Delve Into the History of Brooklyn's Lost Barren Island With the City Reliquary Museum
Learn more about the community of Barren Island with a lecture at Williamsburg’s shrine to the unusual.
Barren Island in 1931. Photo by P.L. Sperr via New York Public Library
Learn more about the community of Barren Island with a lecture at Williamsburg’s shrine to the unusual.
The City Reliquary Museum is hosting Miriam Sicherman, author of Brooklyn’s Barren Island: A Forgotten History, for a talk on the rarely explored history of the island once located in Jamaica Bay. The book, released this fall, documents the hardscrabble community that made their living processing garbage and animal carcasses. From the 1850s until the 1930s, residents created a neighborhood with local businesses, schools and churches. The island was ultimately subsumed into the land mass of Brooklyn and the last residents evicted in the 1930s.
The event takes place on Thursday, November 21 at 7 p.m. at the City Reliquary Museum at 370 Metropolitan Avenue. The event is free to the public. For more information visit the event page at the City Reliquary website.
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