Remembering Brooklyn’s Civil Rights Activists and the Fight for a Better Bed Stuy
The Bibuld Family pickets for desegregation in Brooklyn in 1962. Photo by Bob Adelman via the Brooklyn Historical Society
In the minds of many, the Civil Rights Movement occurred solely in the deep south, where formal segregation was deeply entrenched after the end of Reconstruction.
Feast Your Eyes on the Finest Luxury Apartment Buildings of Gilded Age Brooklyn
Alhambra Apartments on Nostrand Avenue. Photo by Suzanne Spellen
There’s nothing like a Gilded Age apartment to set the heart racing — or to inspire a swap for one’s first born, as the movie Rosemary’s Baby so famously depicted. That particularly coveted real estate showstopper was located in Manhattan’s Dakota building, home to stars from John Lennon to Lauren Bacall.
But Brooklyn has its grand apartment buildings too. These immense elaborate structures attracted admiration like no others — and they still do today.
Revolutionary Soldiers Carved Names on Beams of This Now-Gone Dutch Farm in Flatlands
“The Kouwenhoven Farmhouse, the house that my great grandparents occupied from about 1900 until 1925 when the land was sold to developers and Kings Highway was expanded. The figures on the porch were farm hands.”
An old Dutch farm that once stood in Flatlands is gone but not forgotten. A Brownstoner reader sent in never-before-published family photos and stories of life on the farm circa 1900, when his great-grandfather lived there.
The One Thing You Need to Know About Dating an Old House
Brownstones and limestones on Jefferson Avenue in Bed Stuy. Photo by Cate Corcoran
How can you know the age of your house or apartment building? Here’s the one rule you should be sure to follow in New York City.
It’s Not Literal, It’s Dutch: How Flatbush Got Its Name
Brownstoner takes on Brooklyn history in Nabe Names, a series of briefs on the origins and surprising stories of neighborhood nomenclature.
Flatbush and Church avenues, circa 1918. Photo via Brooklyn Historical Society
Flatbush encompasses a sprawling mass of central Brooklyn, serving as a main artery and residential hub for more than 100,000 Brooklynites as well as being the borough’s literal center.
Coney Island’s Lost Bicycle Racing Velodrome
Photo via Ephemeral New York
Bicycles may be the thing here in 21st century Brooklyn, but all of the borough’s current bike venues have nothing on Coney Island’s former bicycling stadium.
Celery and Glacé Fantaisie: What Fancy Brooklyn Cyclists Ate in 1899
Menu via NYPL. Photo via Online Bicycle Museum
When you envision a post-bike-ride snack, you probably think along the lines of granola bars, smoothies or energy drinks. But for the Brooklynites of yesteryear, cycling was much more than a sport, and eating with fellow bikers could go well beyond replenishing electrolytes.
Did You Know the Brillo Pad Was Invented in Brooklyn?
Everything ends up here eventually, but Made in Brooklyn is a column exploring native, born-and-bred borough creations.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a revolution in home cookware was taking American kitchens by storm, with aluminum pots and pans supplanting their unwieldy predecessors: cast iron cookery. But new wares also required new cleaning methods.
The Inspiring Story of Weeksville, One of America’s First Free Black Communities
Imagine being told your entire life that you were not really a citizen of your town or country. Imagine being treated as an inferior, offered only the most menial of jobs, and told to be happy with your lot in life. Imagine being banned from churches, stores and theaters, even cemeteries, because they did not serve “your kind.”
Now imagine finding a town where you were accepted — a town where you were able to build your own home, worship in your own church, buy from stores owned by people like you, and raise and educate your children in a place where they would be welcome. A town where you could reach old age and pass on in dignity and equality.
For Brooklyn’s African-American population in the 19th century, some of whom were recently freed from slavery, this remarkable town was called Weeksville. And it survives today in bits and pieces, some of which now comprise a historic center in present-day Crown Heights. Here is its story.
From Boom to Bootlegging: The Excelsior Brewing Company of Bedford Stuyvesant
Images via the Brooklyn Public Library
The Excelsior Brewing Company of Bed Stuy was not the best, biggest, or most well known of Brooklyn’s historic breweries, but it did have one of the strangest schemes to survive Prohibition. Unfortunately, Excelsior got caught.
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