The book may have numerous typos or missing text. It is not illustrated or indexed. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website. You can also preview the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a trial membership in the publisher's book club where they can select from more than a million books for free. Original Publisher: Pub. by subscription Publication date: 1870 Subjects: Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.); Bushwick (New York, N.Y.); Williamsburg (New York, N.Y.); Bushwick, N.Y; History / United States / General; History / United States / State

This book shows how modern Brooklyn’s proud urban identity as an arts-friendly community originated in the mid nineteenth century. Before and after the Civil War, Brooklyn’s elite, many engaged in Atlantic trade, established more than a dozen cultural societies, including the Philharmonic Society, Academy of Music, and Art Association. The associative ethos behind Brooklyn’s fine arts flowering built upon commercial networks that joined commerce, culture, and community. This innovative, carefully researched and documented history employs the concept of parallel Renaissances. It shows influences from Renaissance Italy and Liverpool, then connected to New York through regular packet service like the Black Ball Line that ferried people, ideas, and cargo across the Atlantic. Civil War disrupted Brooklyn’s Renaissance. The city directed energies towards war relief efforts and the women’s Sanitary Fair. The Gilded Age saw Brooklyn’s Renaissance energies diluted by financial and political corruption, planning the Brooklyn Bridge and consolidation with New York City in 1898.

From 19th century playhouses to the opulence of the 1920s movie palace and the multiplexes of today, The Brooklyn Theatre Index acts as a resource guide to the borough's performance spaces. Volume II begins with Royal Palace Hall on Manhattan Avenue and ends with Military Hall on York Street.

From 19th Century playhouses to the opulence of the 1920s movie palace and the multiplexes of today, The Brooklyn Theatre Index acts as a resource guide to the borough's performance spaces. The Index has its origins in two earlier surveys of Brooklyn theatres conducted independently by Dario Marotta and Michael Miller, each compiling an extensive listing of Brooklyn venues. For the purpose of the Index, the two lists were combined and extensive research was carried out on each auditorium with new information uncovered and a number of new venues added. Volume I begins with Gothic Hall on Adams Street and ends with a "moving picture show" at Lorimer and Meserole Streets..

Narrates the story of the elite African American families who lived in New York City in the nineteenth century, describing their successes as businesspeople and professionals and the contributions they made to the culture of that time period.

Old South Brooklyn Entrepreneur is far more than a financial and commercial biography of Anson Blake 1789-1868. It provides many details of local history, not only of South Brooklyn (today’s Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, Boerum Hill and Gowanus) before the Civil War, but of New York City’s economic history, including Anson Blake’s speculation in Wall Street area lands and buildings. Blake also speculated in Upstate New York’s Black River Canal region of Oneida, Hamilton and Herkimer counties where Anson Blake wanted a railroad to be built through his lots. Many interesting illustrations and photographs depict facets of Manhattan and Brooklyn history — including Blake’s early land and building speculation enterprises in South Brooklyn adjacent to the terminus of the original Long Island Railroad, and the Atlantic Street and Hamilton Avenue ferries. This book describes New York’s and Brooklyn’s history during the second quarter of America’s 19th century.

Spanning three centuries of Brooklyn history from the colonial period to the present, A Covenant with Color exposes the intricate relations of dominance and subordination that have long characterized the relative social positions of white and black Brooklynites. Craig Steven Wilder -- examining both quantitative and qualitative evidence and utilizing cutting-edge literature on race theory -- demonstrates how ideas of race were born, how they evolved, and how they were carried forth into contemporary society. In charting the social history of one of the nation's oldest urban locales, Wilder contends that power relations -- in all their complexity -- are the starting point for understanding Brooklyn's turbulent racial dynamics. He spells out the workings of power -- its manipulation of resources, whether in the form of unfree labor, privileges of citizenship, better jobs, housing, government aid, or access to skilled trades. Wilder deploys an extraordinary spectrum of evidence to illustrate the mechanics of power that have kept African American Brooklynites in subordinate positions: from letters and diaries to family papers of Kings County's slaveholders, from tax records to the public archives of the Home Owners Loan Corporation. Wilder illustrates his points through a variety of cases, including banking interests, the rise of Kings County's colonial elite, industrialization and slavery, race-based distribution of federal money in jobs, and mortgage loans during and after the Depression. He delves into the evolution of the Brooklyn ghetto, tracing how housing segregation corralled African Americans in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The book explores colonial enslavement, the rise of Jim Crow, labor discrimination and union exclusion, and educational inequality. Throughout, Wilder uses Brooklyn as a lens through which to view larger issues of race and power on a national level. One of the few recent attempts to provide a comprehensive history of race relations in an American city, A Covenant with Color is a major contribution to urban history and the history of race and class in America.