Celebrate International Lifeguard Appreciation Day (July 31) with this Photo of the Week, which ran in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle on August 20th, 1951. The original caption reads “Maxie, the lifeguard at the Infants Home of Brooklyn, whistles while he works.” The accompanying blurb continues, saying, “When it comes to expert protection of life, leave it to four-year-old Maxie. He is the lifeguard at the wading pool of the Infants Home of Brooklyn, and when the splashing gets too splashy, he toots his tin whistle.”
The children of the Infants Home of Brooklyn participated in a number of events that were publicized in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle in the 1940s and 50s, including the pool day Maxie “supervised” and the recurrent Queen of Tots beauty contest. Check out dozens of photos of the home’s young residents in the Brooklyn Public Library’s digital collections.
Opened around 1920, the Infants Home of Brooklyn was located at 1358 56th Avenue in Borough Park, Brooklyn. The home began as Brooklyn’s only free institution for orphaned children up to age 6, and evolved to include treatment for children with emotional disabilities. In the 1970s, the home merged with the Jewish Board of Guardians, now the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services. Although the institution no longer serves as a home, it continues to offer services from the original building.
Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page to search our collections. Questions? Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.
This blog post reflects the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of Brooklyn Public Library.
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