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About the Author
Russell Granger is the founder and CEO of Arch Digitals, a branding and marketing agency specializing in strategy and design for engaging customers online. He began focusing his research and archiving efforts on antebellum Brooklyn when family history pursuits led to the discovery of an association with Walt Whitman. Russell currently lives in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, just a few streets from several ancestral addresses from the 1830s.
View of Brooklyn, 1855
View of Brooklyn, from the foot of Wall Street, 1855. Period tinting.
This image has all the iconic elements that make it the quintessential mid-19th century view of Brooklyn before the bridge: the majestic Heights to the west sloping gracefully down to the ferry landing at Fulton street; the cluster of masted sails in Wallabout Bay at the Navy Yard; church steeples sprinkled throughout, and a busy East River thoroughfare of skips and sloops, schooners and a paddlewheel, all surrounding the centerpiece of life between the cities: the ubiquitous ferry boat.
The basic design of the ferry boats remained consistent for many decades, as this photograph from the turn of the century suggests.
