Blog Posts tagged as: From the BHS Blog

Brooklyn's Mechanical Milkman

Liza

 

Mechanical milkman, 1953, WORK_0136; Brooklyn Daily Eagle photographs, Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.
Today we’re celebrating not leaving the building for basic necessities! It’s too cold out there. In 1953, automats had been thriving throughout New York City for decades, but Rowe Corporation endeavored to explore territory beyond the cafeteria: the apartment lobby. The Clinton Hill Apartments became the testing site for the charmingly retro-futuristic “mechanical milkman,” which claimed to save women from “braving Winter…

Brooklyn Navy Yard oral history collection now available online!

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Old Navy yard sign that reads: Builders of the World's Mightiest War ShipsFrank J. Trezza, Old Navy yard sign that reads: Builders of the World's Mightiest War Ships, 1978, color slide, V1988.21.344; Frank J. Trezza Seatrain Shipbuilding collection, 1988.21; Brooklyn Historical Society.
  Brooklyn Historical Society is thrilled to announce that the Brooklyn Navy Yard oral history collection is now available through our online Oral History Portal! Forty-nine interviews with the women and men who worked in and around the Brooklyn Navy Yard, particularly during WWII,…

Summer Archives Internship Reflection from Sophia Terry

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Schwarren, Litchfield VIlla, circa 1880, arc.202.box17.113; Photograph and illustration collection, ARC 202, Brooklyn Historical Society.
I’m both lucky and thankful to have gotten the opportunity to intern at the Brooklyn Historical Society this past summer. 2020 has been unique in its challenges, and at the end of a disjointed spring semester, I was left without a real plan for the summer. When I came across a notice for a remote internship through the Brooklyn Historical Society that seemed to fit my area of interest, I decided to apply, despite having never physically…

Summer Archives Internship Reflection from Fiona Wu

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BHS staff with exhibition model

Lesson Learned? Considering the Draft Riots of 1863 for Today

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The arrival of 4,000 Union troops in Manhattan on Thursday, July 16, 1863, marked the beginning of the end to four days of civic unrest and racial violence throughout New York City, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. That week, hundreds of buildings had been ransacked and burned. 119 people had been killed (although some estimates push that number closer to 500) including 19 African Americans, 11 of whom had been publicly lynched.At the height of the Civil War, the events that came to be known as the Draft Riots ignited simmering class and racial tensions in a city–and country–spiraling in the wake…

Announcing the Launch of the BHS Map Portal!

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Map of land of … situate[d] in the town of New Utrecht

Processing Privilege and Moving to Action: Watch, Listen, Explore

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Conversations to Inspire as We Grapple with Our Long History of Racism, Part 3This is the final of three blog posts that share recordings of past conversations that took place live at BHS. You can see the first post -- “Confronting a History of Injustice” -- here, and the second post -- “Structural Racism in America” -- here. We hope that together, they serve as prompts for each individual’s evolving insights about race, and that they spark frank discussion and spur action.In the midst of this watershed moment in American history there is a great deal to be learned about race…

Structural Racism in America: Watch, Listen, Explore

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Conversations to Inspire as We Grapple with Our Long History of Racism, Part 2This is the second of three blog posts that share recordings of past conversations that took place live at BHS. You can see the first post -- “Confronting a History of Injustice” -- here, and the third post -- “Processing Privilege and Moving to Action” -- here. We hope they serve as prompts for each individual’s evolving insights about race. We hope that they spark frank discussion and spur action.In the fight for racial equity, there are many systems in America that have racist roots and are…

Confronting a History of Injustice: Watch, Listen, Explore

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Conversations to Inspire as We Grapple with Our Long History of Racism

Finding your Brooklyn Roots in Brooklyn Historical Society's Beginnings

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With its "Finding Your Brooklyn Roots" initiative, BHS invites its followers to submit questions about their Brooklyn ancestors. In this post, we share one of our recent discoveries based on one of your inquiries. When a patron wrote to us hoping to learn more about her family roots in Brooklyn, she didn’t expect that we would be able to trace her ancestors back to Brooklyn Historical Society. We were just as surprised to find out that her second and third-great grandfathers, Julian and John Hooper, were not only early members of the Society, but made several contributions to our collections…

“Spanish Influenza” in Brooklyn and What We Can Learn from Our History

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We turn to the history of the “Spanish” influenza pandemic, which swept through New York City in several waves between 1918 and 1920. Today, insights from this past may help us cautiously begin this next chapter in our present.

