Fascinating Brooklyn stories from our local history archivists.
Forgotten Brooklyn, an Illustrated Talk and Book Signing by Kevin Walsh. Central Library Trustees Ro
How many guide books to New York City do you know that devote two pages to Brooklyn and think they have done a good job? Kevin Walsh, author of Forgotten New York, breaks this unsatisfactory mold, exploring the borough from end to end and uncovering corners even lifelong Brooklynites may not know. Kevin Walsh is an urban explorer extraordinaore and the creator of www.forgotten-ny.com. He grew up in Bay Ridge and now hosts sold-out Forgotten New York tours throughout the boroughs.
Open Forum: Dodgers
This Saturday, March 21, 1 - 3 PM BHS is hosting an a program: Walter O'Malley and the Brooklyn Dodgers, A New View a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael D'Antonio and Peter O'Malley, moderated by Richard Sandomir, Sports Broadcasting Reporter for the New York Times, followed by a Q&A session, on the occasion of the launch of a new book Forever Blue. This program has sparked lots of press and community interest. BHS is providing this open forum for discussion: we invite you to share your thoughts in the comments section below. This blog forum will be open…
What's in a Name Part 2: Looking for a community
Old directories have always seemed to me like snapshots of the past. Open one up and you are privy to all the people that lived for that period of time. The indexing of citizens: orderly, logical, alphabetical. From the early to mid 1800's the directories listed African-Americans in Brooklyn with "c" or "col" after their names, and I began to wonder how best to use this information. What about constructing a different snapshot--a snapshot of the African-American community during the civil war? The year 1863…
Storyscape
Last Friday, Storyscape launched their third issue with a night of readings and performance here at BHS, it was great. As editor Anne Hays described, Storyscape is a different kind of literary journal since it's not about Fiction or Poetry or Prose, it's about Stories, and stories can be true, untrue, part true and part fiction, told through photographs, drawings, audio pieces such as Ken Cormier's Sounds of Lunch - so good!
Church of the Atonement Ledger
A recent arrival on our shelves is the Ledger of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Atonement at 239 17th Street near Fifth Avenue. This once pretty and active church is now almost a ruin. The ledger documents meetings of the vestry from 1887 to 1907, twenty years of growth and optimism in the life of the congregation. During this period, a new building was erected, an organ by Reuben Midmer was installed, and the arrival of the elevated railroad on Fifth Avenue caused the church to sue for annoyance and depreciation of property. They won a settlement of $5000 from the…
John Manbeck Packs the House
Former Borough Historian John Manbeck gave a lively illustrated talk last night in the Brooklyn Collection's Reserve Room, before a packed house. Using photographs from his two recent books, Brooklyn Historically Speaking and Historic Photos of Brooklyn, John covered the borough from end to end and back again with the ease that can only come from deep knowledge of his subject. He also signed copies of his books.
Kids Workshops
Last weekend, the Center for Architecture Foundation’s Family Day and BHS hosted a workshop for kids about building the Brooklyn Bridge and lots of fun was had by all. Which got us thinking... Parents, teachers, babysitters, mentors and friends of young people: We'd love to hear your ideas for future Kids Workshops. Are mornings or afternoons better? What age group has the greatest need? What would your kids be into? Let us know! Photos by Catherine Teegarden
Elders Share the Arts
I just went to a wonderful performance presented by Elders Share the Arts: Talkin' Brooklyn - A Story Circle Showcase. Story Circle has been partnering with neighborhood branches of the Brooklyn Public Library and local senior centers for six years, inviting elders to get together to share memories and reflect together on their long and unique lives. For this showcase, eight storytellers read from a script made up of multiple narrators' stories which echoed, overlapped, and brought to life Brooklyn childhoods. They told about sing-a-longs in neighborhood movie theaters and street games: "…
North Brooklyn Story Project
Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG), a community organization that has been serving North Brooklyn since 1994, is starting a project called the North Brooklyn Story Project and their first meeting is tonight at 7pm at 101 Kent Avenue at North 8th Street in Williamsburg. This is such a wonderful idea, it's an oral historian's fantasy that everyone everywhere will start recording everybody else everywhere! If you live in North Brooklyn, get involved, and if you live in another part of Brooklyn think about starting your own local Story Project. And if you would like to learn more about…
Brooklyn Barbados Africa
I can't wait to read Brooklyn-born novelist and MacArthur fellow Paule Marshall's new memoir Triangular Road. In our Listening to Women seminar, we will be discussing the differences between oral histories, autobiographies, and memoirs - I'm curious what people think.
