
I was having a very grumpy day. Looking back, I remember that the one thing that can almost always cheer me up--my cat Oscar--didn't seem to do the job before I left for work. Even a day of going through photograph folders, which is a calming, productive, and fun activity, couldn't erase my glum mood. The Brooklyn Collection has been conducting a photo inventory for the past few weeks. We've found lots of photographs, some that we look at in puzzlement -- ("Why would someone take four photos of someone pointing?") --many of checks and awards…
Secret Bookstore on Montague
Mystery Building by Raoul Froger Doudemont
We are cataloguing the Raoul Froger Doudemont Collection, and this photograph has us stumped. Froger Doudemont photographed in New York City and Washington D.C. around the turn of the 20th century--but where is this? There are no prizes for the solution to this conundrum, just our eternal gratitude and smiles from the gods of metadata. Please use the Comments box to dazzle us with your scholarship and knowledge of the world.
Pioneering Children's Services
While students enjoy the final days of summer, we're preparing for another year of class visits and research projects. We get so excited about our plans that we often forget our efforts are based on century-old standards that originated right here in Brooklyn. In the early 20th century, both Brooklyn Public Library and the Brooklyn Children's Museum were pioneers in children's services. By creating spaces that uniquely catered to children, they dramatically changed the way young people interacted with cultural institutions. In 1899, the Brooklyn…
Oral History Interview with Radical Priest Frank Morales
Today's post is by oral historian Amy Starecheski. Amy was Lead Interviewer for the 550-hour Atlantic Philanthropies Oral History Project at the Columbia University Oral History Research Office from 2005-2008. She was a lead interviewer on the September 11, 2001 Narrative and Memory Project, for which she interviewed Afghans, Muslims, Sikhs, activists, low-income people, and the unemployed. Amy is co-author of the Telling Lives Oral History Curriculum Guide and she is currently pursuing a doctorate in anthropology at the City University of New York. Oral History Interview with Squatter…
Panamanian Festival
There was a great deal of drumming and trumpeting behind the library this lunchtime. I grabbed the division's big old digital camera and followed the music through the back door to its source in Mount Prospect Park, right behind the library. The park was filled with the food and sounds of the the Panamanian Festival. Not one but several marching bands, some in splendid white regalia, were parading around the circular path. (Evidently the marching bands are quite active, because I soon found video footage of a similar group.)…
Up for Debate: Thinking about the Supreme Court and Civil Rights with NYC Public School Teachers
I am working as an intern at Brooklyn Historical Society this summer as part of my Masters Program in Museum Studies at NYU. Last week I attended a four-day summer institute for New York City Public School Middle and High School teachers. Brooklyn Historical Society is one of the partner cultural institutions for Leadership in American History (professional development sponsored by a federal Teaching American History Grant [TAHG]). I was there representing BHS with our head of school programs, Todd Florio.…
Regina Pacis and the Case of the Missing Crowns
In the midst of World War II, the parishioners of St. Rosalia's Church in Borough Park made a pledge: if the war came to an end, they would construct "a lasting memorial to the ideal of peace." By 1948 ground was broken for one the greatest churches in Brooklyn, a $1,000,000 devotion to the Queen of Peace - Regina Pacis. Regina Pacis Votive Shrine, at 65th Street and 12th Avenue, was (and still is) a model of Italian Renaissance design. It was a two-story building with 1,500 seats on the main floor and 1,200 more in the basement chapel. It was the second…
Chinese-American Oral Histories Translated by a Chinese-American
Today's post is written by Qin Yong David Chen, our BHS summer intern from the Chinese-American Planning Council. This fall, he will be a sophomore at Stony Brook University where he studies economics and political science. He plans to attend business school after graduating. Many people have proclaimed 8th Avenue in Sunset Park as New York City's third Chinatown. My name is Qin Yong David Chen and I am an intern here at the Brooklyn Historical Society. My job includes many roles: I am a tour guide, a promoter, a receptionist, and an amateur historian. One task that was assigned to me was…
To Gravesend and Back
Last week's guest post was so well received, we thought we'd try it again this week. Today's post is from Joseph Ditta, BHS friend, Reference Librarian at the New-York Historical Society, and born-and-bred Brooklynite. Joseph has a great new book out through Arcadia Publishing called Then & Now: Gravesend, Brooklyn. The book is packed with cool photographs comparing the same locations in the 19th and early 20th Centuries with modern day. It is really fun to see what familiar buildings looked like in their past, the way that people have attempted to modernize buildings (both to good and…
Of Strawberries
Strawberry shortcake is one of my favorite desserts. So I thought what better way to celebrate the end of the strawbery season than to search for, and create one of the strawberry shortcake recipes from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. It seems that Brooklynites were such fans of all things strawberry that there were hundreds of articles about this fruit -- ranging from strawberry festivals to recipes for strawberry custard, strawberry sponge, iced strawberries and strawberries and claret. But I was searching for strawberry shortcake, and the …
Coming Up in Bed Stuy
2007 marked the 40th anniversary of Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration, the oldest community development corporation (CDC) in the United States, founded in 1967 through the efforts of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Jacob Javits.
