Building NYC's Water Infrastructure
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
This week we’re taking Photo of the Week on a journey uptown.This 1846 map shows a cross-section of the southern portion of the Old Croton Aqueduct, from the Harlem River to the Distribution Reservoir (at the present-day location of Bryant Park), and resulting flow of water to the southern tip of Manhattan at the Battery. Construction of the Old…
A Bungalow by the Bay
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
This 1879 auction notice advertising lots for sale in Sheepshead Bay sought to lure potential buyers to Brooklyn's southern limits with the promise of "bathing, boating, and fishing." At the time, the Sheepshead Bay--named after a nightmarish fish with rows of human-like teeth--was less developed than its more popular beachfront cousins, Coney Island and Brighton Beach. Compared to these other…
No To-Go Cocktails Allowed: Brooklyn's Temperance Village
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
Before Prospect Park, before the “Slopes,” before the brownstones, there was “Temperanceville,” or the “South Brooklyn Temperance Village.” This little remembered planned community was part of the first wave of residential development that transformed Brooklyn’s 8th Ward beginning in the early 1830s. This map, probably printed about 1849, advertises available lots for sale between Fourth Avenue and Seventh Avenue, and 12th and 15th Streets. On a current neighborhood map,…
On the Rail: the Behr Monorail that Never Was
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
During the first decade of the twentieth century, Fritz Bernard Behr, a British engineer and inventor of a monorail system, created plans to build a monorail line from South Ferry to Surf Avenue in Coney Island.Behr claimed that express trains on his monorail system would travel between seventy-five and a hundred miles an hour. He also proposed that riders would pay a reasonable three or five cent fare. While Behr had constructed an experimental…
A Grave Tale: Roswell Graves, Jr. and the Cemetery of the Evergreens
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
Among other things, Roswell (Robert) Graves, Jr. was a civil engineer, New York City Surveyor, real estate developer, and not-so-honest businessman. In 1849 he was one of six trustees to incorporate the Cemetery of the Evergreens (also known as Evergreens Cemetery) on the Brooklyn Queens border, part of what’s now known as the Queens Cemetery Belt.Prior to the 19th century, New Yorkers were buried in small cemeteries in churchyards or…
A Litigious Legacy: the Story of a Gravesend Map
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
It was April of 1639, and Anthony Jansen van Salee and his wife Grietje had just been given six months to leave the New Netherlands forever. Anthony, the first known person of Muslim descent to settle in the Americas, had been in and out of court often over the years, chiefly for refusing to pay mandatory fees to the Dutch Reform Church. Grietje had also weathered her share of…
Start Exploring with the BHS Map Portal
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
Today Brooklyn Historical Society is excited to celebrate the launch of our new Map Portal, providing online access to 1500 digitized maps. For the remainder of the summer, we’ll be taking a weekly dive into our map collections to give you a taste of the breadth and depth of the collection, and entice you to start exploring!Paying rent is on every New…
A Summer Day at Dreamland
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
Eugene L. Armbruster's dreamlike photograph shows a mother and daughter in Coney Island's Dreamland amusement park in 1904, the year the park opened. Dreamland was the last of Coney Island's original three large amusement parks, along with Steeplechase Park and Luna Park, and sought to draw visitors with sophisticated architecture and its location right at the water's edge, where the ocean breeze would cool the public during…
Quarantine Summer
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
Now that it is July, Brooklynites are truly in our quarantine summer. Though we may not have our usual bevy of pastimes to look forward to, beaches reopened with lifeguards yesterday, and we are continually entertained (and sometimes annoyed) by fireworks in neighborhoods across the borough and city. This image brings these two pastimes together, showing a view of the sunset behind the Coney Island shoreline with a double exposure of…
A Reckoning for Brooklyn's Philip Livingston: Slaver, Trader, and Signer of the Declaration of Independence
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
We are witnessing a moment of reckoning sweeping across the globe. The simultaneous power and fragility of historical narrative is being exposed as communities reject public monuments erected by past generations. Sculptures of Confederate generals, of Christopher Columbus, of American presidents including Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt are being scrutinized, the “great deeds” they memorialize weighed against the histories of racial oppression and violence they ignore.…
