jmay
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Bio
I am the Photographic Archivist at the Brooklyn Historical Society. I have been managing the photographs since 2006. I'm a graduate of Pratt Institute and have worked in the Pentagram Archive and 40 Acres & a Mule Archive prior to my current position.
Written by Julie May on May 9th, 2012
Riding a Ladies’ Safety, ca.1915, v1988.468.28; Michael Shellens family collection, ARC.094; Brooklyn Historical Society.
From the desk of Julie May, Photo Archivist: For the past couple years, I have commandeered a May blog post or Photo of the Week to exhibit my love of bicycles – both as an activity and as an interesting graphic among Brooklyn Historical Society’s photography collection in acknowledgement of National Bike Month. Unfortunately, I have not discovered any new bicycle photographs in the past year to share and so I am recycling the one above from the Michael Shellens family collection. The two young ladies photographed are likely the daughters of Michael Shellens, Ruth and Hazel, taken in one of the family’s homes in Sunset Park. Ruth is about to leave her sister behind in a ladies’ safety bicycle, a development for cycling that made it easier for ladies to ride while wearing dresses.
Hopefully this picture will entice half the population to throw on a sundress and get out on a bike and the other half to ride along. If you don’t know where to go or who to go with, there are a ton of events listed at a new website here. If you don’t have a bike, New York City is about to embark on another development in cycling – bike share! Coming this July, people wearing all sorts of garments will be able to participate in the joys, without some of the pains, of cycling through Citi Bike – 10,000 bikes at 600 stations.
So by all means, ride any kind of bike over to Brooklyn Historical Society to check out our other photographs, exhibits, and programs — we’re a Bike Friendly Business so you get $1 off admission if you arrive by bike. Happy, safe, and polite riding everyone!
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.
Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Hidden Collections, Library & Archives | No Responses »
Tags: bicycling, Brooklyn, Photo of the Week, Photographs, photography, Photography Collection
Written by Julie May on February 8th, 2012
Gowanus Impression 10:57:46 AM, 2009, 2011.008.04; Gowanus Impressions photographs by Jackie Weisberg, 2011.008; Brooklyn Historical Society.
Anyone who rides the F or G trains knows this spot — it has been disrupting your life for a while now, especially if it means your home stop is skipped. This is the overpass at Smith Street and 9th Street in southern Brooklyn, formally known as the Culver Viaduct, which spans the Gowanus Canal. As one passes by the station or walks below, one can see into the murky ick we’ve come to fear as one of our nation’s recent and controversial Superfund Sites. The canal has a rich past – it was one of Brooklyn’s major commercial waterways during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the consequences of that sometimes bubble up in an unfortunately smelly way. The viaduct has been losing chunks of its infrastructure for some time and is finally getting a makeover.
Perhaps this beautiful photograph taken by Jackie Weisberg at 10:57:46 AM in 2009 will be intriguing enough to make you forget about all that for a moment. Jackie has lived in Brooklyn for many years and only recently felt able to capture the mysterious quality of the Gowanus Canal. Acknowledging its toxic status and its potential, she felt that 2009 was the moment at which she could successfully grasp the canal’s mood, beauty, and ephemeral quality before it all changes. This is one of seventeen photographs she made in her series “Gowanus Impressions,” which explores the canal in a nonjudgmental manner. Jackie donated “Gowanus Impressions” to Brooklyn Historical Society in late 2011. We haven’t even catalogued the images yet so I hope you find this to be a nice preview. You can also go to Jackie’s website to see her entire body of work while we manipulate pixels and metadata on our end. One more year to go before the transit lives of Southern Brooklynites is back to normal – hang in there!
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.
Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Library & Archives | No Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn, Gowanus, Jackie Weisberg, Photo of the Week, Photographs, photography, Photography Collection
Written by Julie May on January 11th, 2012
East side of Furman Street., ca. 1940, v1974.16.228; Edna Huntington papers and photographs, ARC.044, Brooklyn Historical Society.
From the desk of Julie May, Photo Archivist: The first noticeable and great thing about this photograph is the cars, I think. While the new Fiat is sweetly round and compact, I personally don’t think it compares to the curvy lines of the cars above. I imagine they were pretty utilitarian, but I find them romantically stylish. This picture depicts Furman Street – a Furman Street that is no longer. It has transformed from a small street with trees and brick-front buildings to the roaring BQE on the east side of the street and the waterfront on the other side with an occasional building or two. In addition, the new Brooklyn Bridge Park in all its manicured and bike-friendly glory is now between the road and the water. That’s quite a change in a mere seventy years, but that’s Brooklyn for you – always changing.
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.
Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Library & Archives | 2 Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn, Library, Photo of the Week, Photographs, photography, Photography Collection
Written by Julie May on November 16th, 2011
John Jay Pierrepont Home, 1879, v1986.66.70; John Jay Pierrepont photograph collection, ARC.197; Brooklyn Historical Society.
The next time you drive on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) through Brooklyn Heights, imagine what it looked like before there was a BQE. This photograph was taken by John Jay Pierrepont, son of Henry Evelyn and Anna Maria Pierrepont. John and his brother (Henry Evelyn II) lived in Brooklyn Heights and took over Pierrepont Stores, the family’s shipping storage business along the Brooklyn waterfront. In 1879 when this photograph was taken, it would have been very convenient for the brothers to descend the stairs from the backyard of 1 Pierrepont Place, where John resided, toward the offices of the Pierrepont Stores.
Many of the properties along Pierrepont Place enjoyed this aesthetically pleasing and direct route to the water until the BQE was built at the proposal of Robert Moses. After a grueling, public debate, the twentieth-century residents of Brooklyn Heights were able to strike a compromise that eliminated the backyards on Pierrepont Place and installed the Brooklyn Heights Promenade to accommodate the BQE running below instead of criss-crossing the historic neighborhood.
Incidentally, John Jay was also an amateur photographer who chronicled the progress being made on the Brooklyn Bridge and many other waterfront scenes. He was the treasurer for the Long Island Historical Society (now the Brooklyn Historical Society) and a member of the Committee on Brooklyn History.
Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Library & Archives | No Responses »
Tags: Photo of the Week, Photographs, Photography Collection
Written by Julie May on October 12th, 2011
West of Gold Street, south of Prospect Street., ca. 1940, v1974.16.614; Edna Huntington papers and photographs, ARC.044, Brooklyn Historical Society.
This photograph was taken by Long Island Historical Society’s librarian, Edna Huntington, sometime between 1938 and 1942. I chose this picture for the little feral feline caught by the camera in front of the garage door. It’s not National Cat Day (yet ), it’s not my cat’s birthday (November 14), the ASPCA did not put me up to this; I simply felt like acknowledging the many cats in Brooklyn since I’ve been seeing them a lot lately as I ride around on my bicycle. They sit on front lawns, they crawl under warm cars, and they stare at me from their safe window sills as I go by. As for the street where this particular cat was photographed, neither the block nor the structures upon it still exists. While the description leaves the exact coordinates vague, I believe this is now where the Farragut NYCHA Housing Development stands. It was completed in 1952, named after the Hispanic Civil War U.S. Navy Admiral, David Glasgow Farragut, and consists of 1,389 apartment units in ten buildings. Both the BQE construction and the construction of this massive housing development changed this area of Brooklyn substantially and probably scared off the feline population for some time.
Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Library & Archives | 1 Response »
Tags: Brooklyn, cats, Photo of the Week, Photographs, photography, Photography Collection
