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Brooklyn History Photo of the Week: Gowanus Impression

Written by Julie 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, potential, 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 yes 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.

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Map of the Month – February 2012

Written by Carolyn on February 6th, 2012

This month’s featured map was created by the prolific Brooklyn surveyor Teunis G. Bergen, who copied it from an “ancient map.” According to Bergen, there was no date or surveyor’s name on the “ancient map,” but it was probably made before 1750. The map roughly covers modern-day Brooklyn Heights south to the Gowanus and shows buildings and names of landowners. Please note that any writing on the map with an asterisk was added by Bergen and not found on the original map. If you’re interested in learning more about Bergen, the BHS archive has an amazing collection of his writings and maps.

Copy of an ancient map in possession of a descendant of the Hannes or Hans Bergen: whose house is located thereon. Teunis Bergen. 1864. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection.

(Click on the image to show more detail)

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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Brooklyn History Photo of the Week: Seatrain Workers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard

Written by Steve Terry on February 1st, 2012

Seatrain workers on a break at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, 1977, V1988.21.130; Frank J. Trezza Brooklyn Navy Yard Collection, ARMS 1988.016, Brooklyn Historical Society.

This photo shows Seatrain Shipbuilding workers on break at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1977. This photo was donated by Frank J. Trezza a long-time electrician at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The Frank J. Trezza Collection contains several hundred color photographs, black and white photographs, color negatives, and black and white negatives, all photographed by Frank J. Trezza during his tenure at the Seatrain Shipbuilding. Though the dates of the collection span from 1861 to 1988, the bulk of the records are from the period 1973-1978, when Mr. Trezza was an employee of Seatrain Shipbuilding. The images offer an inside view of the Navy Yard during the final years of shipbuilding there. Included are landscapes of the Navy Yard and its surrounding area, portraits of fellow Seatrain employees on the job, and images of the ships that were built or repaired at the Navy Yard during this time. There are also a few copy prints obtained from the National Archives that depict ships built at the Navy Yard from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.

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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Brooklyn History Photo of the Week: Boys at Fort Hamilton

Written by Keara Duggan on January 25th, 2012

Boys at Fort Hamilton, ca.1910, V1981.284.55; Emmanuel House lantern slide collection, v1981.284; Brooklyn Historical Society.

This photograph features boys from Emmanuel House on a visit to Fort Hamilton. Fort Hamilton is located in Bay Ridge, in the southwestern corner of Brooklyn. American soldiers had used the site as a garrison since the Revolutionary War, but the structure that stands today was not erected until the nineteenth century. The Army commenced building Fort Hamilton on June 11, 1825, completing it after six years and at a cost of half a million dollars. Fort Hamilton has played numerous roles in both war and peacetime. Its military residents included Robert E. Lee, garrisoned there during the 1840s, decades before he would lead the Confederate Army. During the Civil War, the fort protected New York harbor against potential Confederate invaders and provided troops to police the New York Draft Riots of 1863. In the twentieth century, it served as a major port of embarkation during both World Wars. Fort Hamilton continues to be an actively used military site today. The fort also houses the Harbor Defense Museum, which offers educational tours, exhibits, and access to archival collections related to military history in New York City.

Emmanuel House was located at 13 Steuben Street in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. As a civic center and place of outreach run by the Young Men’s League of the Emmanuel Baptist Church, the Emmanuel House offered Sunday school, Kindergarten and recreational classes to children of the church and neighborhood. Emmanuel House was demolished in the mid-twentienth century during an expansion of the neighboring Pratt Institute, at which time outreach and recreational activities were resumed at the Emmanuel Baptist Church.

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The Changing Shape of Coney Island

Written by Carolyn on January 13th, 2012

Even with the best of technology and intentions, early mapmakers didn’t always get it right. Browsing through the map collection a few weeks ago, I noticed that the shape of one of Brooklyn’s most iconic features, Coney Island, appears drastically different from one map to another.  While it’s easy to think of maps as authoritative, scientific representations of geographic space, looking at these helps me to remember that maps are also interpretative. As such, they are affected by the historical context in which they were created and may reflect biases or contain inaccuracies. Either that, or Coney Island has done some pretty incredible shape-shifting!

First up, an image of “Cunny” Island from a map published ca. 1770s. Please note that this is the 3rd state of the map, which was originally published in 1732.

A draught of New York from the Hook to New York Town. Mark Tiddeman. 3rd state. ca. 1770s. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection.

Next, an image from ca. 1763:

Porti della Nuova York e Perthamboy. By Giuseppe M. Terreni. ca. 1763. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection.

Then an image from 1778:

Entrée de la riviere d'Hudson depuis la Pointe Sandy Hook jusqu'a New York, les bancs, les sondes, les guides &c. : traduit de l'Anglais. 1778. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection.

Followed by a map from ca. 1794:

Map of Long Island & vicinity. ca. 1794. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection.

Then a map from 1869:

Map of the county of Kings showing the ward and town boundaries. 1869. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection.

And finally, a map from 1976 showing the Coney Island we all recognize:

Hagstrom Brooklyn, New York. 1976. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection.

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