Taking it to the Streets: Bookmobiles and Brooklyn
It is a happy day for public libraries across the city! Another nerve-wracking round of budget negotiations has come to a close, with the city of New York restoring record amounts of funding to the New York Public Library, Queens Public Library, and our very own Brooklyn Public Library. After months of tireless advocacy efforts by library staff and supporters, this celebratory moment seems an opportune time to put our feet up, munch on some popcorn, and think back on the good work we do here. Roll the clip! This film, Who Grows in Brooklyn, is part of the Brooklyn…
Brooklyn takes to the Skies. Part I
Mrs. Virginia Mullen - Miss Brooklyn Aviation 1947 By 1945 the World War II was winding down, and the population of Brooklyn had swelled to nearly 3 million residents, many of whom were eager to travel. In this atmosphere the business and civic community decided to gauge the public's feelings about travel, especially air travel, and to see if the time was right for a new centrally-located state-of-the art Air-Rail-Bus Terminal, that would whisk…
Chris Webber talks about James W.C. Pennington, Fugitive Slave and Black Abolitionist. Tonight!
Tonight, Wednesday June 22, 2011 in the Brooklyn Collection, second floor Central Library. Only the first 40 attendees will be seated. Tickets will be handed out at 6:30 P.M. and only people with tickets will be allowed in. This is a new method of preventing overcrowding in our small Reserve Room location. Refreshments will be served between 6:30 and 7 P.M.
New Eagle Online tutorial narrated by resident Brit
How weird is that? A Brit showing people how to navigate the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online! I detect a northern twang. But do look for more Youtube tutorials coming soon on all aspects of the Brooklyn Collection's web offerings--to be narrated in a rich variety of voices.
From the annals of Brooklyn's musical history: BAM in the early 1930s
Stars of the musical firmament blazed over Brooklyn during the concert seasons from 1930 to 1934 in concerts arranged under the auspices of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, which at that time included the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Sergei Rachmaninoff, Fritz Kreisler, Paul Robeson, tenor Roland Hayes, The Fisk Jubilee Singers, and pianists Walter Gieseking, Robert Goldsand and Jose Iturbi all performed at BAM, as did Australian pianist and composer Percy Grainger, by then a naturalized American living in White Plains. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle files hold…
Anthony Fiala: Soldier, Explorer, Artist
If the three piece suit and rifle don't make you a believer, maybe a few headlines will convince you that Anthony Fiala, in his own time and in his own way, was one bad dude. New York Times May 6, 1928 Brooklyn Daily Eagle October 13, 1922 Brooklyn Daily Eagle February 8, 1928 Brooklyn Daily Eagle August 29, 1927 Ok, maybe racing canoes is a stretch, but the following clipping, which appears beneath the page-long and inch-high headline: "Fiala Plans Hunt for Live Mammoths in Siberia" from a 1927 Eagle may just provide the best glimpse of this man's character.…
It's #AskArchivists Day!
Were you aware that today is International Archives Day? On this day in 1948, the International Council on Archives was created by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), charged with the mission to "promote the management and use of records and archives, and the preservation of the archival heritage of humanity around the world." Today is a day when archives all over the world can toot their respective horns to raise awareness of the myriad of collections they have to offer. With enough of us tooting, we hope to raise a veritable…
A Season to Forget: 1951 Scandal Mars LIU Basketball Program, by Nora Almeida
Our guest blogger this week is Nora Almeida, whom we're happy to have working with us through the Project CHART grant. Nora recently digitized the crime photographs collection from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle files, and turned up this story in the process. People love a scandal—particularly a public scandal involving the rich and famous. A few weeks ago, the front page of the Sunday New York Times ran a story called “The Gossip Machine,” which exposed just how lucrative the gossip industry has become thanks to our ever growing “appetite for dirt.…
The Brooklyn Bridge Centennial: Party like it's 1983!
