COURIER LIFE, JULY 24-30, 2020 25
OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
BY ROSE ADAMS
An online map portal launched on
July 16 by the Brooklyn Historical Society
provides access to hundreds of
rare Brooklyn maps dating back to
the 1700s, giving viewers a look into
the borough’s development over the
centuries, according to the project’s
creator.
“The most dramatic story that
these maps show is the evolution of
Brooklyn from this primarily agricultural
place of villages to then, over
the course of the 19th century, becoming
increasingly urban,” said Maggie
Schreiner, the manager of archives
and special collections, and the project’s
co-director. “That story is very
clear in these maps.”
The online database, which includes
nearly 1,500 maps from across the
state, allows viewers to sort through
fragile, one-of-a-kind artifacts from
the Society’s archives, many of which
have not been displayed publicly for
several decades, Schreiner said.
“Hundreds of the maps that are included
in the portal are manuscript
maps, so they’re hand-drawn maps,”
she said. “Many of these maps are very
large format, they’re very fragile, so
they’re quite hard to pull for researchers
in our reading room.”
Some of the collection’s oldest maps
include rare British surveys of the
territory before the Revolutionary
War, and maps from before the city of
Brooklyn was incorporated into New
York City in 1834, Society reps said in
a statement.
Brooklynites can sort through the
portal’s nearly 900 Brooklyn maps by
location, allowing them to view their
neighborhood as it looked more than
100 years ago, and to see the changes to
its transportation networks and population.
Users can also search by topic or
genre to fi nd a range of transportation
maps, political maps, topographical
maps, and cultural maps, among other
more specifi c topics.
Some of the portal’s most popular
maps show old public transportation
routes, Schreiner said.
“One of the maps that’s been really
popular the fi rst couple days is a map
that shows how to get to Ebbet’s Field
from 1919 — that stadium where the
Brooklyn Dodgers played,” she said.
Staffers at the Brooklyn Historical
Society worked on the portal project
for more than two years, restoring
the maps, sending them to New Jersey
to be digitized, and locating them on a
present-day grid using mapping software,
Schreiner said.
“To digitize the maps, we did that
in New Jersey … that was a big undertaking,”
she said. “We also GIS-located
every single map, so if you look up every
single map it shows a location box
that shows the present day location of
where that map is.”
The Brooklyn Historical Society —
which unveiled an online portal a few
years ago with more than 1,200 oral
histories from across the borough —
has turned to digitization to expand
access to its collections so that academics
and inquisitive Brooklynites
can take a peek into the borough’s history.
“Our goal was to create a portal
that will be used by the full range of
people,” said Schreiner, who added
that the Society prioritizes digitizing
collections that are diffi cult to display
in person. “It’s a tool for those doing
academic research, but also a place for
those curious about their streets and
neighborhoods. Anyone can visit and
take a journey.”
You can visit the online map portal
at www.mapcollections.brooklynhistory.
org.
Mapper’s
delight
New database
chronicles boro’s
development
THERE’S A MAP FOR THAT: This 1864 copy of a 1766 map, “Plan of the village of Brooklyn and part of Long Island,” is one of the oldest views
of the city in the library’s map collection. Brooklyn Historical Society
/www.mapcollections.brooklynhis-tory.org
/www.mapcollections.brooklynhis-tory.org
/www.mapcollections.brooklynhis-tory.org