Researching Ownership Records at Brookyn Register
I lived in Brooklyn most of my life, but am now out in Cleveland. I’m working on a book and was wondering whether someone could answer some quick specific questions about materials at the Brooklyn Register in the Municipal Building. 1. How are the bound indexes organized and for what years are they available? 2….
I lived in Brooklyn most of my life, but am now out in Cleveland. I’m working on a book and was wondering whether someone could answer some quick specific questions about materials at the Brooklyn Register in the Municipal Building.
1. How are the bound indexes organized and for what years are they available?
2. How are the microfilms organized? Is there one libre per reel, a month, a year etc.?
3. How far back do the bound libre books go before you have to look at them on micofilm?
I did try calling the Register, but didn’t get anywhere talking to them. I appreciate any help anyone can offer. Thank you.
Thanks for all the information. I really appreciate the help.
A lot of records are already online accessoble via acris.
Old records that are there have multiple books staggered into different books and maps. When they digitized the documents tehy removed some of them so now there is only the real old ones.
They used to have one set of grey and blue from app. 1960-1990 and then you would use the computer and most of these are already uploaded. On these books you would look up the liber / reel / page and get a copy from the microfilm. These books have been removed since the launch of acris.
Then there would be the medium red books for each block with dates from the late 1800 till about 1945-1950 also with an indication of a different set of liber / reel / page no. listed according to type of conveyance and also bigger red books with multiple blocks from the same time listed according to date transfers.
Earlier than that there are the other books with actual copies of deeds in it starting from the eraliest deed transfers (I saw some from 1850-1860 roughly) till the dates of the big red books.
amzi hill- that link is amazing-
NorthHeights and greenwoodgeneral have good descriptions. The indexes are difficult to work with, but with patience you can find what you need. If you are just looking for chain of title type information, you may not even need to look at the microfilm.
There are two different volumes of index books for each block. The more recent index book has block and lots, and is fairly easy to work with. The older book (covering most of the 19th century and before) is just organized by block, usually with no address or lot designations. So you need to be able to trace titles by names – and of course, sometimes a name is missing, so you lose the chain.
The link Amzi provided takes you to the Real Estate Record and Builder’s Guide, a publication that started in about 1868 (Columbia’s digitization only goes through 1922, but the Record was published in the 1960s, I think). It includes information on conveyances, mortgages, liens, new building applications, alterations and much more. BUT, the Record & Guide is not complete, particularly for Brooklyn. The Brooklyn records start in the 1870s, spottily, and aren’t indexed until the 1880s (and then the indexing stops in the 1890s). You can search the Record, but the search engine is not very robust and the character recognition is nowhere near 100%, so you need to be creative, diligent or obstinate to find what you need.
try this.. it has really helped me out: http://ldpd.lamp.columbia.edu/rerecord/browse.php
The indexes for deeds go back to the first land grants in Brooklyn in the 1600s. The indexes for mortgages go back to the early 1800s but they’re missing some books.
The libers were just put onto microfilm sequentially. Usually 2-3 libers per reel, but in many cases libers span more than 1 reel.
The bound libers go back to about the 1940s.
Everything historical was re-indexed in the 1930s as a WPA project using the current tax block numbering. So if you have a current BBL, you should be fine to start, although the indexes are grouped in different year groups which is what necessitates lots of walking. But the historical indexes don’t have lot numbers, just party names, so it’s difficult to look up a historical addresses unless you already know the owner, or have done a title search back to that point. The deeds themselves often have lot numbers from private maps filed with the register, but you have to do some detective work to figure out what corresponds to modern lots (and they don’t always overlap). Not to mention that addresses have changed, most significantly in the early 1870s when pretty much the entire city was renumbered.
There are also transferor/transferee and mortgagor/mortgagee indexes but these are only on film.
The employees try to be helpful, but really their job is to process current filings so they don’t have much knowledge about the books. It’s not a research facility. They let the title searchers and other researchers have the run of the place. The title searchers are very helpful in telling you what place on the floor an index might be located.
All of the microfilm is on the second floor and if you pretend you’re a title searcher and know what you’re doing, they’ll let you just browse the reels, which is much more efficient than putting in request slips.
The Brooklyn Historical Society has some different indexes, which in some cases have more information than the register’s own indexes.
They go back pretty far– for instance I traced my lot back to the 1700s in the original registers, and used the other registers to find when it was split into parcels and built upon in the 1800s. The issue is that the current boro was many different towns at different points, and that the block/lot and address system changes a lot. From my experience, the oldest docs seem to be in the actual books. The 1800s docs are on fiche. The newer docs are also in actual books. You have to do a lot of walking around to different stacks and floors to get the full list of docs on your building (but it’s kind of a fun day, and people there are helpful interested).
Can’t answer your question directly but the Brooklyn Historical Society can (and more). Contact them via http://www.brooklynhistory.org/library/ask.html