Sir, No Sir
Last Thursday, we screened Sir, No Sir, the second film in the Cinema of the Vietnam War series we are co-presenting with Brooklyn For Peace. It's an award-winning documentary about anti-war activism within the military, including underground GI newspapers, the coffeehouse movement, and some high-profile cases of resistance such as Dr. Howard Levy's. We were lucky to have Dr. Levy himself leading a discussion following the film. A dermotologist, Dr. Levy was drafted in 1965 and assigned to instruct Green Berets in some simple medicine that they could use in Vietnam to "win hearts and minds…
Our Library
From The New York Sun today: "The cast-iron columns in the first-floor auditorium support the library floor, while iron trusses in the attic support the library ceiling, the attic floor, and the roof. The loftiness of the space and its exquisite woodwork take your breath away. The gorgeous carved-wood fluted columns, with Corinthian capitals, encase iron columns that support the galleries that encircle the room. It is everything a library should be." Read more here
Flatbush Neighborhood History Guide
Check out this review in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
Floyd DeSilva
Floyd DeSilva, owner of DeSilva South Brooklyn Liquors on 5th Avenue in Park Slope, passed away on August 7, 2008. Corie Trancho-Robie interviewed Mr. DeSilva in July for the Park Slope neighborhood guide we are working on, and clips from this interview will be made part of the audio tour (due out in October). I learned of Mr. DeSilva's passing when I called the store to get his approval for the clip we'd like to use. I'm so glad we were able to record Mr. DeSilva's memories of the neighborhood. Born in Trinidad, Mr. DeSilva came to New York as a teenager. He saved up the money to buy his…
Our Podcast
Updated April 2016: You can find out about Brooklyn Historical Society's podcast Flatbush + Main on the web at www.brooklynhistory.org/flatbush-main and via iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, and most major podcast applications.
Eleven Dreams in Red Hook
Wow, this is really neat.
Betsey Biggs, an artist and composer, has created audio tours of Red Hook and she's hosting them every Saturday in September. Check out Eleven Dreams in Red Hook.
Save Coney Island
Charlie Denson from the Coney Island History Project gave a talk at the Municipal Arts Society last night. Spirits were low three days after the closing of Astroland but some folks are organizing a letter-writing campaign, among other things, to Save Coney Island and insure that redevelopment plans are kept to a human scale and include an amusement district. The conversation at the Municipal Arts Center will continue next Wednesday, September 17 at 6:30pm when Lynn Kelly, president of the Coney Island Development Corporation and Carol Hall Albert, owner of Astroland and others will discuss…
John Wayne
Last night, BHS screened John Wayne's The Green Berets (1968), the first film in the series Cinema of the Vietnam War that we are co-hosting with Brooklyn For Peace. What a cultural artifact! One of the Vietnam veterans in the audience said it was like a 2.5 hour long recruitment movie, and that's a good description. Marilyn Young, author of The Vietnam Wars who lead a discussion with the audience, noted that John Wayne actually got permission from President Johnson to make the film on a military base in Georgia. They were given access to all kinds of military equipment - and that was…
Park Slope Food Coop
Seventeen seconds of sound from the Park Slope Food Coop, recorded today around 11:30am. Click here to listen: Park Slope Food Coop Today
Lesbian Herstory Archives
Today took me to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Park Slope to interview one of their volunteer staff for our forthcoming Park Slope Neighborhood Guide's audio component. They have over 2,000 tapes of oral history in their collection that they are slowly digitizing. It's a warm, welcoming, and inspiring place.
Speaking of Coney Island...
Here's an a little clip from an oral history interview from our collection (circa 1987) with Lillian Santangello, former owner of the Coney Island Wax Museum. The interviewer, Benjamin Filene, asks Lillian about a bunch of things from the Wax Museum that became part of the BHS' collection, including a wax Nat King Cole head! Click on the link below to listen: Six Wax Mystery Heads
Coney Island Hall of Fame
Cataloguing Our Oral History Collection
This summer, with the help of two wonderful interns Naomi (Brooklyn College) and Amna (Stuyvesant High School), we have been cataloguing our oral history collection so soon visitors can search through and listen to our oral history interviews right in the library.
Welcome!
The Brooklyn Historical Society began our Oral History Program in 2006 to collect important audio documents: primary sources about people, ideas, and events that make up the history of 21st century Brooklyn. In December 2007, we opened our Oral History Gallery with the exhibit In Our Own Words: Portraits of Brooklyn's Vietnam Veterans. Come visit! We're located in Brooklyn Heights, an historic landmarked district, in a building designed by architect George B. Post and completed in 1881. We're down the street from Borough Hall (and the Borough Hall Farmers' Market on Tuesdays and Thursdays)…