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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

Photo of the Week: Self Portrait

Written by Julie May on February 6th, 2013

Untitled, January 11, 1899, 2010.023.30; 141 Quincy Street photograph album, 2010.023; Brooklyn Historical Society.

This charming photograph comes from a photo album discovered and donated to the Brooklyn Historical Society by the current owner of 141 Quincy Street. The album contains interior photographs of the home, this young lady’s family members including a sister, both parents, and a baby, in addition to a parade and a few outings. 141 Quincy Street is located between Bedford and Franklin Avenues in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. The house was built around the turn of the century in what was at that time a middle-class neighborhood of German immigrants. Legend has it that the sisters lived in the house their entire lives. When they died, the house was auctioned off, but the person who bought it lived there only a short while. The current owner and donor of this album intends on staying in the house for a while and is enjoying the original details throughout the house: floor to ceiling mirrors, some of the original furniture, the multiple fireplaces, and the beautiful light fixtures.

I love looking at this picture and imagining this young woman experiencing the changes of Brooklyn from the late 19^th century well into the 20^th century. I also like that her self-portrait includes her camera. This looks like an early roll film camera with bellows and a fixed lens. It was at this time that Kodak started making Brownies available to the masses, but this camera looks a bit more complicated indicating a more involved interest in photography. Want to see a similar camera? BHS has several cameras on exhibit that trace the technological progress of photography and its cameras in our 3^rd floor gallery where Say Cheese: Portraits to Pics is on view.

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.

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Library & Archives | 3 Responses »
Tags: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn photographs, Photo of the Week, Photographs, Photography Collection

Photo of the Week: Skiing in Prospect Park

Written by Julie May on January 2nd, 2013

Brooklyn Photographs: Prospect Park, 1978, v1990.2.182; Donald L. Nowlan Brooklyn collection, ARC. 120; Brooklyn Historical Society.

I am drawn to the photograph above for two reasons: I am writing from my perch in the gallery level of the Brooklyn Historical Society Othmer Library where I can see a section of Clinton Street from my window. Unfortunately, there is not a snowflake to be seen and for that, I am disappointed in December. However, I hear snow is coming to NYC over the weekend while friends in Vermont and family in Pennsylvania are already enjoying inches and inches of the white stuff. As a long-time skier, I say: bring it on! I would love to traverse Prospect Park on skis — who wouldn’t?

The other reason this photograph interests me is the color deterioration. Color prints were introduced in the 1940s alongside Kodacolor film negatives. Early color photographic materials are notoriously unstable. This print, and much of the Nowlan Brooklyn collection that it is a part of, show the characteristic impact of age on early color prints. It’s worth noting that this print would not have faded so much if it was stored within very strict environmental conditions: between 0 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity between 25 and 30 percent — in other words, a cold, dry freezer. This is hard for an individual to do, but at the very least, you might spend your remaining holiday downtime moving your boxes of photographs down from the sometimes hot, other times cold attic and up from the often moist basement into a still dark, but cooler, more stable climate.

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Library & Archives | 6 Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn photos, Photo of the Week, Photographs, Photography Collection, Prospect Park

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.

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Library & Archives | No Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn photos, Photo of the Week, Photographs, Photography Collection

Photo of the Week: Meserole House

Written by Cassie Mey on August 22nd, 2012

Meserole House, 1000 Lorimer Street, ca.1905, V1981.15.124; Ralph Irving Lloyd lantern slides, V1981.015; Brooklyn Historical Society.

From the desk of Cassie Mey, Project CHART intern: While scanning the Ralph Irving Lloyd lantern slides, ca. 1905, I have discovered particular slides that speak to me personally and enliven Brooklyn history in my imagination. For example, I used to live at 1010 Lorimer Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and this lantern slide shows a historic house at the address of 1000 Lorimer Street. Currently, 1000 Lorimer is the site of a brick manufacturing building, so at first I didn’t realize that I possibly lived next door to the original site of the house captured in this slide. Since making this connection and the more I look at this image, the more it looks to me as if this Meserole House could be the very same structure of the wood-sided, multi-family townhouse at 1010 Lorimer Street, where I previously lived. I’m also struck by how the surrounding apartment buildings in the image look so much like Greenpoint of today.

The creator of this slide collection, Dr. Ralph Irving Lloyd, amateur photographer and Park Slope ophthalmologist, captured Brooklyn around the time that the city was incorporated as a borough of Greater New York City. His lantern slides show exterior views of historic houses and the landscapes and early street scenes that tell the story of Brooklyn transitioning into today’s cityscape. Against this backdrop, adults, children, and even cats show up as observers in Lloyd’s slides.

Many other images in the Ralph Irving Lloyd collection could offer a historic view of your house, or even an early street scene from your block. View more of Lloyd’s images and others from the BHS collection on the Online Image Gallery. To search our entire collection of images visit BHS’s visit the Othmer Library Wed-Fri, 1:00-5:00 p.m.

Many other images in the Ralph Irving Lloyd collection could offer a historic view of your house, or even an early street scene from your block. View more of Lloyd’s images on the BHS Online Image Gallery.

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Library & Archives | 1 Response »
Tags: Brooklyn Past & Present, Brooklyn photographs, Photo of the Week, Photographs, Photography Collection

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