POTW: Bring Your Photo ID: Filling Gaps in the Archive

Everyone loves a mystery, and we have no lack of them here in the archive. Some are in the form of unidentified photographs waiting for eagle-eyed staff or other longtime Brooklynites to recognize their true identities and bring them out of the darkness.

Today’s Photo of the Week flashed into view as I was browsing our collection, a picture identified only as coming to us with the acquisition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle photographs, but with no other supporting information. Because I had recently been on this stretch of Flatbush Avenue, I recognized the distinctive Gothic architecture of Erasmus Hall, located across the street from the historic Dutch Reformed Church.

The gateway building we see here was designed as a high school by Charles B. J. Snyder, at that time Superintendent of School Buildings for the New York City Board of Education, and built between 1905-1906, with other adjacent buildings added in succeeding years. In 1994 the school was closed, and the site now serves several smaller schools under the name Erasmus Hall Educational Campus. Its identity is reinforced by a nearby business, perhaps a vocational outpost of the institution: Erasmus Beauty School? An interesting side note: the school is on a block bordered by Snyder Avenue, but this is a mere coincidence with the school’s designer. According to the New York Times (John Jacob Snyder, figure in Flatbush, Feb. 14, 1946, page 24) the street is named after a local family.

There was no date in the record, but I hoped the Astor Theater marquee would give us some clues. The release dates in this Kung-fu double-bill: The Hammer of God (1970) and The Brutal Boxer / Blood fingers (1972) make our earliest possible date 1972 for the photo. A dive into one of our books, The Brooklyn theatre index by Cezar Del Valle, reveals the Astor Theater closed in 1977, so we have a neat five-year date span for the photograph. I then hoped some of the cars on the street could narrow our years. I learned from my friend Robert Meyer, an auto aficionado, that the distinctive model on the left is a 1961 Plymouth Valiant. This is too early to help us, but the other side of the street is lined 1970s vintage cars, and somewhere there will be a photograph that syncs up exactly with the car driving away on the right. He suggests it is most likely an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.

Those familiar with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper will know that it ceased publication in 1955. Although the photo came to us among the Eagle collection, its date establishes it as not being a product of that publication. Perhaps someday an astute reader can help us to refine the data on this photograph, but for now I am delighted it can take its place among our collections with a solid identity.

Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page to search our collections. Questions? Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.