Serendipity in the Eagle Morgue
If the serendipitous nature of alphabetical order has ever struck you as one of life's inexpensive pleasures, then the Eagle morgue is for you. Why should nudity and nugatory nestle so close to one another on the dictionary page? And there among the s's sedition and seduction rub shoulders, one misdemeanor inciting its neighbor to worse and worse behavior. A file drawer full of photographs is much like a dictionary page in producing strange bedfellows. Leslie mentioned in her last post that we have been undertaking an inventory of some of our photograph…
Storybooks and Captain Hook
We've been working diligently on our photo inventory, and it's uncovered some new material to write about. Today, I found myself enchanted by a relatively unknown event in the Central Library's kitschier history: the Pet Show. On May 21, 1955, Brooklyn Public Library and Abraham & Straus department store hosted the Storybook Pet Show, a costumed pet competition for children in first through seventh grades. Entrants were asked to create a costume or display that was, in true library form, inspired by a good book. One young man went all out, creating both a…
What’s wrong with my scrapbook?
The library at BHS is lucky enough to have a great team of interns working on all kinds of projects from answering your reference questions to scanning historic images to cataloging archival collections. Today we'll hear from Katy Christensen, who has been working in the archives processing and cataloging archive, manuscript and photo collections, about some of her recent work. Scrapbooking has become increasingly popular in recent years and one can now find webpages devoted entirely to scrapbook layouts and suggested themes. They are hardly a new phenomenon, however. Scrapbooks have been…
Love and Financial Services
Before most of us had ever heard of credit default swaps and other financial services, products, and derivatives, there were changes afoot in the banking industry as local savings banks, also known as thrifts, got involved in other kinds of investment banking following federal deregulations in the 1990s. Many of the smaller banks were eventually bought out by larger banks, which is what happened to Brooklyn-based Independence Community Bank in 2006 when Sovereign Bancorp (which is itself owned by Banco Santander, based in Spain) took it over. An integral part of Brooklyn’s economic and…
A Home for "Ladies"
A search for luxury condos in Clinton Hill might bring you to 320 Washington Avenue, a lovely co-op surrounded by trees and situated on a comfortable street. And, if that weren't enough, it is an historic building, which seems to be a favorite factoid for realtors. While doing some research into the building's history, it came to my attention that our colleagues over at the Brooklyn Historical Society had just blogged about this very building. It was particularly helpful because I never think to use annual reports as they did. I love a good story, so I decided to…
The Eagle Excursion to the Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893. Part II
In my last post on the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, I mentioned two books. First, I wrote extensively on the fair as described in The Hand Book to the World's Columbian Exposition. Now I would like to share a scrapbook that documents one Brooklynite's journey from Brooklyn to Chicago and back in October 1893. Entitled Brooklyn Eagle World Fair Excursion, the scrapbook begins with the list of men and women who lodged at the Vermont Hotel in Chicago. The excursion, sponsored by the Eagle, lasted one week and included 250 people who…
Teacups, Frog Hopper and Cyclone
Photographer Ron Meisel has donated one of his beautiful 40 x 15" prints to the Brooklyn Collection. Coney Island, Brooklyn--Astroland Park: Teacups, Frog Hopper and Cyclone (2007) now holds pride of place on the rear wall of the reading room to the right of the Reserve Room doors, with Bill Creevy's pastel drawing of the Central Library to the left. Ron Meisel is represented by Phyllis Stigliano at the Phyllis Stigliano Gallery, 62 Eighth Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217. This is a panoramic photograph taken with a Hasselblad Xpan camera, Fuji Color negative film and scanned on an…
Important records for the study of African history digitized and available on Ancestry.com for FREE!
