The Chewing Gum King
1885-1886 Brooklyn Directory In the late 1860s, Thomas Adams carried out a series of experiments with chicle, which is extracted from Mexican Sapota trees, hoping he could make the rubber-like substance into toys, boots or bicycle tires. The trials were a failure. He was just about to throw the chicle into the East River when he remembered that his boss, who was the ex-dictator of Mexico, regularly chewed it. Experimenting by adding sugar, he created a better tasting gum than any other available at that time. How Chewing Gum is Made. Brooklyn Daily…
Teen Genius
Last summer Cecilia put together a great post on the yearbooks of Manual Training High School (once John Jay and now the Secondary School for Law, Journalism, and Research) and, due to a patron request, I had cause to retrieve the boxes housing these books from the morgue once again. I'm happy I did. Along with the Prospect yearbooks, Manual Training also produced a "Literary-Art Issue" of the Prospect, and therein I found a number of striking drawings which serve to illustrate stories, poems, and scripts. Without too much commentary, I figured I'd post some of my favorites along with the…
New Funding Promises a Bright Future for Brooklyn Connections!
The Brooklyn Collection is thrilled to announce that it has received an exciting two-year, $200,000 grant from the New York Life Foundation for the Brooklyn Connections program! With additional generous support from the Morris & Alma Schapiro Fund, the Tiger Baron Foundation and Epstein Teicher Philanthropies, the program will continue to be available at no cost to Brooklyn classrooms through the 2012-13 school year. We are especially pleased to acknowledge this renewed support from New York Life Foundation, whose initial funding made it possible to pilot the program in 2007…
A Lump of the Old Jersey
That infamous hulk, the Old Jersey prison ship, in which upwards of 11,000 American prisoners lost their lives during the Revolution, lay rotting in the Wallabout mud for over a century. And well it deserved to rot. Crowded between airless decks, starved or compelled to eat raw meat and drink filthy water, infected with smallpox, yellow fever and dysentery, the prisoners died by the dozen. Their bodies, hastily thrown into trenches on the shore, were often washed out by the waves at high tide, so that the whole Wallabout beach became a bone-littered charnel house. Among the keys,…
The Eagle Cookbook and the Brooklyn Diet
I first picked up The Eagle Cookbook from 1922 with every intention of writing a blog entry on recipes from the early 1920s. But as I carefully flipped through the pages, I found myself distracted from the recipes by the countless advertisements for pre-packaged, pre-processed and unexpectedly modern grocery items. While the editors proudly present a collection of recipes that were "handed down from generation to generation" in families across the United States and Europe, the advertisements tell a slightly different story about the 1920s Brooklyn diet. For example, you could…
Luna Parks Galore
Brooklynology readers will not be fooled by this picture of an ersatz Luna Park culled from my latest holiday snaps. This one is not in Brooklyn, of course, but in Scarborough, an attractive windswept seaside town in North Yorkshire, UK. Our own grand original opened in 1903 and burned down in 1944, but in the interim "Luna Park" became synonymous with "amusement park" across the nation and even further afield. Just as Brooklyn itself has spawned other Brooklyns across the globe, the name Luna Park has become a proxy for places providing imaginative amusement, off-the-…
For Those Who Would A-Wheeling Go
Such hyperbole could only come from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which printed this notice on June 26, 1896, the eve of the grand opening of a new bicycling path connecting Prospect Park to Coney Island. Twenty-thousand cyclists were expected to ride in a parade down Eastern Parkway to the path's head in Prospect Park, with thousands more spectators cheering from the sidelines. Leading the pack was the distinguished Brooklyn Park Commissioner Timothy L. Woodruff, who would later serve as lieutenant governor under Theodore Roosevelt. This photograph by …
Peter Cooper and his Glue
By 1899 Newtown Creek had become so gummed up with pollutants that men could walk atop the water as if it were earth. The odors themselves that hung in the air were so substantial that children could perch upon them as though sitting on the wooden ostriches and horses of a carousel, to circle above the copper smelters, oil tanks, and tallow shops of the creek. And in order to sink pylons for new docks, laborers had to use handsaws to cut holes in the grime-thick water, the gelatinous bricks they extracted being sent off to the candle makers who carved their wares from the…
Brooklyn takes to the Skies Part II
When one thinks of Brooklyn, airline travel usually isn't the first thing that comes to mind. But in the late 1940's Brooklyn's business leaders and the Brooklyn Eagle wanted to change all that, and after years of campaigning, the lease was signed to open the first ever Brooklyn Airlines Terminal in the lobby of the Hotel St. George. The new terminal would provide information, ticket and limousine service to Brooklyn executives and vacationers alike. Eight airlines in all were represented in the attractive newly designed…
On the Road with the Eagle
Summer is in full swing and hopefully for many of our readers the word VACATION is coming to mind. While daydreaming of my own escape from the daily grind, I came across a scrapbook in excellent condition that chronicles a journey taken by a group of Brooklynites exactly 92 years ago today. The National Parks Tour, organized by the Eagle, was open to the public and advertised in the paper during the early months of 1919. Headlines such as "Western Cities Rival in Offers of Hospitality to Eagle Tour; Unique Drives Programmed," attempted to lure all of…
The Excellent Acoustic Properties of a Sewer; or, Mayor Low's Wild Ride
Raw sewage weighs heavily on the minds of many Brooklynites these days, ever since a massive load of the stuff (about 200 million gallons) was flushed into the Hudson River last week. Four of the city's beaches have been closed due to unsafe levels of bacteria and icky things, including Brooklyn's own Sea Gate Beach. It's unpleasant enough to think about all that voided matter clogging up our river and carrying that awful offal to the ocean, but it's more unbearable still for such a thing to happen during one of the hottest weekends on record. In the…
Beat the Heat! Visit the Brooklyn Collection's New Exhibit!