Pigtown
Some new pictures of Pigtown by E.E. Rutter that have made their way to us, started me wondering where exactly Pigtown was. I am now in a position to answer that question: it was, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of April 6, 1921, and allowing for some flexibility of boundaries, "that part of Flatbush which is bounded on the north by Malbone st., on the south by Midwood st., on the east by Albany Ave and on the west by Nostrand ave." The images show tracts of wasteland, ash dumps, garbage piles, stark new dwellings fronting empty blocks defined by crudely…
New Photo Exhibit at the Brooklyn Collection!
The Brooklyn Collection recently acquired 29 photographs of the Steeplechase Park Circus in Brooklyn during the 1936-1937 season. Images include death-defying barrel jumps, performing horses and acrobats, and more. Visit the Brooklyn Collection at the Brooklyn Public Library, Central Branch to view this unique collection. .
So this is Brooklyn! An illustrated talk by John Manbeck. Wed, March 11 2009, 7 p.m.
Brooklyn's former borough historian will give an illustrated talk on Brooklyn's history, showing many photographs published in his recent books, Historic Photos of Brooklyn and Brooklyn: Historically Speaking. John B. Manbeck taught English and journalism at Kingsborough Community College for 32 years. He has lectured at the Smithsonian and for the New York Council for the Humanities. He will be available to sign copies of his books at the end of the talk. This event will take place in the Brooklyn Collection Reserve Room on the Second Floor of the Central Library.
Brooklyn Born
We're enjoying this blog today:
Brooklyn Born: Views of a Born and Bred Brooklynite
And the New York Times' Brooklyn blogging foray based in Fort Greene/Clinton Hill:
The Local
And photos of Brooklyn covered in snow:
Brooklyn's New Culinary Movement
This time the New York Times got it right about Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Kitchen is a dreamy store, the owners Taylor and Harry are wonderful, and it's a great place to take classes like How to Make Kombucha. Plus, it's good to read about the growing successes of mom & pop operations and not just their closings, like Jimmy Prince's Major Prime Meat Market on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island which opened in 1934 and is closing at the end of the month. In honor of Jimmy Prince, shop local this weekend and come see our exhibit Counter/Culture: The Disappearing Face of Brooklyn's Storefronts!…
It's Here: The Brooklyn Collection Teacher's Guide!
We are proud to present a new FREE resource for educators in Brooklyn - A Teacher's Guide: Student Projects at the Brooklyn Collection. Our new publication will help Social Studies teachers create exciting and rewarding projects for their students using the thousands of materials held right here in the Brooklyn Collection. In addition to basic information about our collection, the guide also provides... Worksheets and Lesson Plans: Sample Documents from Brooklyn's past: Example projects with step-by-step instructions:…
Women Veterans
Here's more information about this event next week: Women Veterans: Citizen-Soldiers in Changing Times Thursday, March 5, 6:30 – 8:30 PM *This BHS event is being held around the corner from BHS at the Rotunda Gallery, 33 Clinton Street* Women veterans who served in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan discuss their military experiences and the expanding role of women in U.S. Armed Forces. Presented in conjunction with the Brooklyn Historical Society exhibit In Our Own Words: Portraits of Brooklyn’s Vietnam Veterans Featuring: Joan Furey, author with Lynda Van Devanter of Visions of War, Dreams of…
FUREE Film Premiere
Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE), a Brooklyn-based, multi-racial organization announce the premiere screening of the documentary Some Place Like Home: The Fight Against Gentrification in Downtown Brooklyn this coming December - tickets are on sale now. Check out the trailer, what do you think?
The Sheepshead Bay Race Track and the Birth of a Black Community. Illustrated talk, Wed Feb 25th, 20
Brooklyn Collection Librarian June Koffi and others will give an illustrated talk on the history of the race track, the founding of the First Baptist Church of Sheepshead Bay that welcomed many of its African American workers, and the community that grew around them. This program will take place at 7 p.m. in the Brooklyn Collection Reserve Room on the Second Floor of the Central Library.
