Wild About Maison Foffe
Venison, anyone? How about some wild pheasant? No, this ghastly tableau doesn't depict a horrible roadkill incident but, rather, an invitation to dinner. Decades ahead of the current trends of locally-sourced food and organic meats, Alfred Foffe was serving wild game in his tony Brooklyn Heights restaurant, Maison Foffe. These suspended carcasses signal to those in the know that Foffe is back from his annual hunting trip with a menu of fresh-from-the-wild animals to serve his customers. The story of the Foffe family's establishment as Brooklyn restaurant…
Everything Bagel
When I began to write this post, it was going to be just about bagels. It will still be about bagels, dear reader, however, I've added something very special to the end. It's worth the wait, I promise! The Brooklyn Collection must be thinking about food lately -- specifically round breads with a hole in the middle. Tara wrote a fantastic post about the doughnut and now I'm writing about the bagel. While the bagel was not an original Brooklyn creation, we're close enough to the Lower East Side to practically have a mirrored history. Immigrants who moved…
So Long, Brooklyn.....Hello, Brooklyn. A Farewell post from Tara.
It feels bittersweet that my time in Brooklyn is coming to an end, as I am moving to Australia with my husband to have a child and begin a new life chapter. I will certainly miss my job as the Research Assistant in the Brooklyn Collection, and the pleasures of discovering fascinating Little-Known Brooklyn Residents in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Morgue. My days of unearthing photos of cats dressed up in princess outfits, pipe-organs in apartments, and youthful treasure hunters are behind me, and I will remember these days fondly. Happy days working in the morgue Although there is…
Tonight! October 27th at 6:30pm BUSHWICK FARMS: Imagined Genealogies and Conceptual History.
What happens when art meets history and genealogy? Tara Cuthbert and Stuart Solzberg, creators of the Bushwick Farms project, will describe their ongoing art project as it nears the end of one phase and enters another, in an illustrated talk at 7 p.m. on Wednesday October 27th in the Brooklyn Collection, Central Library. Click here to learn more and prepare to be surprised and delighted. As usual, we will ply you with astonishingly good cheese and wine starting at 6:30 p.m. before you take your seat.
And They're Off! - Part 2
In this second part of And They're Off we look at the role that the racing industry played in establishing the Sheepshead Bay African-American community and the First Baptist Church of Sheepshead Bay. …
Project CHART - Digitizing Brooklyn History
Brooklynology is pleased to welcome Micah Vandegrift for this guest post. Micah is the Coordinator for Project CHART (Cultural Heritage Access Research and Technology) at Brooklyn Public Library where he will be supervising interns in the digitization of historic photographs, and co-managing CHART's development as a cultural heritage curriculum. Looks like Bedford these days too! View this image in our catalog. It is not difficult to imagine what Brooklyn would have looked like in the recent past. Many of the buildings, landmarks and neighborhoods retain the characteristics of…
Move over Costco
Stores like BJ's and Costco have brought to many present-day Brooklynites an irresistible combination of consumer emotions, making us feel simultaneously rich and frugal by allowing us to cram our tiny New York City dwellings with discounted consumer goods. For maybe seventy percent of the regular price, plus the price of your annual membership, you can lay up industrial quantities of frozen cod fillets, kitchen towels, and bottles of detergent so large you can barely lift them. You can buy two dozen eggs at once and watch them ageing in the…
Little-Known Brooklyn Residents: Birthday Dancers Joseph Notarfrancesco and Laura Louise Ottomanelli
On October 12, 1951, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that the family of 89 year-old Joseph Notarfrancesco caught him climbing onto his garage roof with the intent of making repairs with a hammer. His family urged him down in a hurry, concerned that he should not be doing such activities at his age. "Pop can't stand still," his granddaughter said, "...he always has a hammer in his hand." The Eagle reported "...for a nonagenarian the elderly man is indeed active. He reads avidly, writes letters, goes to church every Sunday, and even dances the rhumba." Just two days later on his 90th birthday…
Found in the Morgue: Efforts to Elevate the Humble Doughnut
The humble doughnut is often considered lowly food in the landscape of American snacks. During the 1940s and 1950s several efforts were made to elevate the status of the doughnut, and the Morgue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle records these efforts well. Following are three examples found in the Morgue photo files. In 1955, Miss America's Wanda Jennings was the spokesperson for a nationwide campaign to "encourage housewives to serve families more nutritious snacks." Doughnuts and milk were promoted as "Wholesome Pals" -- "a good nutritious food and all important mid-morning or…
Vanquish your neighbors, win prizes: The Brooklyn Trivia Challenge
TONIGHT! Wednesday, September 29th 7:00 p.m., 6:30 for wine and cheese Something must be in the air, some twin wind blowing and doubling everything up; in another instance of eerie coincidence, it looks like we have, unbeknownst to us, planned a trivia night the evening after a similar event is slated to be held at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Oh well. I guess good things come in pairs, especially if you love rattling your brain trying to answer questions about Brooklyn history. And besides, anyone who knows Brooklyn knows that one trivia night could never get at all of the strange…
Little-Known Brooklyn Businesses. S. Gumpert & Co.