On July 16th Ancestry.com, in conjunction with the Virgin Islands Social History Association (VISHA), launched the 1st installment of newly digitized St. Croix-Virgin Islands slave records. Part of the St. Croix African Roots Project, the two databases now available, St. Croix Slave Lists (1772-1821) and Population Census (1835-1911), will be freely available until July 31st: http://bit.ly/IbxiE For some background information on this project, check out: http://bit.ly/18jsf2 Genealogy for African Americans presents its own unique sets of challenges, largely because records like these are…
Breukelen State of Mind
The Brooklyn Paper's going Dutch this week? The newspaper's title banner has been changed to the Dutch spelling of the word (or at least a version of the Dutch spelling) and is replete with an animated windmill. Jasper Danckaerts would be thrilled - though perhaps not as much with reporter Shannon Gies' "good riddance" send off of Danckaerts and the Labadists. As for the Breukelen/Breuckelen spelling of the Dutch-settled land - this is something that BHS debated about during the preparation of the Pages of the Past exhibit. After all, BHS has a t-shirt that uses the spelling with the 'c', and…
Beauty and the Beer
Brooklyn and beer have a long history together, as do beautiful women and beer advertising. These early advertisements from our collection illustrate that point: But no beauty was quite like Miss Rheingold: From 1942 to 1965, Liebmann Breweries of Bushwick, Brooklyn used an annual beauty contest to sell beer. It was a clever marketing ploy that offered the general public the opportunity to choose Miss Rheingold. Ballot boxes were placed in taverns, grocery stores and other locations and citizens could vote as many…
Park Lit TONIGHT Coney Island ALWAYS
Two of BHS's Interpreting Brooklyn artists, novelist Elizabeth Gaffney and Coney Island playwright Michael Schwartz, will be reading tonight in Fort Greene Park with L.J. Davis, a fellow contributor to the magazine A Public Space. Another friend of BHS and Coney Island, Charles Denson, founder of the Coney Island History Project, is hosting an online conversation at The New York Times City Room Blog this week. If you haven't been following the debates about revitalizing Coney Island, the City Council is about to vote on a rezoning plan and the Municipal Art Society has suggested improvements…
Photograph inventory July 13-24, 2009
Brooklyn Collection staff will be carrying out an inventory of our photograph collections from July 13 to 24, 2009. The physical photograph collections will be closed to researchers during that time and no photograph orders will be processed, although images will still be available through our digital files.
Some Brooklyn Hats
As a "friend" once memorably put it, you can always count on me to find the cloud behind every silver lining. The rain has held off for a few days now, but can the miserably hot and humid days of summer be far behind? There was a time when head protection on sunny days was de rigueur, and a baseball cap was considered the appropriate headgear only for playing baseball. For the rest of life, other types of summer hat gave Brooklyn heads their special pizzazz. In the late 19th century you could still wear a straw boater without a hint of irony, in fact every member of this well-…
Sham Warfare in Prospect Park
On a frigid February afternoon in 1885, the Third Brigade of Brooklyn's Second Division of the National Guard marched onto the frozen, snow covered fields of Prospect Park. Dressed in full winter uniforms, carrying muskets and bayonettes and waving their American flags, they were prepared for an elaborate exercise in mock warfare - a sham battle. In the 19th century, sham battles were used for either commemorative or practical reasons. Although the National Guard had scheduled the event on a holiday, Washington's birthday, the sham battle was…
The Saw-Book Quarterly
It is my good fortune to purchase, when funds allow, new items for the Brooklyn Collection. Among our ever-growing sub-collections is a group of trade catalogues from Brooklyn businesses, and I was happy to find three of them in a recent offering from a well-known bookseller. The most striking was this booklet bearing the subtitle Saws--Their History, Manufacture and Use, Continued. The cover image of a phoenix rising from a flaming ruin clearly announces what must have befallen the company of Joshua Oldham and Sons. Sure enough, the booklet tells the whole story of the disaster…
New Exhibit: Students Reflect On a Year of Research
It's been another busy year for the students in our Brooklyn Connections program, and we are celebrating with an exhibit at the Central Library! This year we wanted to celebrate the diversity of topics and projects selected by our partner schools. Each panel highlights one school's project and the thoughts of students who worked to complete it. Students utilized photographs, newspapers and other documents to bring history alive in their classrooms. We were thrilled to see that even 8th graders were able to truly appreciate all that the Brooklyn…
Brooklyn in Film: Gems from our 16mm Collection
Aziz Rahman, director of the Brooklyn Film & Arts Festival, will present highlights of our 16mm film collection in the Dweck Auditorium on Wednesday June 24th at 7 p.m. Program: Trinidad in Brooklyn, 1985; Who Grows in Brooklyn, 1969; Incident on Wilson Street, 1964; I remember Barbara, 1981. Free.
