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11,713 Photos of the Week: Brooklyn Visual Heritage has Launched!

Written by Leah on March 6th, 2013

We are happy to announce the Brooklyn Visual Heritage (BVH) website, http://www.brooklynvisualheritage.org. The website was created through Project CHART, a 3-year collaborative project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) that began in 2010 between the Pratt School of Information and Library Science (Pratt-SILS), Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS), Brooklyn Museum (BM), and Brooklyn Public Library (BPL).

Project CHART supports a diverse group of Pratt-SILS students who take series of courses focusing on digital libraries and work with the staff of these distinguished institutions. Together, they have researched, cataloged, and digitized thousands of historical photographs of Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn Visual Heritage website highlights only a portion of the visual collections at these Brooklyn institutions. Each image contains links back to the partner sites, where you can learn more and contact the staff at the individual institutions for help with your research.

This has been a great endeavor that has allowed us to pull together a portion of their image collections from three great cultural heritage institutions in Brooklyn. We invite you to explore and use this new online resource intended to serve scholars, historians and the general public of all ages, to engage with Brooklyn’s historic past and make connections to its present diverse and vibrant culture.

Here are some image highlights from the three institutions…enjoy!

[Woman standing at an intersection], 1977, V2007.042.2; 1977 Blackout Slide collection, V2007.042; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Cocktail party balked, 1953, CRIM 0093; Crime Collection; Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection.

Ebbets Field welcome, 1944, DODG 0135; Brooklyn Dodgers collection; Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Collection.

Tradecard. Jos. O’Brien & Co., Dry & Fancy Goods. 151 to 159 Atlantic Ave. Brooklyn, NY. Recto, : [Advertising cards] [ 1883-1889]; Brooklyn Museum Libraries, Special Collections

Views: U.S., Brooklyn. Brooklyn, Coney Island. View 012: Coney Island, about 1899, Lantern Slide Collection; Brooklyn Museum Archives.

[Female Factory Workers], 1915 ca., V1988.35.5; Eberhard Faber Pencil Company collection, ARC.028; Brooklyn Historical Society.

For even more images from the Brooklyn Historical Society photography collection please 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.

For more information on Brooklyn Visual Heritage you can also find us on Facebook and Twitter here:

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Brooklyn-Visual-Heritage/132586790244481?ref=ts&fref=ts

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bklyn_Heritage

The website will be presented on at the upcoming 2013 ARLIS annual conference in Pasadena, California and also at the 2013 Museums and the Web conference in Portland, Oregon. Tula Giannini, Dean, Pratt-SILS will present the paper, Visualizing Brooklyn at the Electronic Visualization and the Arts Conference in London in June 2013.

Project CHART is funded through an IMLS grant sponsored by the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian program.

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Exhibitions, Hidden Collections, Library & Archives | No Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Past & Present, Brooklyn photos, Photographs, Photography Collection

Renovation Report – Behind the Scenes

Written by Janice on January 24th, 2013

Welcome to Renovation Report, the first installment in a monthly series of blog posts to provide progress reports on Brooklyn Historical Society’s (BHS) current renovation and to highlight the fascinating features of our landmark building. Designed by architect George Post and opened in 1881, Brooklyn Historical Society’s building was ahead of its time, and will be once again.

BHS trustees and staff view the ceiling restoration of the ground floor event space

BHS is midway through construction to renovate the first floor and lower level. We are thrilled to see physical changes unfold! We remain OPEN during this construction period, and the new spaces are slated to open in fall 2013 in conjunction with the launch of BHS’s 150^th anniversary celebrations. We want to let you know what’s happening, what to expect, share some of the amazing architectural details of our building, and give you an insider’s view into the behind-the-scenes work that is underway.

