Prospect Park

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Photo of the Week: Maypole Dancing on Long Meadow

Written by Julie May on May 1st, 2013

[Anniversary Day, Prospect Park] ca. 1915, v1972.1.788; Early Brooklyn and Long Island photograph collection, arc.201; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Despite the dreary weather yesterday, it is finally May! I encourage all to remember the past weekend with the dazzling sunshine. We too will be able to leap happily around Prospect Park day after endless summer day very soon just like all the young ladies in the picture above.

Taken on Anniversary Day, these girls were among many schoolchildren to march through the many parks of all five boroughs of New York City as part of the Sunday School Union Anniversary Day Parade. A New York Times article from 1901 estimated participation of 90,000 children in that year’s event, considered as important to the city’s children as Christmas. The children marched through the streets donning bright colors and carrying flags. The marching was followed by celebratory ice cream and cake at their respective churches. Prospect Park has gone through many changes [link embedded in changes] over the years, but today continues to be a central gathering place for Brooklynites. There we celebrate everything from Michael Jackson’s birthday, local and gourmet food, the historic Battle of Brooklyn, and just plain good weather and happy times. Happy Spring Brooklyn – see you in the park.

Interested in seeing more photos from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images. Interested in seeing more historic Brooklyn images, visit our new website here. To search BHS’s entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections 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, Photography Collection, Prospect Park

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

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.

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 | 6 Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn photos, Photo of the Week, Photographs, Photography Collection, Prospect Park

Brooklyn History Photo of the Week: A Man and His Dog

Written by Susan Gamble on July 18th, 2012

A Man and His Dog on a Bench in Prospect Park, circa 1975, v2008.013.40; Lucille Fornasieri-Gold Photograph Collection; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Lucille Fornasieri-Gold donated ninety-three color and black and white photographs to Brooklyn Historical Society in 2008, including this one of a man and his dog on a bench in Prospect Park. Lucille Fornasieri-Gold was born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn in the 1930s. Gold started photographing with a Leica camera in 1969, while her children were in school. She would develop and print in a kitchen darkroom in her Park Slope home. When she moved, she lost her darkroom, and as a result Gold had an abundance of processed negatives that remained unprinted for years. In the 1990s, Gold and her husband scanned the negatives and modified the images using Adobe Photoshop. In 2002, Gold retired and now works only on her photography, processing her negatives digitally. She says of her photography: “When I’m photographing I feel the weight of the antecedents, the spirals of time, the evolution of thought and science.”

The photographs in this document a variety of neighborhoods in Brooklyn as well as New York and New Jersey and subjects as diverse as street scenes, children, dogs, twins, and cityscapes, influenced by the photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gary Winogrand, and Lisette Modell.

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 | No Responses »
Tags: Brooklyn, Lucille Fornasieri-Gold, Photo of the Week, Photographs, photography, Photography Collection, Prospect Park, Union Docs

Brooklyn History Photo of the Week: Three Picnicking Ladies

Written by Michael Satalof on July 4th, 2012

Three picnicking ladies, ca. 1899, 2010.023.61; 141 Quincy Street photograph album; 2010.023; Brooklyn Historical Society.

These three ladies are enjoying a leisurely picnic by the water in Prospect Park in 1899. Even then, just a year after the consolidation of Brooklyn into modern New York City, Frederick Law Olmsted’s park provided neighbors with a refuge from the rapid urbanization taking place beyond its boundaries. Today, the park is still an oasis for many Brooklynites, providing a place for recreation or relaxation, and a place to enjoy nature in the heart of Brooklyn.

The photograph comes from the 141 Quincy Street photograph album, which documents the house and home life of a Bedford-Stuyvesant family in the late 1890s. The album was donated to Brooklyn Historical Society by the third owners of 141 Quincy Street, a house still standing and in almost its original condition, between Bedford and Franklin Avenues. More pages from this album can be seen in Say Cheese! Portraits to Pics, now on view at Brooklyn Historical Society.

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

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