Bath houses or Axel Hedman Part III
I am probably the only person alive in Brooklyn to have made regular use of a Scottish municipal bath house as well as a "steamie," a public laundry facility. In my student days in Edinburgh I lived for a year in a flat with a bath tub that filled so slowly that by the time you had enough water for a bath, it was stone cold. The solution was the bath house around the corner from James Thin Bookseller, which had big deep bathtubs with an enormously wide faucet that released a river of hot water, filling the tub in seconds. While some probably associate such places with poverty,…
Grunge Is Dead
Following in the footsteps of Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, authors of Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk, comes Greg Prato's Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music. I'm excited to see how this book talks about Riot Grrrl. And I'm always interested in this small but powerful distinction: THE Oral History vs. AN Oral History, hmm... is there a difference?
Brooklyn Women
Yesterday, I was getting some ducks in order for the Brooklyn Navy Yard Oral History Project we're working on and browsing through some audio recordings to double check dates of birth and I happened to listen to two striking moments. In one, a woman who grew up in Red Hook in the 1920s and 1930s breaks into tears when she talks about having to end her schooling and go to work. She was a proud honors student but she didn''t finish high school. In the second, a woman who worked as a welder in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during WWII talks about how she would have loved to continue her career as a…
On moving houses, and John Thatcher.
A print that is new to our collection got me thinking about buildings that have been moved, about things worth keeping, and exile, and all sorts of serious things. Single-pointed focus is not my strong point, and so the faithful reader--if you are still there, thank you--will just have to put up with reading several posts melded into one. This print shows the Brighton Beach Hotel being moved back from the beach to terra firma in 1888, after erosion brought the ocean to the very foundations of the building. No small structure, the hotel was…
America I AM
America I AM: The African American Imprint is currently on view at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. I heard about it on NY1 yesterday where they quoted the exhibition's press release: An interactive component of the exhibition will allow visitors to leave their own video “imprints,” and this collection will grow throughout the life of the exhibit to become the largest recorded oral history project in U.S. history. And that got me thinking about the meaning of oral history. Recording the impressions of museum visitors certainly creates an excellent video document that future…
Federal Writers' Project
Oh wow, this is a treasure: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 - 1940.* There are 417 stories in the New York City collection. In one titled Brooklyn Streets the worker (that's how the WPA writers were cited) William Wood describes The Hundski Pickers he heard many tell about: The Hundski Pickers were a strange occupational group whose scattered membership plied their business in Brooklyn during the early years of the present century. Their calling was definitely unconnected with the harvest fields; nor was it related with the garnering of some strange genus of flora. In…
New Oral Histories
Islam, Women and Violence in Kashmir: Between India and Pakistan by Nyla Ali Khan I have chosen to deploy oral evidence in my book, which has allowed me to approach events, notions, and literatures about which there was meager evidence from other sources. The use of oral history has empowered my interviewees/correspondents, people of Jammu and Kashmir, in significant ways, bringing acknowledgment of hitherto disregarded opinions and experiences. Chicana Sexuality and Gender: Cultural Refiguring in Literature, Oral History, and Art by Debra Blake Since the 1980s Chicana writers including…
Citizen Soldiers
While We Lie Sleeping, a silent short film by Monica Sharf, is a tribute to those who have served or are still serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a provocative addition to the 'support the troops and oppose the war' conversation. Relatedly, we're hosting a discussion with women who have served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam: Women Veterans: Citizen Soldiers in Changing Times Thursday, March 5th 6:30 - 8:30pm
Collective History of LGBT Groups
Spreading the word about a good public history project: OutHistory, an educational website produced by CUNY's Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies is collecting histories of LGBT Employee and Other Groups. Jonathan Ned Katz, director of OutHistory.org, says: We’d especially like to have histories of LGBT employee organizing at Google and IBM, at other electronic media companies, and at other corporations. We are also asking users to create histories of organized LGBT groups within unions, and among LGBT professionals.
Give a Man a Job!
