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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, 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

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.

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

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.

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Library & Archives | 1 Response »
Tags: Brooklyn, Emmanuel House, Fort Hamilton, Photo of the Week, Photographs, photography, Photography Collection

Brooklyn History Photo of the Week: Furman Street

Written by Julie 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.

Posted in Brooklyn Past & Present, Library & Archives | 2 Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn, Library, Photo of the Week, Photographs, photography, Photography Collection

Brooklyn History Photo of the Week: Horse-drawn Carriage

Written by Carolina Garcia on January 4th, 2012

Horse-drawn carriage on Clinton Avenue at Fulton Street, after the blizzard, ca. 1888, V1974.7.78; Adrian Vanderveer Martense lantern slide collection, ARC.191; Brooklyn Historical Society.

From the desk of Carolina Garcia, project intern: When I first started working on digitizing the Adrian Vanderveer Martense collection of lantern slides, one of the things I was most amused by was the fact that the labels on the slides were stamped “A.V. Martense, Amateur”. Martense hailed from one of Brooklyn’s oldest and wealthiest families and enjoyed the hobby of photography. Although he was not a professional photographer, there are many impressive images in the collection—from portraits to landscapes to architecture.

I chose to share this image because of the sharpness and richness that Martense managed to capture. It is among the images Martense created in the wake of a New York blizzard in March of 1888. The horse and carriage stand in front of a building near the corner of Fulton and Clinton Avenue in Brooklyn.

Posted in Hidden Collections, Library & Archives | 3 Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn, Photo of the Week, Photographs, photography, Photography Collection

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