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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.
Fireworks from the Heights
View from Montague, July 4th, 1859. Wall Street Ferry, Pierrepont Stores. Period tinting.
My paternal ancestors have the distinction of being the first to have set Walt Whitman to music, when in 1846 an ode written by Whitman for the July 4th celebrations at Fort Greene was sung to the tune of The Star Spangled Banner as played by Granger’s Brooklyn Brass Band.
Here is an excerpted transcription of the day’s program, including the Whitman Ode, as published by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on July 2nd, 1846:
Flatbush at Atlantic
View south on Flatbush where Atlantic crosses, 1845. Period tinting.
A Long Island Rail Road train makes its approach from the east toward the Bull’s Head Tavern, made famous by its role in the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn as Baker’s Tavern.
The Brooklyn and Jamaica Rail Road was chartered in 1832, and was opened from the South Ferry to Jamaica, a distance of about twelve miles in 1836; not long after the Long Island Rail Road, chartered April 26, 1834, ran cars over the same track, reaching some of the towns in Suffolk county. The route was along Atlantic Street, now Atlantic avenue.
Cannonball Gardens
Northeastern view from inside the Navy Yard, Wallabout Bay and Williamsburgh beyond. 1851.
A romantic, picture-postcard view from inside the Navy Yard in 1851. Note the oxen, presumably for hauling, inside the ship-building shed, and the wonderfully sculptural quality of the cannonball pyramids (one is reminded of today’s annual sculpture installations along the Dumbo waterfront in Brooklyn Bridge Park).
The Navy Yard was indeed a romantic destination for most of the nineteenth century. The following excerpt from a New York Times article in the 1890s offers an evocative glimpse of the location’s appeal:
SE Corner Fulton & Prospect
A block of the old Brooklyn Village that remained, more or less, for over 125 years. Modern tinting.
In the time period this image depicts, about 1830, the western terminus of Prospect Street was part of a busy three-way intersection that included Main and Fulton, and marked the split of traffic between the Fulton Ferry and the more eastern Catharine Ferry at the foot of Main Street.
Remarkably, several of these wood-frame buildings remained for over a century.