Center for Brooklyn History at Brooklyn Public Library

Preserving Brooklyn's History—For the Future

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MetroNew York City, USA (NYC)
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Formerly known as the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Center for Brooklyn History became part of Brooklyn Public Library in 2020 and is now free and accessible to all for research, education, culture and more. The story of the Center for Brooklyn History began in 1863 with the founding of the Long Island Historical Society (LIHS) during a time of tumultuous change. In only a few decades, Brooklyn had grown from a tiny agricultural backwater to the third largest city in the country. Civic pride was at an all-time high. Many of Brooklyn’s citizens believed they needed to commemorate their city’s rural past before it quickly faded from memory. Founders also envisioned the LIHS as a center for dialogue about history. In the nineteenth century, the society’s roster of speakers included newspaper editor and reformer Horace Greeley, writer Arthur Conan Doyle and abolitionist and women’s rights activist Julia Ward Howe. The CBH houses a world-renowned special collections and archives library on the second floor of its landmark building on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights. The Othmer Library’s magnificent reading room with its stained-glass windows and carved wooden columns transports the visitor to an earlier era, and connects them to over 33,000 books, 1,600 archival collections, 1,200 oral history interviews, 50,000 photographs, 2,000 maps, 8,000 artifacts, and 300 paintings that document the commercial, residential, community, and civic development of the borough. In combining these resources with BPL’s Brooklyn Collection, the Center for Brooklyn History collects, preserves and makes accessible the most comprehensive collection of materials related to Brooklyn’s history and culture in the world.