When first I pulled this recipe booklet from S. Gumpert & Co. out of its file, the synthetic orange and pink sherbert colors of the cover illustration suggested a company that manufactured cheap water ices. But to open the booklet at any page was to realize that in this instance, Gumpert's interest was less in the ices themselves but in their ingredients. A glance at a recipe shows that this sorbet is destined for no puny domestic freezer. The secret to fine water ices, it turns out, is a substance produced by the Gumpert Company called "Textor."…
Little-Known Brooklyn Residents: Parrot Fanciers Jeremiah O'Shea and William Musella
Jeremiah O'Shea, a 1950 Red Hook resident, owned a parrot with a special talent -- the ability to swear in four languages. When Jeremiah made a trip to the pet store for birdseed one morning, he returned to find his front door open and his parrot Polly missing from her cage. He searched the neighborhood and the police investigated too, with no success. Almost a month later two teens were pulled up for causing a disturbance and after police questioning, the teens admitted that they had broken into Jeremiah's home and sold Polly to another local bird fancier. To O'Shea's delight Polly was…
Ephemera #2: All hail the fastener, that master of combination and order.
Not being a part of the things which it binds, a fastener is neither here nor there. Unless it's not there but needs to be, or it's breaking down and shouldn't be, a fastener usually goes unnoticed. It's an entirely forgettable little piece of hardware in this world, but not in the least is a fastener inconsequential. On the contrary, it can be the very thing upon which consequence depends. After all, if it weren't for those two staples punched into the 12 months of your wall calendar, would October really follow September? We should pause to thank those puny, bendable wickets for they…
Brooklyn Weddings
Sometimes you can't ignore a good coincidence. Around the time that I was planning my own wedding, I opened a drawer in the Eagle morgue labeled "unsorted." Inside I found lovely ladies smiling up at me, some in wedding gowns and some who looked as if they were posing for school photos. Reading through them, I found that they were all wedding and engagement photos! We have since rehoused the images in folders and will be listing them so that anyone wanting to add to their family photo album may be able to find an image or two here at the Brooklyn…
Seen from Brooklyn, September 11, 2001. Photographs by Anders Goldfarb.
From 1072 Lorimer St, Brooklyn, 9:10 a.m. Near Flatbush Ave, crowds walking home. Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Bedford Ave northside Corner of Calyer St and Manhattan Ave, Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Little-Known Brooklyn Businesses. The Bilnor Corporation
In the 1950’s the Bilnor Corporation was a leading manufacturer of swimming pools and water toys. From their location at 300 Morgan Avenue in East Williamsburg, they turned out summertime recreational products made from plastic. In 1954 they expanded upon their seasonal merchandise by creating portable ice rinks. Made of Krene, (a popular plastic developed in the 1940's) these winter weather contraptions required only water and freezing temperatures. "Ice Rink In a Package -- A new portable ice…
Ephemera #1: Locks, Olives, and Hats
We have filing cabinets full of ephemera -- campaign materials, menus, ticket stubs, old library cards, beer coasters -- all the typical daily detritus which, through our careful selection and preservation, we have saved from the trash bin. But a filing cabinet is no place for what are, more often than not, strikingly designed historical materials. So in an attempt to air out these easily overlooked treasures, we here at the Brooklyn Collection will start posting images of our favorite flotsam and jetsam every week to offer an unglossed peek at some of the surviving bits…
Brooklyn, Then and Now Exhibit....curated by teen interns.
Stop by the Brooklyn Collection to view our new exhibit, "Brooklyn, Then and Now." This new exhibit was curated by our teen interns, Arelis and Eva, who joined us this summer through the Multicultural Internship Program. We were very lucky to have two eager interns help us with tasks throughout the collection. Their primary project was to create a series of "Then and Now" pairs, which match a historic image from our collection with a photograph taken from the exact same spot today. From day one, Arelis and Eva helped us with this project by…
Leprosy on Kingston Avenue
Although many have heard of Kings County Hospital, the huge medical center that sits right in the middle of Brooklyn between New York and Utica Avenues, few now remember the name of the Kingston Avenue Hospital, which occupied a site bounded by Kingston and Albany Avenues to the west and east, and Rutland Road and Winthrop Street to the north and south. And the reason we have heard of it here in the Brooklyn Collection, is that a doctor by the name of Boris Schleifer photographed the hospital and some of its inmates and staff during the 1930s. The resultant collection of over…
Little-Known Brooklyn Residents: Charles M. Murphy
Charles M. Murphy was one of the greatest riders in bicycle history. On June 30th, 1899, he completed a famous bicycle ride behind a Long Island Railroad train, covering an entire mile in the record-breaking time of 57 4/5 seconds. This record earned him the nickname of "Mile-a-Minute Murphy." Mile-a-Minute Murphy The event took place at Maywood, Long Island, where board track was placed over the railroad tracks, and visitors piled in by the hundreds to watch the event. On the following day, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported "the ride was thrilling and…