Last week a teacher asked me to find evidence of the New Deal in Brooklyn. She is asking her students to complete a project on the Great Depression and compare it to the economic situation in Brooklyn today. As my research progressed, I stumbled upon the story of the NRA, or National Recovery Administration, a New Deal initiative with direct ties to Brooklyn's past. Started in 1933, the NRA (not to be confused with the Rifle Association), was one of President Roosevelt's first major efforts. It was designed to enforce strategies that were set forth in the…
Lincoln's 200th Birthday
Thank goodness for well-preserved audio archives! On the occasion of Lincoln's 200th birthday, WNYC is sharing a clip from their audio archives recorded in 1938: This is William R. Rathvon, the only known eyewitness of both Lincoln’s arrival at Gettysburg and the address itself to have left an audio recording of his recollections. Click here to listen.
Brooklyn Vets Share with Teachers
Red Hook Wedding Hall?
Yesterday, we hosted the Brooklyn Real Estate Roundtable. I wasn't there, but according to the Brooklyn Paper this morning, Red Hook developer Greg O'Connell (who built the Fairway) is proposing a high-end wedding hall near the end of Van Dyke Street. The funny thing is, while this announcement was being discussed downstairs, I was upstairs interviewing Frank Palescandolo (b. 1917), a writer who grew up in Coney Island and whose most famous book Rumble on the Docks (1953) is set in Red Hook. It's about longshoremen and teenage gangs, it's got a classic pulp cover, and in 1956 it was made…
West Indian Roots of Hip Hop
Saturday, February 28, 3 - 6pm Organized by our friends at City Lore and featuring Dr. Natasha Lightfoot, DJ Kool Herc, Kool DJ Red Alert, Ralph McDaniels, and Co-founder of VP Records in Jamaica, Patricia Chin.
Food in Bushwick
This sounds like it will be a really interesting community conversation: Past, Present, Future of Food: Bushwick, Brooklyn A(n Urban) (Farm) Salon March 7, 2009 1:00 to 4:00 Brooklyn Public Library, Bushwick Branch 340 Bushwick Avenue, L train to Montrose stop We will explore how Brooklyn and Bushwick in particular went from being so rich an agricultural community to the desert it is today, and we’ll talk about what people can and ARE doing to grow food here. How did it happen that all the land was developed? What kind of food can you get to eat here now? What’s made here? Is it good for you…
Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales visits BHS
Jimmy Wales, founder of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, filmed a promo in BHS' Library for USA network's "Character of the Year Award". Click here to see the longer version of the commercial with Mr. Wales discussing censorship, the future of the internet and other fascinating ideas with the stunning Othmer Library as backdrop.
Counter/Culture Extended
The rumors are true! We're extending the Public Perspectives exhibition Counter/Culture: The Disappearing Face of Brooklyn's Storefronts. If you haven't yet seen Karla and Jim Murray's photographs of mom & pop shops in Brooklyn or their gorgeous new book Storefront: The Disappearing Face of New York, make the time to visit, it's really great. Jim and Karla also photo-document grafitti in their book Burning New York and that's how they fell into the Storefront project.
Oral History in Turkey
Oral history workshops are becoming really popular in Turkey. Professor Leyla Neyzi, who leads the workshops, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “We have started to think very differently about our history. The past is being rethought in terms of the demands of the present.” Yesterday, we hosted a workshop for teachers regarding our oral history exhibition In Our Own Words: Portraits of Brooklyn Vietnam Veterans. We discussed ways to teach contested histories and difficult material; using oral history as a tool in the classroom both to bring history alive and to teach important…
Lakota Oral History Found
Oral historians are always talking about the best way to archive and preserve oral history interviews. At this moment in time, we're all working to digitize interviews in our collections recorded on cassette tapes, since cassette tapes degrade and break over time. Storing things digitally seems like an archivist's dream because digital files can be copied over and over without effecting the original and you can easily store them in multiple places. But what's still the most reliable way to preserve an oral history interview? Paper. Good ol' (acid free) paper. Proof positive: A woman in…
Women in Archives
Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending a conference at Columbia University called Archiving Women, "bringing together scholars and archivists to examine feminist practices in the archive". It was as interesting and interdisciplinary as one would expect, and it was very crowded! Many people spoke about the historical and habitual lack of focus on women in archival collections. Central to that is the debate about What constitutes archives-worthy materials. To illustrate how public/professional lives intertwine with the personal Michael Ryan described his processing of Erica Jong's…
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Everytime the New York Times writes about Brooklyn neighborhoods it's like they are just discovering the borough!