Transforming Brooklyn's Legal Landscape
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
The photograph featured in today's photo of the week shows the demolition of the old Kings County Courthouse in 1961. Only the portico of the once Palladian structure--now a carcass of stone and marble--remains. The courthouse, erected in the 1860s and designed by architects Gamaliel King and Herman Teckritz, was once one of Brooklyn's finest civic structures. Located on 250 Joralemon…
Grammar School Graduation, 1900
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With this week's Photo of the Week, we congratulate the graduates of 2020! The photograph above shows the graduating class of P.S. 15 in the year 1900. The school stood on Third Avenue between Schermerhorn and State streets. Today it is the home of the Khalil Gibran International Academy High School, but you can still see evidence of its history above the entrances, where there appears a “Public School” sign in terra cotta over one door, and “Public School No. 15” over another. We are fortunate that on the back of the photo, the donor…
Black Lives Matter
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
This image comes from our collection of photographs from the Brooklyn Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). In the spirit of the work that CORE and similar organizations have done over many decades, today we are using this space to highlight campaigns, organizations, resources, and books where you can learn more, donate, and get involved with the movement for racial justice…
Brooklyn is not a Place, It is a People
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
Over the past several weeks, our Photos of the Week have expressed gratitude for Brooklyn and New York’s essential workers who have been keeping the city going during the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant shelter in place circumstances. In this final installment of this series, we’re putting focus on a different facet essential to Brooklyn: Brooklynites themselves. In a…
Class Portraits from Clinton Hill
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This week we honor Brooklyn's teachers. To all the educators who have rapidly adapted to a remote learning environment, thank you for continuing to provide educational opportunities and a crucial sense of routine to our children. Children in 19th and early 20th century school photographs often look stiff and expressionless—an image of childhood that feels unfamiliar. The many poses and personalities among these students at Emmanuel House in Clinton Hill, by contrast, give these charming photographs a sense of relatability even one…
Cleaning Up in Brooklyn
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
This week we’re honoring our borough’s cleaners and sanitation workers. To the people who are cleaning hospital rooms, grocery stores, buses and subways, and picking up garbage and recycling, thank you for doing this important work to keep us safe and healthy! The above image from 1962 shows a Brooklyn Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) demonstration called “Operation Clean Sweep” and illustrates the…
Keeping New York in Motion
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
This week we honor the transportation workers who are keeping New York City connected in this time of global crisis. To the bus and subway operators and drivers, engineers, mechanics, and tradesmen, along with cleaning staff, thank you for what you are doing to keep our essential workers and others still commuting daily safe. We are devastated by reports, including this recent opinion piece from the New York Times, of transit workers getting sick and…
Changing with the Times, Always First to Respond
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
This week we honor the first responders in Emergency Medical Services (EMS) -- the paramedics, emergency medical technicians, and the Fire Department of the City of New York -- who provide all kinds of vital pre-hospital care. Thank you! This gelatin silver print of firefighters from the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY…
Taking Stock of Staying Stocked
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
During these weeks of sheltering in place, we will be honoring Brooklyn’s essential workers: the people who keep us fed, provide groceries and other essentials, clean homes and workplaces, and take care of us when we’re sick.This week we're honoring our borough's tireless grocery store workers, who have been working to keep food, household needs, and…
The Evolution of a Brooklyn Block
Thomas, Web Applications, Web Applications
This week we honor all the postal, shipping, and delivery workers who continue to deliver our mail, packages, and food throughout our vast city, come rain, shine, or pandemic. This photograph of a US Postal Service carrier pushing his package-filled cart was taken in front of the Wynmore Social Club at 255 Adams Street in downtown Brooklyn around 1925. The club was located across the street from the main Brooklyn…
Pagination
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