I'll See Your Polar Vortex and Raise You a Blizzard
Over the past few weeks, it seems as though every other day a mess of snow, sleet, and rain has fallen on our fair city, only to become a sheet of treacherous ice in the days following. New Yorkers have been running to the local supermarkets to buy the necessities ('necessities' being an incredibly subjective term: milk and bottled water for one person might be chips and a bottle of wine for another) and stopping at the hardware store to purchase the last remaining bag of salt and a leftover garden trowel, the only shovel to be found in a twenty block radius. Even though we've been…
Brooklyn Film Night -- Wednesday, January 29th, 7pm
After a brief holiday hiatus, the Brooklyn Collection is happy to kick off another year of public programming next Wednesday, January 29th. On this evening we will take an audiovisual tour through some previously unscreened gems from our 16mm film collection as well as introduce new content from a collection of Umatic videos created by Brooklyn Public Library staff in the 1980s. All fans of vintage Brooklyn are welcome! Come by at 6:30 to pick up free tickets and mingle during our wine and cheese reception. Screening starts at 7:00pm. All programs are held in the…
A Brief History of a Blonde Bombshell
While researching the Queen of Tots pageant at the Infants Home of Brooklyn, I stumbled upon a photo of Hollywood icon Carole Landis crowning one of the young queens. Queen Crowns Queen, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1954. I could have Googled her and gotten an immediate summary of her life and work, but that's not how we roll at the Brooklyn Collection. I went downstairs into our archive to see if I could find a small envelope with her name on it amidst the myriad of file cabinets. Lo and behold, I am not the only person who has taken an interest in Ms. Landis. I found a whole mess…
Toddlers in Tiaras of Yesteryear
Brooklyn has crowned many a beauty queen in its day. The Queen of Beer? Yes. The most beautiful grandmother? Of course! It turns out Brooklyn was crowning beauties of all ages. The Infants Home of Brooklyn, originally located in a private home at 1356 56th Street which was later demolished to make room for a new, more permanent building, hosted an annual beauty pageant to crown the Queen of Tots. The Infants Home opened in 1919 as an emergency shelter for five children left homeless by a fire in Borough Park. It was specifically a home for Jewish children until a 1947 plea by the Welfare…
Speakeasies Abound in Prohibition Era Brooklyn
Prohibition has always held a certain level of fascination in my mind and, dare I say, I'm not the only one. Long has the era been immortalized by Hollywood through movies, TV shows and the fashion trends they inspire. However, living in the current day and age that we do one might find it difficult to navigate what's real from what's merely a romantic reinterpretation of a profound, if not completely befuddling, time in our nation's history. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 6, 1928. The Morgue hosts not one, but three drawers stuffed with newspaper clippings from the prohibition era…
That green branch cut down
When the Brooklyn Daily Eagle shut its doors in 1955 the borough lost an important conduit for receiving news of the world and for investigating and editorializing on community developments. After the paper's short-lived revival finally sputtered out in June of 1963 -- just a few months before John F Kennedy was killed in Dallas -- Brooklynites had to turn to smaller neighborhood newspapers for reports on the assassination and to see their grief reflected back to them in stunned print encomiums for the recently dead president. In addition to the entirety of the Eagle, we also have…
Brooklyn's Plymouth Church in the Civil War Era - Wednesday Evening Author Talk
Statue of Reverend Henry Ward Beecher with Mrs. Rose Ward in flowered hat (1927). Mrs. Ward's freedom had been purchased by the congregation of Plymouth Church during one of Beecher's sermons in 1860. During the years leading up to the Civil War, Brooklyn had the distinction of being one of the strongest abolitionist cities in the nation. And led by the fiery and passionate preacher Henry Ward Beecher, Plymouth Church became a central site in the abolitionist movement. From electrifying sermons and fund-raising concerts, to harboring escaped slaves, Plymouth Church…
Researching Your Family Tree: Monthly Genealogy Workshop
When our doors swing open here at the Brooklyn Collection they are likely being pushed apart by the determined hands of a genealogist. Whether looking for the Williamsburg address of a great aunt or hunting down the high school yearbook photo of Dad, the Brooklyn Collection is where many an ancestor sleuth starts her journey. In order to better assist these researchers, and to introduce a whole new phalanx of patrons to the genealogy trade, we are teaming up with historian and genealogist Wilhelmena Kelly to offer monthly genealogy workshops in Central Library's ground floor…
Brooklyn's Ice Palace
It's not often we take patrons to the "Morgue," but during our recent Educator Open House, we took a group of teachers down to the basement of the library to see the old clippings and photographs of the Brooklyn Eagle. Close-up of Celia Mallon and Connie Richichi working in file room or library at Brooklyn Eagle in Downtown Brooklyn. 1953. While we were down there, I pulled a folder to show the teachers some of the remarkable photographs we have. I pulled, "Klopfer, Sonya*Ice Skater," and as the teachers made comments about the photo, I was more interested in learning about…
A Conversation with Brooklyn Public Library's First Artist-in-Residence, Elizabeth Felicella -- Wedn
Elizabeth Felicella will discuss her work as an architectural photographer with Brooklyn Collection archivists Ben Gocker and Ivy Marvel, with special attention to how it relates to her photographs of the library archive that are included in the current exhibition, Brooklyn Public Library: An Open Book. An archive is typically deemed a repository of the past, compiled for the sake of posterity, the future; this public conversation, which is grounded in the collaborative relationship between photographer and archivist that has developed during Felicella’s time as Artist-in-Residence…