New York State’s Regional Monitoring Dashboard New York State’s Regional Monitoring Dashboard, https://forward.ny.gov/regional-monitoring-dashboard
On Friday, May 15, New York State will begin the gradual process of rolling back the Executive Order known as NY Pause. This ten-point…

Backgrounds of Brooklyn: Historical Flair for Your Video Calls!

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[Panorama of Brooklyn and Manhattan waterfronts] [Panorama of Brooklyn and Manhattan waterfronts], circa 1910, photographic prints, v1976.2.268; Edward B. Watson photographs and prints collection, Brooklyn Historical Society.
Video chats and conference calls have become a routine element of our everyday experiences of work, school, and connecting with family or friends. Add a bit of…

"Indian Villages": The Story Behind a Map

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Indian villages, paths, ponds and places in Kings County [1946]; B B-1946.Fl; Brooklyn Historical Society.
A map called “Indian villages, paths, ponds and places in Kings County” is one of the more popular items in Brooklyn Historical Society’s Library & Archives. But a question we often hear is: where did the information in this map come from? To find out we had to look, strangely enough, at the life of a construction worker and vaudevillian from County Longford, Ireland.  James A. Kelly’s first…

HIV in Our Communities

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Health Center, Mid-Brooklyn Health Society, Inc.,1977;V2007.042.83;Brooklyn Historical Society
Everybody gets sick. For most of us, our health is a deeply personal and even private topic. But sickness and health are also public issues that have long shaped Brooklyn’s economy, its built environment, its laws and institutions, and its diverse communities. Taking Care of Brooklyn: Stories of Sickness and Health is one of Brooklyn Historical Society’s current exhibitions which explores how centuries of Brooklynites have understood sickness and health. Through the…

Poison for Profit

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Everybody gets sick. For most of us, our health is a deeply personal and even private topic. But sickness and health are also public issues that have long shaped Brooklyn’s economy, its built environment, its laws and institutions, and its diverse communities. Taking Care of Brooklyn: Stories of Sickness and Health is one of Brooklyn Historical Society’s current exhibitions which explores how centuries of Brooklynites have understood sickness and health. Through the experiences of everyday Brooklynites giving, receiving, demanding, and being denied health care, Taking Care of Brooklyn shows…

Contraception, Control & Care

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Everybody gets sick. For most of us, our health is a deeply personal and even private topic. But sickness and health are also public issues that have long shaped Brooklyn’s economy, its built environment, its laws and institutions, and its diverse communities. Taking Care of Brooklyn: Stories of Sickness and Health is one of Brooklyn Historical Society’s current exhibitions which explores how centuries of Brooklynites have understood sickness and health. Through the experiences of everyday Brooklynites giving, receiving, demanding, and being denied health care, Taking Care of Brooklyn…

The Recap: Toxic City

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An ad for Dutch Boy brand lead paintUsed in Dr. David Rosner's presentation for this program.
Each Recap post highlights a recent public program featured at Brooklyn Historical Society.  Scroll to the bottom of the page to hear the program in its entirety.How can we combat a toxin that is all around us?In New York City, which has some of the oldest housing stock in the country, thousands of pounds of lead-based paint and the dust or chips it can produce have accumulated on the walls, ceilings, and other surfaces in public and private housing, as well as schools, offices, and…

Caretakers as Changemakers

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Portrait of an unidentified nursing student

New recordings from the Packer Collegiate Institute now online!

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This post was written by Aliki Caloyeras, Brooklyn Historical Society Digitization Intern. Brooklyn Historical Society is pleased to announce the availability of over 175 newly digitized audio recordings, films, and videos from the Packer Collegiate Institute records (2014.019). This project has been made possible by a generous digitization grant from the Metropolitan Library Council (METRO), and follows up on our previous work with METRO to preserve quickly-deteriorating magnetic media and provide the public with easy access to our audio, video, and film collections.  

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The Recap: Gentrification 2.0

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  Each Recap post highlights a recent public program featured at Brooklyn Historical Society.  Scroll to the bottom of the page to hear the program in its entirety. Is change inevitable? That seemed to be the question of the evening at BHS’s first program of the season. On Wednesday, January 15th, 2020, the Great Hall was packed wall-to-wall with New Yorkers from all corners of the city waiting to hear what new aspect of gentrification we could possibly touch upon. Panelists included Matthew Schuerman, author of Newcomers: Gentrification and Its Discontents…