About This Item

  • Call NumberOSOS_OH_0300-accs
  • Summary(0:15) Her family history -- (3:02) Born in Brooklyn but moved to Poland when 5 months old -- (3:02) Didn’t intend to go back to Brooklyn -- (5:65) Working as a translator in a shipyard in Poland -- (6:42) Translating for Poland's Solidarity Movement -- (7:58) Friends losing jobs and housing -- (8:45) Being blacklisted and going back to the US in 1984 -- (10:41) Seeing Manhattan from Triborough Bridge -- (11:26) Living in Greenpoint for 2 years -- (12:22) Finding Greenpoint provincial -- (14:17) Moving to a more diverse community in Flatbush -- (15:15) Remembering Williamsburg and the empty warehouses -- (16:26) Finding East Flatbush -- (17:44) Discovering Brooklyn history -- (19:14) Neighborhood changes -- (19:57) The Empty buildings on Flatbush Avenue -- (21:10) Changes in Williamsburg and Greenpoint -- (21:42) The battle for McCarren Park Pool -- (22:25) The polish church community -- (23:16) Putting her daughter in catholic school -- (24:27) Going to church every sunday for the first time -- (25:48) Daughter going to public school -- (26:33) The gentrification of Flatbush Avenue -- (27:27) When Brooklyn wasn’t the place to be and Saturday Night Fever -- (29:28) Flatbush Avenue the center of business -- (30:24) The Blackout -- (31:56) Store owners following customers to other areas -- (33:37) The photographer friend and gentrification -- (36:59) A small town feeling -- (37:39) The “Your mother will never know”-syndrome.
  • Date2019-02-08
  • Physical Description1 sound file (39 min.) : digital, MP3
  • CreatorLipner, Christine
  • Cite AsBrooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History
  • Digital Public Library of AmericaThis item is represented in the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).
  • Formatsound recording-nonmusical
  • GenreinterviewsMP3
  • NoteAudio interview conducted on February 8, 2019, by Johan Norberg at the Central Library in Brooklyn. Collected through Our Streets, Our Stories, an oral history project of Brooklyn Public Library. This project is a partnership with Services for Older Adults and the Brooklyn Collection.
  • SubjectEmigration & Immigration ; Poland ; Warsaw ; World War, 1939-1945 ; Sri Lanka ; NSZZ "Solidarność" (Labor organization) ; Polish Americans ; Shipping ; Translators ; Gdynia (Poland) ; Rents ; Protestant Dutch Reformed Church (Flushing, New York, N.Y.) ; Buses ; Subways--New York (State) ; Consolidated Edison Company of New York, inc ; Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church ; Choirs (Music) ; Catholic Schools ; Gentrification ; Saturday night fever (Motion picture) ; Accents and accentuation ; Electric power failures ; Stores & shops ; Real property ; Cultural Pluralism ; Public Schools ; Abandoned buildings ; Triborough Bridge (New York, N.Y.) ; Drugstores
  • PlaceBedford-Stuyvesant (New York, N.Y.)Downtown Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)East Flatbush (New York, N.Y.)Flatbush Avenue (New York, N.Y.)Greenpoint (New York, N.Y.)Williamsburg (New York, N.Y.)
  • RightsThis work is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Users are free to share and adapt the work for non-commercial purposes as long as appropriate credit is given to the source and new material created with this work is shared under the same conditions.
  • TitleOral history interview conducted with Christine Lipner on February 8, 2019.