Celebrating the Next Million Possibilities!

In 1997, Brooklyn Public Library celebrated its 100-year anniversary serving local readers, the first free public library in Brooklyn having opened in 1897 inside Public School 3, in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

This button is one example of our extensive button collection. In the 1980s and 1990s there was a substantive push to collect more community ephemera, and pin-back buttons such as this one are excellent examples of the importance of ephemeral social and cultural history.

Last week we announced that Brooklyn Historical Society is now the Center for Brooklyn History at Brooklyn Public Library. As part of Brooklyn Public Library, the resources of the Center for Brooklyn History will reach more Brooklynites and patrons from around the country and the world than ever before, and allow the institution to continue its longstanding commitment to expanding and diversifying representations of the history of Brooklyn.

We look forward to many more anniversaries and another hundred years of new possibilities.

Interested in seeing more photos from CBH's collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images. We look forward inviting you to CBH is the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our digital collections, available here. Our reference staff are still available to help with your research! You can reach us at library@brooklynhistory.org.