The rain it raineth every day...
Since we've been deluged for the greater part of the month I thought it would be appropriate to find some rain-related entries from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. _______________________________________________ The rain isn't bothering this woman on Cortelyou and Coney Island Avenue in 1948 …
MMNY at BHS
Photos from the Make Music New Y0rk show at BHS yesterday And a review of the show in Girls Rock & Girls Rule!
Old Ladies and Respectable but Indigent Females
Build the Bridge: The Eagle Backs a Failing Venture
If the Eagle had gotten its way, the New York skyline would look quite different. A tunnel from South Brooklyn to the Battery had been on the drawing table for at least a decade in 1939. However, when federal funding started to dry up, it became unclear who would fund such an expensive venture. Enter Robert Moses, whose Triborough Bridge Authority had more than enough spare cash on hand. Moses "graciously" agreed to help and he soon unveiled his proposal - not for a tunnel, but for a bridge. A bridge, he argued, would be…
Photographs by Mike Stein of the Prospect Press
Imagine finding a lost trove of 25,000 negatives documenting life in Brooklyn a quarter century ago. They were produced for a newspaper, beloved in the community for its honest and detailed reporting - and reviled by some for the same reasons - that published for five years, and exists only in the memories of long-time Brooklynites. It was called the Prospect Press, and it lived a short but illustrious life from 1982 to 1987. Although it was only distributed in the communities of Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Kensington and Sunset Park, its impact reached beyond, as it reported on…
Women Make Movies @ BHS
Join BHS and the New York Chapter of COLAGE, a national movement of children, youth, and adults with one or more LGBTQ parents, as we celebrate Brooklyn PRIDE with a screening of films on same-sex marriage from Women Make Movies: My Sister, My Bride directed by Bonnie Burt (26 min) As the issue of gay marriage grips the country, this touching documentary follows the heartwarming and historic journey of two Jewish lesbians as they seek to celebrate their commitment to one another. In Sickness and In Health directed by Pilar Prissas (56 min) A battle to legalize same-sex marriage turns…
ExLab Students on WNYC!
Listen to the Ex Lab student curators of Pages of the Past: The Breukelen Adventures of Jasper Dankaerts on WNYC: And here they are giving a virtual tour of the exhibit which is on view now: AND the students have a blog where they wrote about foot-long oysters and much more...
Herb and Dorothy, and Brooklyn Public Library.
Herb and Dorothy Trailer from Herb and Dorothy on Vimeo. I stand a little bit prouder as a librarian of Brooklyn Public Library today, after seeing Megumi Sasaki's film about art collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel. Herb and Dorothy, a documentary about the lives of librarian Dorothy and postal clerk Herb and their shared passion for art, opened on Friday at Cinema Village on East 12th Street. For those who do not know their story, the Vogels, living in a one-bedroom rent-controlled apartment on the East side, used her salary to cover their expenses and his to buy art. They…
Babes named (in) Brooklyn
Whilst doing research, I discovered an article from March 7, 1938 titled “Everybody Wants Library to Name Baby.” It seems that the Brooklyn Public Library received a “flood of requests for baby names” when the public discovered that the library had a whopping 560,000 names at its disposal. Soon the librarians spent oodles of time looking for names for a “whimsical baby boy with long ears and a penchant for the esthetic” or a “girl, coquettish, second choice of father who wanted boy named Jack.” To manage the demand, the chief…
Now You've Got Plans for Friday
If you've been clicking around the BHS website recently, you've probably seen the mentions of this new exhibit, Pages of the Past: The Breukelen Adventures of Jasper Danckaerts. Or if you've come into our building lately then you might have noticed that exhibit in the midst of installation. Days ago I was stunned to see the high school student-curators who've created this exhibit, painting images of whales and birds onto the walls. The images were straight out of Jasper Danckaerts' diary, perfectly resembling the sepia drawings throughout his journals. I wonder if in 1679, Danckaerts had any…
Admirals Row
BHS is collaborating with the Brooklyn Navy Yard to interview people who worked in the Yard during WWII for our oral history collection. It's a fascinating project and I felt really lucky the first time I got to snoop around inside the gates of the Navy Yard (after spending years riding my bike past it and wondering what goes on in there). It seems like a lot of other people share this curiosity since BHS's new tours of the Navy Yard always fill up fast (the next one is June 21 at 1:30pm)! One part of the Brooklyn Navy Yard is still owned by the federal government and there is a lot of…
What is it about Brooklyn?