May 24th, 1883 is a date that looms large in Brooklyn history; it is the birthdate of this borough's beloved icon, the Brooklyn Bridge. Over the past 128 years, the bridge has been immortalized dozens of times over, in countless studied histories and gorgeous photography books that aim to capture both its cultural impact and its architectural grace. The bridge's popularity extends far beyond this borough, as well. On any weekend the bridge is glutted with tourists from all over the globe snapping pictures, and we've heard that even aliens like…
Raising Brooklyn: An Illustrated Talk by Tamara Mose Brown, Wednesday May 25th, 7pm
Tamara Mose Brown discusses her new book Raising Brooklyn which offers an in-depth look at the daily lives of women of Caribbean descent who provide childcare for white middle- and upper-middleclass families, examining the roles they play in the families whose children they help to raise. Though at first glance these childcare providers appear isolated and exploited -- and this is the case for many -- Mose Brown shows that their daily interactions in the social spaces they create allow their collective lives and cultural identities to flourish. Research for the book was largely…
From Records to Data: Seeing and sharing digital cultural heritage collections differently with Reco
Recollection is a free and open source web application for generating and customizing views, allowing scholars, librarians and curators to explore digital collections in novel and intuitive ways. This demonstration by Trevor Owens, Digital Archivist at the Library of Congress, will show how content can be ingested from spreadsheets, sets of MODS records, or RSS and Atom feeds, and then used to generate a range of interactive visualizations. Funded by the IMLS CHART Project Thursday May 19, 2011, 3:00 P.M.-4:30 P.M. Dweck Center, Central Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn NY 11238
Out in the Cold: Part II
Before turning the page on Brooklyn's own polar explorer, I figured we might as well give the good doctor his full due and take a look at a few other items in our collection related to his life and work. In going through the materials related to Frederick A. Cook one photograph jumped out at me immediately. Having lived in Bushwick and having worked at the DeKalb branch for 2 years, I was more than a little excited to find this: Though the area surrounding it today looks different, there was no mistaking that this was the same three-story red brick mansion still standing in the shadows…
Defying Fate: the macabre antics of Brooklyn's Thirteen Club
"It never before looked as it did last night. It never will again. The blinds were drawn, the only light being from a dozen candles, which flickered in burnished holders, placed around a big coffin in the center of the room. The walls were draped in black. Grinning skulls beamed down upon the bones which were strewn along the coffin top, and the figure of a skeleton dangled from an invisible wire..." Thirteen gentlemen in long black robes solemnly marched into the chamber and seated themselves around the immense coffin; their leader seated at the head, and a…
Out in the Cold: Part I
A portion of the Leslie's page -- a little hard to see. I couldn't get a good scan of the September 30, 1909 page from Leslie's Weekly which I wanted to show you, so I'll try to describe it: in the upper left hand corner there is a photo taken from the back row of a fairground bandstand looking out at a string of promenading milk cows; beside it, in the upper right hand corner of the page, is a photo of a tubby U.S. President tomahawking the air with his right hand as he delivers a speech on the postal service from a bunting-swathed stage; beneath that photo, center-right of the page, is a…
How sweet it was...
Let us consider for a moment that fount of dietary evil, refined sugar. A cursory search today brings up hundreds of web sites decrying the noxious effects of sugar upon health. One site lists 146 different ways the seductive crystals can make your life a misery, from causing arthritis and asthma to bringing on toxemia and eczema. The industry's apologists back in 1916 thought otherwise. One unnamed English "expert" is quoted as saying, "There have been few more important additions to our dietary, or which have done more to promote the health of the rising generation, than our…
The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: An Illustrated Talk by Suleiman Osman, Weds May 11, 7 P.M.
Considered among the city's most notorious slums in the 1940s and 1950s, brownstone Brooklyn by the 1980s had become a post-industrial landscape of hip bars, yoga studios and beautifully renovated town houses. Author Suleiman Osman, Assistant Professor of American Studies at George Washington University, discusses his new book, offering a groundbreaking history of this transformation. Brooklyn Collection, 2nd floor, Central Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn NY 11238 Wine and cheese at 6:30 P.M. The talk starts promptly at 7 P.M.
The Answer to All of Life's Problems
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle was, for its entire run of over 100 years, a fount of crucial information for Brooklynites. Covering news both local and global, it was a busy newspaper serving a busy metropolis. But the Eagle was not content to merely report on the outer world; it wanted to tackle the thorny issues of the inner world as well. Or so we can assume, once this headline began appearing in 1933. Although these are questions many people struggle over for several years, if not an entire lifetime, the Eagle sought to solve these conundrums for its readers once and for…
Tearin' It Up
This past summer I had the opportunity to teach a collage class. This four week workshop sponsored by the Brooklyn Collection and AMMS (the Arts, Media, Music and Sports Division) was open to anybody of any age and skill level, from accomplished artists to absolute beginners. The overarching theme was "What I like about Brooklyn." To get things started we looked at the wonderful collage panels of Romare Bearden called "The Block," his homage to Harlem. Following in Bearden's footsteps, our intrepid group, which ranged from ages 8…
Hispanic Genealogical Society of New York to present on April 27th
Charlie Fourquet of the Hispanic Genealogical Society of New York will give a free illustrated talk on how to explore your Hispanic roots here in the Brooklyn Collection, second floor, Central Library, on Wednesday April 27, 2011 from 7-8 p.m. Wine and cheese will be served from 6:30 to 7.
Gertrude Hoffman, Outlaw Dancer
I wrapped up last week's introduction to the early 20th century dancer, Gertrude Hoffman, with a promise of more tales of scandal and glamour to come. As usual, a trip to "the morgue" unearthed several gems from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Gertrude Hoffman made her first major impression on New York audiences in 1908, when a debacle erupted over her interpretation of the "Salome" dance at Oscar Hammerstein's Roof Garden in Manhattan. The dance was based on the biblical story of the execution of John the Baptist; more to the dismay of prudish audiences, it…