The newly configured spaces will include 2,200 square feet of new galleries for exhibitions and create a classroom for student and teacher programs. We are also restoring the historic entrance to the building and will provide an exciting, new welcome desk and Brooklyn specific gift shop. These updates will improve visitor flow through the building with better ADA access. Central to the project is enlivening our main event space for public programs and space rentals by restoring the space to the full breadth of the original auditorium. It will once again accommodate up to 200 people seated, highlight the detailed wood ceiling with updated lighting, and offer a fully equipped audio-visual system. All of these changes to the building modernize the spaces for current and future use while respecting the magnificence of our landmark building. View the new designs here.

Cross-section of the newly designed spaces on BHS’s first floor and lower level

Please check back next month for the latest update. Or view the whole series in our blog category, Landmark Building.

Posted in Landmark Building | No Responses »
Tags: Architecture, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, George B. Post, Historic Landmark, Renovation

Map of the Month – January 2013

Written by Carolyn on January 14th, 2013

This month’s featured map shows a plan for the Parade Ground, laid out just south of Prospect Park. Parade grounds served a significant purpose in the 19th century by providing large expanses of land where the military could conduct drills and exercises. Originally, the park’s designers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux proposed that the park’s parade ground be located in East New York, but they later settled on an area south of the park. Completed in 1869, about two years after the park opened to the public, the Parade Ground served the military’s needs while protecting the grasses of the Long Meadow from the stress of repeated drills. As early as 1881 the Grounds began to be used for field sports when not being used drills and parades. By 1905 the Parade Grounds consisted of twenty-five baseball diamonds, only half of which were regulation size and during the winter the area hosted rugby and four football fields.

Plan for the Parade Ground : proposed to be laid out for Kings Co., L.I. States & Koch. ca. 1860. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection.

(Click on the image to see more detail)

Special thanks goes out to Paul Nelson, Press Director of the Prospect Park Alliance, and the Prospect Park Archives who helped with some of the historic details of this post!

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.

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Hidden Collections, Library & Archives | 3 Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn, Map of the Month, maps, Prospect Park

Brooklyn History Photo of the Week: Summer

Written by Susan Gamble on August 1st, 2012

Summer, Dr. Ralph Irving Lloyd, circa 1910, v1981.15.208; Lloyd Collection; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Back in the early twentieth century, before the heyday of air conditioning, shady trees offered a welcome respite from hot Brooklyn sidewalks. This photograph of one shady street was taken by Dr. Ralph Irving Lloyd in Park Slope circa 1910. It is part of the Lloyd Collection which includes roughly 400 lantern photographs of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and other locations, taken between 1890 and 1920. Dr. Lloyd was an ophthalmologist by trade, but had a passion for photography. Dr. Lloyd’s subjects ranged from old buildings and baseball to scenery and street scenes, We hope this photo will inspire you, next time you’re walking down the hot street with an Italian ice in hand, to picture what that street might have looked like one hundred years ago.

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 | 2 Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn, Park Slope, Photo of the Week, Photographs, photography, Photography Collection, summer

Brooklyn History Photo of the Week: Doll and Spinning Wheel

Written by Susan Gamble on July 25th, 2012

Doll and Spinning Wheel amid Bookshelves on Top Floor of Long Island Historical Society, 6/21/1979, Amy Davis, v1974.31.103; Photographs Relating to Long Island Historical Society; Brooklyn Historical Society.

With renovations to BHS’s first floor and lower-level underway and Brooklyn Historical Society’s 150^th anniversary rapidly approaching, it is fun to look through photographs of the institutional archives collection. One such photograph features this eerie porcelain doll, once housed in BHS’s storage room. This doll may seem lost and lonely, but according to Mrs. Gordon, a former BHS librarian, in the days of volunteer “women’s groups” at BHS the doll collection was considered to be an extremely valuable part of the library’s holdings. This photograph was taken in 1979 when Brooklyn Historical Society was still known as the Long Island Historical Society; the name change took place in 1985. Look for more stories and images from BHS’s past as we launch our 150^th anniversary celebration in 2013.

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Hidden Collections, Library & Archives | No Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Historical Society, dolls, Photo of the Week, Photographs, photography, Photography Collection

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