In Brooklyn, A Slice of the South
I now pronounce you...
Olivia's post on minstrel shows got me wondering about cultural oddities that appear in our collection: No, this is not a photograph of a mysterious child wedding. It is a "Tom Thumb Wedding" hosted by All Souls Universalist Church, located on Ocean and Ditmas Avenues, in 1951. Tom Thumb weddings are not named after the folklore character. They are inspired by an actual event involving the famous General Tom Thumb, pictured here in 1844. At just under three feet tall, General Thumb, born Charles Sherwood Stratton, was one of the…
Change--Follow Up
While we are still in this post-inaugural glow I wanted to follow up on the Brooklyn Daily Eagle article about Oscar De Priest, the African-American congressman from Illinois. In January of 1934 he began his campaign to publicize the ban on African-Americans eating in the House restaurant. He obtained the 145 signatures necessary to force House consideration of his resolution to investigate the ban. This ban was issued by Representative Lindsay Warren of North Carolina who was chairman of the Accounts Committee controlling the restaurant. In June…
Brooklynology interviewed in Ephemera Blog
Check out the article in Ephemera. Exploring the World of Old Paper, entitled "Brooklyn Public Library Blog interview." That's us! http://www.ephemera.typepad.com
Axel Hedman Part II--I think
Back in November I posted a short article about the Brooklyn architect Axel Hedman. While researching that article I came across evidence that Hedman had designed a bath house on Hicks Street, but was unable to find any picture of it in our files and eventually gave up the search. (See http://tinyurl.com/bes7zm) I assumed that the bath house had been razed to make way for the BQE. Well, one thing has a way of leading to another. Following our interest in Brooklyn-related ephemera, we have just acquired an interesting group of old menus. Among them is one for a dinner given on…
It's A Small Island After All
Yesterday I had one of those "small world" experiences that reinforces the idea that there aren't many degrees of separation between all of us (and Kevin Bacon). Every Wednesday I volunteer at the Brooklyn Historical Society, helping Oral History Coordinator Sady Sullivan organize audio files that are backlogged or fall through the proverbial cracks. Sady had recently found some old Coney Island related interviews, including one with the son of Marcus Illions, a Lithuanian immigrant that became a world class carver of horses on the Coney Island Carousels, and Lillie Santangelo, founder of…
Brooklyn Menus
I made some thrilling new discoveries in our ephemera files: Menus! We are lucky enough to have several of them and I am now on a crusade to expand the collection. These menus give us a fascinating glimpse of culinary history and menu design in New York City's most populous borough. Social clubs had great menus, not just for the food that was offered, but also for their artwork and general frivolity. Some menus were just that - a menu in its most common form, describing what the food for the evening would be. But…
Astroland Rocket
The Astroland Rocket of Coney Island finally found a new home. Former Astroland co-owner, Carol Hill Albert donated the super-awesome Rocket to the NYC Economic Development Corp. on behalf of the Coney Island History Project. We still don't know where it will actually live though. Photo by Peter Kleeman, Space Age Museum
Archiving Women
Cool conference @ Columbia this Friday: And check out this related project: Engendering the Archive.
Walking on Water
In my last entry, I alluded to my love for our print collection. With all of the snow and ice we have seen this winter, I thought I would share another favorite: Harper's Weekly published this print in March of 1871. Here we see a few ambitious souls walking across a frozen East River while others enjoy the unusual scene from the safety of the piers. Although it was not a regular occurrence, the East River did freeze from time to time, stopping all boat traffic and giving Brooklynites and New Yorkers (the two were still independent cities) the…
Worst Joke Ever
Ok, so, this post isn't Brooklyn-related, but this is an important document of our times: Watch George H.W. Bush telling an infuriating joke about women: I'm looking forward to having the space to discuss the ramifications of things like this at our forthcoming seminar Documenting Women's Lives.