High School Newspapers Make Headlines
Some people would rather die than have their high school experiences splashed across the (blog) pages of one of the world's most widely read newspapers, but we imagine that Janet Yellen, who was recently nominated to head the Federal Reserve, has more important things on her mind. The Brooklyn Collection, however, is not above basking for a moment in her reflected glory, as we've recently made news because we hold not just Ms. Yellen's Fort Hamilton High School yearbook, but also her high school newspaper, the Pilot, of which she was an editor. These heretofore unregarded…
Open House and Tour of the Brooklyn Collection
Every year the Archivists Round Table of Metrpolitan New York organizes a week of lectures, tours, workshops and open houses at cultural institutions around the city and calls it, fittingly, Archives Week. The Brooklyn Collection will be participating in the festivities this year, with an open house and exhibit tour on Monday, October 7th, from 6 - 8pm. The event will include an introduction to our collections and programs, including the school outreach initiative, Brooklyn Connections. Visitors will also tour the exhibition "Brooklyn Public Library: An Open Book", which is on…
Brooklyn Public Library: an Open Book
As we've recorded in the webpages of this blog before, the Brooklyn Collection serves as the defacto institutional archive for the Brooklyn Public Library. We keep the annual reports, the retired library cards, the book plates, the program flyers, and all the other flotsam and jetsam one would expect to be generated by the fifth-largest library system in the United States, serving a population of over 2.5 million Brooklynites. It is not often that these materials see the light of day, so we are very pleased to announce a new building-wide exhibit at the Central Library…
Fall Educator Programs
We are pleased to announce two FREE educator programs for the fall. The events are open to all teachers and educators from across the city and offer a unique opportunity to tour and explore the Brooklyn Collection. Both events will take place in the Brooklyn Collection, 2nd Floor, Central Library. Please join us for our Open Educator House on October 2, 4pm-6pm. Tour our facilities, including the Brooklyn Daily Eagle "morgue" and other restricted areas. View thousands of primary sources that are available to you and your students. Access our…
Brooklyn's Vitagraph Studios: an author talk with Trav S.D., Wednesday, September 25th, 7pm
The Brooklyn Collection will kick off its fall season of lectures with a look at Brooklyn's contribution to film history. In the early years of cinema, Brooklyn (Midwood, to be specific) was one of America’s great film production centers thanks to the early establishment there of Vitagraph Studios by J. Stuart Blackton in 1907. Above, a 1913 image of a fashion shoot at Vitagraph Studios. Brooklyn writer Trav S.D. (Travis Stewart), author of the new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, will talk about the central role the studio played…
Brooklyn Connections Continues to Connect Students to Local History
The Brooklyn Collection is pleased to announce that it has received funding to continue the Brooklyn Connections program. Our generous funders, the David and Paula Weiner Memorial Grant, the Morris & Alma Schapiro Fund, and the Tiger Baron Foundation have ensured the program will go on! The program will continue to be available at no cost to Brooklyn classrooms for the 2013-2014 school year. We are proud to be in our seventh year of operation. Thanks to our generous funders, Brooklyn Connections will be able to expand in several important ways: *Additional…
Rioghan Kirchner
We at the Brooklyn Collection are very sad to announce the passing of a great friend to the library, Rioghan Kirchner. Visitors to the collection may recall seeing Rioghan at her volunteer post in our reserve room, where she spent every Tuesday afternoon indexing the Black News newsletter (a resource that she donated) with her faithful dachsund Teddy waiting patiently at her feet. Her warmth and humor will be missed by all who knew her. In addition to her work with us in preserving the history of the civil rights movement in Brooklyn, Rioghan was herself an activist…
Brooklyn Schools: A Look at Ephemera and More
At the Brooklyn Collection, we have a large assortment of Brooklyn school ephemera, newspaper clippings, photos, yearbooks and even school newspapers. I've written a few entries about schools the Brooklyn Connections program has partnered with: Erasmus Hall (STAR Early College), MS 57 and PS 26 (Brooklyn Excelsior). Recently as I was doing some research for yet another Brooklyn Connections partner school, I came across this: School Diary, Primary School 3, 1878. The flip side of the Diary states, "New and improved series of school records adapted for public of private…
Death in the Air
Accurate or not, it's fair to say that in the popular imagination the Brooklyn Dodgers are remembered as a rag tag bunch of lovable lunks, both object of their zany fanbase's opprobrium as well as affection. What other sports team wore so sour an epithet (dem Bums!) as proudly as the Dodgers? Yet, for all of the organization's sweet buffoonishness, there have been times when an ill-starred pop-up has darkened the outfield. One such instance, and one which is perhaps little known to all but those who bleed blue, occurred in 1935 -- in a private plane, in the skies above Toronto.…
New Collection: The Linewaiters' Gazette
It is always exciting to accession a big new collection, as it brings the promise of new researchers, new information, and because it's just fun to dig around in new stuff. Our latest big new collection is the Linewaiters' Gazette, the official bi-weekly newspaper of what is likely the world's most famous grocery store, the Park Slope Food Coop. Perhaps you've heard of it? The Park Slope Food Coop was established as a members-only, collectively-run buying club in 1973, housed in the Mongoose Community Center at 782 Union Street (where the Coop continues to operate). …