Looking for an excuse to utilize BPL's air conditioning for a little while longer this week? Why not stop by the Brooklyn Collection to view our latest exhibit from the Brooklyn Connections program: This year, our exhibit focuses on the ways in which our Brooklyn Connections participants became historians while completing research projects on their favorite Brooklyn topics. Each case is dedicated to a step in the research process, from developing an initial question to reflecting on what they learned. Included in this year's exhibit, you will see glimpses of projects…
HEAT WAVE!
Brooklyn is no stranger to that sadistic summer visitor, the heat wave. But we're tough. We can take it. We know how to cope. And because the Central Library is a designated cooling center here in the borough, and since just visualizing something cold can help ease the pain, I figured I'd share some photos from our collection of Brooklynites taking summer's worst in stride. Who cares about the heat? Not this quintet of Coney Island bathers; dashing into the surf are, left to right, Frances Friedenthal, Lee Krush, Maureen Haver, Nettie Thomas, and Bea Resnikoff. Small fry…
Gardens of Brooklyn Part II: Victory Gardens
In the 1930s, Relief Gardens, also called Subsistence Gardens, run by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) helped hundreds of Brooklyn Families put food on the table in the depths of the Great Depression. In 1944, President Roosevelt called on all Americans to grow gardens to help compensate for the increased food requirements of forces at the fronts during World War II. The Civilian Defense Volunteer Office (CDVO) encouraged people to plant vegetable gardens, facilitating the use of vacant land, and educating gardeners into the mysteries of crop rotations and…
Historypin in Brooklyn
Our talented and hardworking intern from the Multicultural Internship Program has been pinning at a great rate. Check out what's up there already. And for those not yet familiar with Historypin, five minutes of exploration will unlock most of the mysteries of the site. The little icon that looks like an eyeball with a line through it is the key to seeing then and now images. Just move the little red dot up and down. It's magic!
No Ancestry.com in Reserve Room July 25-29 due to Storycorps interviews
The Brooklyn Collection will be partnering with Storycorps for Brooklyn Week from Monday July 25 to Friday July 29. Interviews will be held in the Reserve Room of the Brooklyn Collection on the Second floor of the Central Library. If you are interested in participating, or would like to learn more about the project, please contact StoryCorps at: 646-723-7020 ext. 27 or at: nyc+brooklynweek@storycorps.org Interviews can be scheduled for anytime during the hours listed below. Monday, July 25th: 12pm - 6pm Tuesday, July 26th: 10am - 4pm Wednesday, July 27th: 10am - 4pm Thursday,…
Gardens of Brooklyn Part I: 1930s WPA Subsistence Gardens.
Long gone are the days when, according to Gertrude Lefferts Vanderbilt, "The head of every family in Flatbush, with few exceptions, was a farmer...they cultivated their land in the most careful manner, and were among the best farmers in the state." Still, even in the 1880s, market gardeners of Kings County sent considerable amounts of food to the tables of New York City. But by 1900 a precipitous rise in development entailed a corresponding decline in the amount of available farmland. By 1924 there were 24 farms left in Brooklyn, by 1930 only 11, but the depression and World War…
Rumble on the Docks: teen warfare hits Brooklyn
The Nits, the Jolly Stompers, the Brewery Rats, the Tigers, the Presidents, the Shamrocks, the Beavers, the Midtowners, the Robins, the Majesties, the Garfield Gang, the South Brooklyn Boys, the Socialistic Gents, the Midget Socialistic Gents, the Bishops, and the Hawks; ranging from intimidating to clever to unexpectedly silly, these names struck dread in the hearts of policeman, civic leaders, teachers, and Brooklynites of every stripe. These were the names of just a few of the gangs of adolescent boys and girls who turned the borough into their battleground in the 1950s. …
Information for Busy People: The Brooklyn Eagle Library
The Proposed Constitution of the State of New York; Full Report of the Proceedings of the 80th Annual Meeting of the American Board; The New Primary Law; Brooklyn Church Semi Centennial; Directory of Educational Institutions; Mortgage Tax Law; Life Insurance; The War Revenue Bill. Not exactly beach reading, is it? And yet I can see him now, our anthropomorphized Brooklyn eagle, from whose library these titles come, under a parasol on Jones Beach, zinc on his beak, poring over the new Sanitary Code of the Board of Health, totally absorbed, waves lapping his talons, a cold soda wrapped in his…
StoryCorps at the Brooklyn Collection: July 25th - July 29th
We are very happy to announce a new partnership with StoryCorps, a national nonprofit oral history organization. During Brooklyn Week, which runs from July 25th to the 29th, we will team up to record the stories and experiences of everyday people who live and work in the borough. If you are interested in participating, or would like to learn more about the project, please contact StoryCorps at: 646-723-7020 ext. 27 or at: nyc%2Bbrooklynweek@storycorps.org Interviews can be scheduled for anytime during the hours listed below. Monday, July 25th: 12pm - 6pm Tuesday,…