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December, 2012

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Photo of the Week: Holiday Carolers

Written by Taina on December 26th, 2012

Carolers at Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building, ca. 1956, V2006.001.1.129; Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building photographs and architectural drawings, ARC.116; Brooklyn Historical Society.

The children pictured above are carolers from PS 9, located in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, singing around a piano and office desk in the Williamsburgh Savings Bank building in 1956. Some of our staff members have recently joined the ranks of Christmas Carolers, singing at Albee Square in partnership with the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance. As the holidays continue here in Brooklyn, we are thinking of our neighbors in Newtown, Connecticut and throughout the City. We wish everyone a safe, reflective, and healing New Year.

Happy Holidays to you and your family,
Brooklyn Historical Society Staff

Interested in seeing more photos from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images. To search our entire collection of images visit BHS’s Othmer Library Wed-Fri, 1:00-5:00 p.m.

 

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Photo of the Week: Fulton Ferry Landing

Written by Julie May on December 19th, 2012

Manhattan skyline as seen from Brooklyn Fulton Ferry landing area, ca. 1975, v1989.18.56; DUMBO, Brooklyn waterfront photographs and slides, Joseph Maraio, V1989.018; Brooklyn Historical Society.

This week’s post comes from our CHART intern, Twila Rios, who is currently digitizing and cataloging the DUMBO, Brooklyn waterfront photographs and slides by Joseph Maraio.

What a difference a few decades make.  This is a picture of a new park deck circa 1975 in the Fulton Ferry area of DUMBO. The two people strolling on the deck are probably enjoying views of the Twin Towers, the Woolworth Building (behind that tree), the Brooklyn Bridge and the rest of Manhattan’s skyline.  They are also ignoring the No Trespassing signs that are still posted!

Brooklyn Historical Society’s Water Street Associates collection on the Fulton Ferry Landing proposal  (1990.027) contains the architectural plans proposing a renovation of the Fulton Ferry area, dated 1971, at which time the area shown in the above photograph was a parking lot; not a park deck. Now part of the Empire-Fulton Ferry Park, this picture indicates that this part of the waterfront was identified as a locale in need of renovation more than once: in 1971 and its more recent proposal that we enjoy today. As of Fall 2012, the same view of the Manhattan skyline is dominated by the in-process One World Trade Center and the twists and turns of Frank Gehry’s Beekman Tower.

Interested in seeing more photos from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images. To search our entire collection of images visit BHS’s Othmer Library Wed-Fri, 1:00-5:00 p.m.

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Progress on Documenting Sandy, from the Director of Library and Archives

Written by Jacob Nadal on December 18th, 2012

The history of Brooklyn contains many stories of resilience and reinvention and Hurricane Sandy adds another chapter to that account. Brooklyn has come out in force to help this recovery and Brooklyn Historical Society is committed to doing its part by making sure there is a thorough and publicly available collection of material that will document the preparations, response, and recovery efforts.

Soon after Sandy made landfall, Brooklyn History began using email and social media to collect photographs. Our November Photo of the Week series featured “before and after” photo essays about areas impacted by the storm. We have a Storify page where you can see some of these photos, and you can still contribute: tweet photos to @brooklynhistory or using the hashtags #brooklynphotos and #sandy, or email us at library@brooklynhistory.org, with “Sandy” in the subject line.

Throughout the fall, BHS has turned its efforts to more systematic documentation of the storm. Journalists sometimes refer to their work as the first rough draft of history. I think of the archive’s work coming just behind the news cycle to collect the information that writers and researchers will need to write the second, third, and thirty-fourth drafts of our history. To that end, we have started up collecting efforts in several areas. Some of these projects are already in progress, although the most intense work will happen in the first months of 2013, and some will go on for a few years:
Click to continue »

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Photo of the Week: Happy Chanukkah Hanukkah Channuka?

Written by Julie May on December 12th, 2012

Grandmother at Hanukah Party in Brighton Beach, ca. 1980, v1992.43.29; Marcia Bricker photographs, v1992.43; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Happy Chanukkah* Brooklyn!  Wednesday, December 12 is the fourth day and the fifth night of Chanukkah.  So, gamble away your chocolate gelt over a crazy game of dreidl, catch a glimpse of the bike-drawn menorah in Williamsburg, Oattend any number of menorah lightings around town, and definitely overdo it on the latkes – Chanukkah comes but 8 days a year!

One more thing: call your Bubby and thank her for the real Chanukkah gelt.

* And yes, this is MY preferred spelling of the festival of lights.  Google it any way you like because as far as I can tell, no one has come to an agreement on the spelling – except maybe in Hebrew (chet, nun, kaf, hey).

Interested in seeing more photographs from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery which includes a selection of our images.  To search our entire collection of images, visit BHS Othmer Library Wed-Fri 1:00-5:00 p.m.

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Map of the Month – December 2012

Written by Carolyn on December 8th, 2012

This month’s featured map is a reproduction of Hooker’s Map of the Village of Brooklyn in the Year 1827. The reproduction was made in 1861 for Brooklyn reporter Henry McCloskey’s Manual of the Corporation. Hooker’s map is one of the earliest detailed maps of Brooklyn, showing wards, churches, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the marshlands of Gowanus, and even Andre Parmentier’s Garden, one of Brooklyn’s earliest botanical gardens.

Hooker’s map of the village of Brooklyn in the year 1827. William Hooker. 1861. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection.

1827, the year that the Hooker Map was originally published, was an auspicious year for Brooklynites. On July 4th of that year, New York State abolished slavery.  Over the next decades, Kings County, an agricultural region once reliant on slave labor, would become the home of a thriving and diverse abolitionist movement.  Along with Weeksville Heritage Center and Irondale Ensemble Project, BHS is chronicling the history of Brooklyn’s abolitionist movement through the In Pursuit of Freedom Project.

Click here to view detail from the map.

Interested in seeing more maps? You can view the BHS map collection anytime during the library’s open hours, Wed.-Fri., from 1-5 p.m. No appointment is necessary to view most maps. Our cataloged maps can be searched through BobCat and our map inventories through Emma.

Map of the Month is part of a project to catalog our map holdings, funded through the Council on Library and Information Resources Hidden Collections program. If you would like to help us do more of this kind of work with our exciting map holdings, donate here.

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