The Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS), founded in 1863, is a museum, library, and educational center preserving and encouraging the study of Brooklyn' s 400-year past.
Overview
Located at 128 Pierrepont Street on the corner of Clinton Street in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, USA, the Brooklyn Historical Society houses materials relating to the history of Brooklyn and its people. These holdings supply exhibitions illuminating the past and informing the future. BHS hosts over 9,000 members of the general public at its exhibitions each year. In addition to general programming, BHS serves over 70,000 public school students and teachers annually by providing exhibit tours, educational programs and curricula, and making its professional staff available for instruction and consultation.
The Society's headquarters building is a National Historic Landmark designed by George B. Post and constructed in 1878-81 for what was then named the Long Island Historical Society, which became the Brooklyn Historical Society in 1985.
History and building
The Brooklyn Historical Society was founded in 1863 by Henry Pierrepont (1808â€"1888) as the Long Island Historical Society', with a charter from the New England Historical Society in Boston. In 1985, the society changed its name to the Brooklyn Historical Society.
The society's headquarters building, on the corner of Pierrepoint and Clinton Streets, was built in 1878â€"81 and was designed by George B. Post in the Renaissance revival style. Post was selected as a result of a competition between 14 architects. The building's design utilizes terra cotta ornamentation made by the Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company, and has architectural sculptures by Olin Levi Warner, including busts of Michelangelo, Beethoven, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Columbus, Benjamin Franklin, a Viking and a Native American.
The building has been described as "one of the City's great architectural treasures", and the interior as "one of New York's great 19th-century interiors." It is part of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission's Brooklyn Heights Historic District, designated in 1966, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark in 1991. In October 1999, BHS began a full-scale restoration of the building, supervised by architect Jan Hird Pokorny, and reopened in 2003.
In 2005, the BHS was among 406 New York City arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Programs
Principal activities of BHS include education programs, which are organized around a central educational concept of encouraging students to understand that history is connected to their lives. BHS programs link the study of American history to events and sites in the students’ own communities by introducing the investigation of primary source documents and neighborhood histories. BHS’ education programs largely focus on the ability of students to “read†primary source documents, including works of art, maps, photographs, and other artifacts.
BHS offers a schedule of programs designed to engage a broad range of audiences. Programs range from topics in history and current affairs to exhibition related lectures, to musical events, walking tours, readings and plays.
Up to eight exhibitions each year are presented by BHS, ranging from comprehensive retrospectives and historical surveys to more focused presentations that explore specific themes and topics. Installations from the collection have included a gallery of family portraits and another of landscape paintings. These installations rotate over time, providing visitors with greater access to BHS’ fine arts collections.
In December 2007, BHS opened the first gallery in the United States devoted to oral history. The first exhibition installed in the gallery was an installation of oral histories, photographs, documents, and artifacts called "In Our Own Words: Portraits of Brooklyn's Vietnam Veterans".
Collection
The Othmer Library has an extensive collection. Collection highlights include: historic maps and atlases of Brooklyn and New York City, numerous individual family histories in the genealogy collection, a microfilm collection of Brooklyn and Long Island newspapers from the 19th and early 20th century, an important collection of microfiche pamphlets on slavery and abolition, the papers of abolitionist clergyman Henry Ward Beecher, the Pierrepont Papers, the Brooklyn Firefighting Collection, and the Brooklyn Council of Churches.
The Brooklyn Historical Society possesses a collection of historical maps spanning the years ca. 1562â€"2011. The geographic coverage of the collection includes the five boroughs, New York City, Long Island, New York State, New Jersey, New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Eastern United States. Additionally, the collection contains some items covering the United States, North America, and the Western Hemisphere. In 2010 while cataloging the map collection, BHS staff discovered a previously uncatalogued, and rare copy of a c. 1770 map by Bernard Ratzer that has been restored and is now accessible to the public.
The collection contains a variety of different types of maps, including: physical maps, political maps, transportation maps, property maps, survey maps, pictorial maps, manuscript maps, topographic maps, cultural maps, and nautical charts. It is an excellent resource for all types of research.
The Oral History Collections contain interviews with over 300 narrators. Transcripts and recordings can be accessed in the Othmer Library. More information about the Oral History Collections is available on the BHS website and blog. A 2013 Oral History Project is called Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations. It is a public programming series and oral history project about mixed-heritage families, with historical perspective.
See also
- Brooklyn Visual Heritage
- List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Kings County, New York
References
Notes
External links
- Official website
- The Landmark Building, at Brooklyn Historical Society
- Society of Old Brooklynites monthly lectures
- "Streetscapes/About Brooklyn Historical Society; An 1881 Landmark in Red Brick and Terra Cotta" by Christopher Gray, New York Times, 2/11/2001
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