Here’s an a little clip from an oral history interview from our collection (circa 1987) with Lillian Santangello, former owner of the Coney Island Wax Museum. The interviewer, Benjamin Filene, asks Lillian about a bunch of things from the Wax Museum that became part of the BHS’ collection, including a wax Nat King Cole head!
Click on the link below to listen:
photos by Sady Sullivan
Today, I attended the 2008 Coney Island Hall of Fame Induction ceremony at the Coney Island History Project museum located under the ever-invigorating Cyclone roller coaster. Carol Albert accepted a plaque on behalf of Astroland Park and three post-mortem inductees were honored: Woody Guthrie, Granville T. Woods, and William Ward.
The Coney Island History Project has a great growing Oral History Archive and they invite visitors to the museum to leave 1 minute memory videos.
1-minute memory recorder
I ran into one of the Interpreting Brooklyn artists, playwright Michael Schwartz, and my friend Peter Kleeman, curator of the Space Age Museum.
Peter and Michael
And lucky for us, a wild coney made a rare appearance.
Sea Rabbit!
I want to let everyone know about a new community-curated exhibit in our Public Perspectives series that will open at BHS on Wednesday, September 10, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. Counter/Culture: The Disappearing Face of Brooklyn’s Storefronts features color photographs by James and Karla Murray of mom and pop shops all over Brooklyn. Keeping it old school, the photos were taken with film. There are photos of single storefronts, and then they took the film and created digitally-edited panoramas of stretches of an entire block of storefronts. In addition to the photographs, there is audio and video of interviews with the storeowners. This show truly captures the character of old storefronts and their owners! The exhibit also addresses the challenges of maintaining a family-owned or small business in the face of neighborhood development.
The opening reception is free and open to the public. Come on by BHS and check it out!
This summer, with the help of two wonderful interns Naomi (Brooklyn College) and Amna (Stuyvesant High School), we have been cataloguing our oral history collection so soon visitors can search through and listen to our oral history interviews right in the library.
