Armed with a notebook and a pencil, I spent most of my internship at the Brooklyn Historical Society in their research library, pouring over fire insurance atlases. Part of a larger project for a new offsite satellite location on the Brooklyn waterfront, my role was to trace the industrial development of the waterfront. Knowing very little about Brooklyn’s history and even less about the geography, the task before me seemed daunting. Fast forward eighteen weeks and I now possess an intimate knowledge of every fire insurance atlas in BHS collection from 1855 to 1941 for the neighborhoods of DUMBO and Vinegar Hill, can visually picture the development along the waterfront in a time-lapse sequence that plays on a loop in my mind, and rattle off obscure and interesting facts about the major industrial companies and manufacturers on command.
And I couldn’t be more excited.
The research process was frustrating, thrilling, and mostly intriguing. I spent hours with the atlases in the library, going block by block from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Fulton Street from the East River into York Street. My notes reflected the changes in the area as coal sheds, stables, and small warehouses, were replaced by big name coffee companies, shoe factories, and paint companies, among a number of other national manufacturers and industries that called Brooklyn home. Compiling the research was monotonous at times, but in the end I had compiled a 70 page database from thirteen different atlases that chronicled the industrial growth of Brooklyn from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Fulton Street.
Atlas of the City of Brooklyn, G.W. Bromley and Co., 1893
But I had to make the research useable. Coding the companies by type – warehouse, manufacturer, other industry, utility, and community development – was the first step in building a profile of the neighborhoods. The coding led to an index of every company and a note of every atlas they appeared and what they produced. Throughout the course of the project I was aware that I wasn’t going to be at BHS for the duration of the projection and other staff members and researchers would have to use my research. By creating these indexes, along with a master list of each company and their category, the research now held meaning for more than just myself.
Now I had a multicolored word document and a spreadsheet with numerous tabs. From the first leg of my research I was able to figure out who the big players on the waterfront were and from there I began writing short company bios, filled with fun facts and quirky little details, which built the narrative of why these companies were so important to the development of Brooklyn. Some of my favorite odds and ends were things like the National Licorice Company, which was headquartered in DUMBO in the early 20th century, invented Twizzlers candy which later became a subsidiary of Hershey’s. Or that E.W. Bliss Co., the largest contractor of warheads and torpedoes for the United States Navy, built cars for commercial sale in 1906.
My internship at Brooklyn Historical Society, not only taught me about the history of the waterfront, which was expressed through my research and resulting analysis, but also a worthwhile learning experience. Public history is one of those professions that’s loosely defined and changes from venue to venue. While the semester is ending and my internship has come to close, my experience at BHS helped shape my understanding of public history and my own skills and goals as an emerging professional in the field.