Hard Times by guest blogger Richard Reyes-Gavilan, Chief of the Central Library
Library Budget Cuts -- A Recurring Theme In the summer of 1995 New York City’s public libraries were hiring en masse. I’d just moved back to the city after having spent a few years in Texas earning my MLS. Mayor Giuliani, fixated on the quality-of-life issues that—until September 11, 2001—had defined his administration, held firm on the plan for six-day service across the city’s 200 branches. Finding work was easy. Everyone was happy. Just a few years earlier, in 1991, the city, in the depths of recession and long-mired in a crack-fueled…
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the Chicago World's Fair
I just finished reading the book The Devil in the White City. It's a really good read about an unimaginable task done well--the story of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. What does this have to do with Brooklyn? Well, Brooklyn was mentioned many times in the book and there were many famous historical names that I have frequently looked up in the collection that had some association with Brooklyn, and then I remembered, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle sent an entire team of reporters and about 200 Brooklynites to Chicago to cover the fair. So, I…
Revisiting a Lost World: The Past, Present and Future of Brooklyn's Dutch Farms. A Talk by Dr Sean S
This illustrated talk will revisit the lost world of Brooklyn's Dutch farms--from their 17th century origins through their heyday in the mid-19th century when Long Island was the center of American agriculture, to their rapid extinction in the 20th century and the precious but precarious survival of their remnants on the streets of Brooklyn today. Dr Sean Sawyer has taught at Harvard, Columbia and Fordham universities and the New School. He was Director of the Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum from 2001-2007, and is currently an organizer of 5 Dutch Days 5 Boroughs" and the…
The “Figurative Border”
Sunset Park Oral Histories
The current Public Perspectives exhibit, Living and Learning: Chinese Immigration, Restriction, and Community in Brooklyn, 1850 to Present curated by Andy Urban, features audio clips from BHS's oral history collections - you can listen online or download the BHS podcast from iTunes (search the Store for Brooklyn Historical Society). In 1993 - 1994, BHS and the Museum of Chinese in America, then known as the Chinatown History Museum, collected interviews regarding Brooklyn's Chinese Community in Sunset Park. The resulting oral history collection, 8th Avenue - Sunset Park Oral History Project…
Robert Moses, the Power Broker
The below blog is posted on behalf of my Visitor Services colleague, Eric Ursol, who's having a few issues with his log-in info. Eric's here every weekend with me, at the front desk and gift shop, and is a recently graduated History major at St. Francis here in Brooklyn Heights- so his thoughts on the history texts we carry at the BHS gift shop are pretty informed! Robert Moses is one of the most important figures in New York City history. His reign as Parks Commissioner is mired in both fame and infamy. The decades you've lived in will probably determine your opinion on Robert…
iDream of BHS
As someone charged with marketing BHS and our many awesome projects, programs and collections I often find myself weighing the most innovative and cost-effective options to spread the word about our work. Last night it came to me in a dream, (perhaps because of Julie's obsession with them) that creating a BHS iPhone app would certainly be the best way to introduce people to the Brooklyn Historical Society. But then again, what would a BHS app do? Would people be able to look up their family genealogy with the touch of a screen? Or trace their house history by simply typing in the address?…
Beautifying Montague Street with Guerrilla Knitting
I think we can all admit there's an aesthetic division on Montague Street in our Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. In one several-block stretch little shops of delicacies, restaurants with sidewalk seating, and cafes to satiate your caffeine addiction abound. However, in just the one block between Clinton and Court Streets, a parking garage, banks, construction and the subway entrance leaves little to admire (excepting the lovely Brooklyn Trust Company, now the Chase Manhattan Bank). I suppose that's why it was attacked by guerrilla knitters this week. I don't know about anyone else, but I…
Miss Doggett's Masterpiece
If this post is about anything at all, it is about the places you can end up when you don't quite know where you are going. There is a book in our collection that no one ever asks for, even though it is an excellent example of its kind and a work of solid scholarship. The book I have in mind is Marguerite V. Doggett's, Long Island Printing 1791-1830. This bibliography of all the earliest printed works produced on Long Island inspired me some years ago to search the decks of the Library for neglected examples of early Brooklyn printing. [Some people are unaware of the fact…