POTW: Garbage barge at Barren Island
This week's photo of the week takes us to a tugboat and garbage barge at Barren Island in 1910. I could not find the associated article with this Brooklyn Daily Eagle photograph, but this could have been meant to illustrate a proposed project to develop Jamaica Bay as a harbor extending "from the southeasterly border of Barren Island to a point some 7,000 feet east of the Long Island…
POTW: The Thunderbolt
This week's Photo of the Week features an Anders Goldfarb photograph of the Coney Island boardwalk in 1984. A man with his bike rests in the sun against a wall in the foreground. In the background is not the Cyclone, but the original Thunderbolt, a wooden roller coaster that operated from 1925 to 1982. The Thunderbolt soon became a ruin and the structure was demolished in 2000…
POTW from the Vault: Cat named “Lazybones”
This From the Vault post was originally written by Tess Colwell and published on January 9, 2019 by the Brooklyn Historical Society. To see the latest Photo of the Week entries, visit the Brooklynology blog home, or subscribe to our Center for Brooklyn History newsletter. The photo of the week depicts a cat named “Lazybones,”…
POTW: Cutting up carpenters
Who knew shopwork classes could be so fun! This week's Photo of the Week depicts (from left to right) 6-year-olds Richard Steiner, Augustus Jackson, and Nicholas Parese working on some carpentry projects in May 1952. This class was hosted by Willoughby House, a settlement house founded in 1901, which provided art, drama, and athletic workshops for Brooklyn kids and young people in…
POTW: Great big beautiful dolls
In August of 1951, Park Slope kids competed in P.S. 77's "beautiful doll" contest. This week's Photo of the Week shows the winners standing proudly with their entries in the schoolyard (from left to right): Judith Flynn (third place), Barbara Joyce Wendel, Roberta Hope Wendel (the Wendel's got the grand prize), and Camille Stafanello (first place). Second place winner Arlene Kennedy did not…
POTW: All this for the Dodgers!
Anyone else missing baseball season? This week's Photo of the Week takes us to Ebbets Field where we see a crowd of fans who were unable to get into the final game of the Yankees-Dodgers 1952 World Series. Over 33,000 people attended the game, so many people were turned away at the gates. The boy in the middle appears to be pleading with the photographer to let him in, others look like they would squeeze…
Not forgotten: Activism in the AIDS/Brooklyn exhibition collection
Friday, December 1 is World AIDS Day, a day started by the World Health Organization in 1988 to "show strength and solidarity against HIV stigma and to remember lives lost." The first World AIDS Day was recognized by awareness events (such as condom distributions and fundraisers), discussions among medical experts and human rights advocates, and world leaders calling on the United Nations to increase their efforts to combat the…
POTW: The Blessing of Brooke the Office Cat
This week's Photo of the Week takes us to St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Church in Greenpoint where Brooke the cat is being blessed by a priest during a Blessing of the Animals event circa 2010. The Blessing of the Animals is observed in the Catholic Church in conjunction with the annual Feast of St. Francis of Assisi on October 4th. The man holding Brooke, Joseph R. Lentol…
POTW: Cumberland Street Hospital's magnet
Is this modern art or Cumberland Street Hopital's 500-pound, $280 electric magnet? This Photo of the Week, originally published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in April 1924, shows a demonstration of the magnet's considerable power: "when plugged into an ordinary electric socket it can lift a steel door key from a hand 12 inches below." While this is an impressive display, the magnet was actually meant…
POTW: Brooklyn Fire Headquarters
This From the Vault post was originally written by Dan Brenner and published on June 5, 2019 by the Brooklyn Historical Society. To see the latest Photo of the Week entries, visit the Brooklynology blog home, or subscribe to our Center for Brooklyn History newsletter. In 1892, the Brooklyn Fire Department opened its headquarters at 365…
POTW: Penny-farthing
This From the Vault post was originally written by Tess Colwell and published on June 14, 2017 by the Brooklyn Historical Society. To see the latest Photo of the Week entries, visit the Brooklynology blog home, or subscribe to our Center for Brooklyn History newsletter. The photo of the week depicts Eddie Tepper posing with a penny-farthing bicycle in 1886. This is…
A Tale of Two Schools: a Brooklyn-France Connection in the Aftermath of World War II
On December 12, 1947, Madame Carrillon, La Directrice of Collège Jules-Ferry in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France wrote to Packer Collegiate…
POTW: Kane Street Synagogue
This photo of the week shows the sanctuary interior of Kane Street Synagogue in Cobble Hill in 1934. The building was constructed in 1855 as a Middle Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in the Norman style of Romanesque architecture and was subsequently owned by the Trinity German Lutheran Church. Congregation Baith Israel purchased the building in 1905 when they moved from their Boerum Hill Synagogue (Congregations…
POTW: Bundling Up
It finally feels like fall in New York and Brooklynites are starting to bundle up. This photo of the week takes us to the sidewalks of 1950s New York where little Cataldo Piccione poses for the camera in his one-piece winter suit. While the exact location of this scene is unknown, we can see the familiar sight of buildings rising in the background and a not quite legible…
POTW: Wasted Space, But Not for Long
Can you guess where this week's Photo of the Week was taken? "Referred to as 'the hole' by library personnel," this cavernous space was the sub-basement of our very own Central Library. In this photo we see a miniature Chief Librarian, Francis R. S. John, speaking with a Brooklyn Eagle reporter about plans for the space to be converted into stacks for 500,000 more books. This sub-basement was…
POTW: Hot Dog Days
It's the dog days of summer here in Brooklyn, a perfect time to head down to Coney Island and enjoy a hot dog on the boardwalk. This coat of arms honoring the 50th anniversary of the hot dog in 1939 shows a royal figure knighting a kneeling hot dog in the center. On the sides are two dachshunds (wiener dogs, of course) standing on their hind legs with faces turned up towards a radiant pot of "sinapi" ("…
POTW: To Save Three Lives
Tuesday, June 14th is World Blood Donor Day, so this Photo of the Week takes us to a scene at Kings County Hospital on October 22, 1948. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle caption, eight firefighters donated four quarts of blood "To Save Three Lives." The firefighters knew the three girls for whom they were donating blood: "Dolores Johnson, 4, and her sister, Eleanor, 2, in the institution with critical…
Introducing the Park Slope Civic Council Records
The Park Slope Civic Council (PSCC) was founded in 1896 as the South Brooklyn Board of Trade, a kind of chamber of commerce formed to lobby the city and state for improvements to infrastructure and services across the geographic area south of Downtown Brooklyn. In the late 1950s, the South Brooklyn Board of Trade changed its name to the Park Slope Civic Council in order to improve engagement in the neighborhood. As a result of this change, PSCC leaders planned to center civic projects and residents' needs, as opposed to focusing mostly on business owners. …
POTW: On a Boat Built for One
This week's Photo of the Week takes us to a scene on the Canarsie Creek in 1924 where 1-year-old, William Johnson, floats in a little toy boat next to a skiff holding an unidentified man and boy. It's possible this creek is a section of the Fresh Creek Nature Preserve, a body of water between Canarsie and Starrett City in the Jamaica Bay Watershed. In October 2021, the Governor's Office of…
POTW: Macaroni-Making Machine
Ever wonder how the pasta gets made? This photograph from circa 1932 shows an "Automatic Short Paste Drying Unit," which promised pasta-making "From Press to Package without Handling." The machine itself was manufactured by the Consolidated Macaroni Machine Corporation at 156-166 Sixth Street in Gowanus. Ignazio De Francisci, an engineer from Sicily, founded Consolidated Macaroni…
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