Watch this great video of a giant anchor arriving home to the Brooklyn Navy Yard where it will soon become part of the exhibition at the Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at Building 92.
Since 2007, BHS and BNYDC have partnered on an oral history project documenting the important work that happens in the Navy Yard. We are currently interviewing people who worked in they Yard in the 1950s and 1960s and for any of the private shipbuilders after the 1966 decommissioning.
You can listen to some clips from WWII-era interviews here. And to suggest someone we should interview please contact the BHS Oral History Program.
BHS is collaborating with the Brooklyn Navy Yard to interview people who worked in the Yard during WWII for our oral history collection. It’s a fascinating project and I felt really lucky the first time I got to snoop around inside the gates of the Navy Yard (after spending years riding my bike past it and wondering what goes on in there). It seems like a lot of other people share this curiosity since BHS’s new tours of the Navy Yard always fill up fast (the next one is June 21 at 1:30pm)!
One part of the Brooklyn Navy Yard is still owned by the federal government and there is a lot of debate about what to do with it if the Navy Yard succeeds in acquiring it: Have you ever passed those ivy-covered abandoned buildings along Flushing Avenue? That’s Admirals Row, a spot that has captured many peoples’ curiosity. I hear Michel Gondry thought about filming part of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind there, or maybe he in fact did film there? It’s a fitting spot since it looks both forgotten and full of memories. The debate about whether it’s possible to restore and preserve the buildings continues – check out this video by the Municipal Art Society – what do you think?
