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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, AUGUST 23, 2020
Mural highlights struggles of formerly incarcerated
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BY KEVIN DUGGAN
A new website maps Depression
era tax photos of every
building in the city, making
it easier for researchers
and history buffs to navigate
several hundred thousand
snapshots of buildings from
1940s New York City, according
to the site’s creator.
“It seemed so obvious. It’s
such a great collection of photos,
and I know a ton of work
went into digitizing and tagging
them, but the way they
were presented was less than
ideal,” said Park Sloper Julian
Boilen.
The software engineer
launched the historic page
www.1940s.nyc on Aug. 11
— dubbing it “Street View
of 1940s New York” — where
he charted photos taken between
1939-1951 by the city
Tax Department and the
New Deal-era Works Progress
Administration.
The city’s Department
of Records and Information
Services painstakingly digitized
more than 700,000 of the
functional black and white
photos on 35 mm fi lm in
2018 — but the government’s
website was diffi cult to navigate,
according to Boilen,
who wanted to simplify the
search process.
The Records Department’s
chief praised Boilen’s
initiative for giving historyhungry
New Yorkers an easier
way to get a glimpse into
the city’s past, while also
pointing to the municipal archive’s
site where people can
buy high-quality prints or
digital copies of the photos.
“This is an easy-to-use
tool that helps New Yorkers
dig into the past and see what
their neighborhood looked
like in the 1940s,” said Commissioner
Pauline Toole.
Boilen’s site also links
to a similar previous effort
mapping 1980s tax photos by
Brooklynites Brandon Liu
and Jeremy Lechtzin.
The 1940s New York City
images stem from the initiative
which sent photographers
around the Five Boroughs
to photograph every
single building, which offi -
cials hoped would improve
property tax assessments.
The photos exhibit a city at
the tail-end of the Great Depression,
before the great urban
renewal programs and
the dawn of the automobile
era that would come to reshape
the urban landscape.
The archival images show
historic 1940s Kings County
sites like the working waterfront
that has since become
Brooklyn Bridge Park, the
old townhouses that master
builder Robert Moses razed
to make way for the Brooklyn
Queens Expressway, and
the former elevated train
line that ran down Myrtle
Avenue. The collection also
includes some 10,000 outtakes,
such as photos at the
beginning of a new reel or
pictures where the building
was blocked by a person.
Boilen said when he fi rst
showed the photo of his apartment
building to his landlord,
the longtime property
owner recognized old family
members in the shot.
“The building I live in, I
found the building and there
were people outside it in the
picture,” he said. “I know my
landlord’s family owned this
building for 98 years and I
asked if he knows these people
and he was like, ‘That’s
uncle so and so.’”
Interested viewers can
head to www.1940s.nyc to see
all the pictures.
Property
taxes
SPOT CHECK: (Left) A government worker holds the block and lot sign on Johnson Street near Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard in Downtown
Brooklyn. (Right) The former elevated train above Myrtle Avenue near Navy Street.. Municipal Archives, City of New York
Park Sloper maps old tax photos
on ‘1940s Street View’ website
PAINFUL REMINDER: The new mural in Bed-Stuy. .
Jonnea Herman/The Century Foundation
BY BEN VERDE
A new mural in Bedford-
Stuyvesant aims to bring
attention to the challenges
faced by formerly incarcerated
people in America.
The mural, painted by
artist Damien Mitchell on
Atlantic Avenue and Perry
Place, is part of the End
Perpetual Punishment
campaign spearheaded
by entrepreneur Michael
“Zaki” Smith, a Bedford-
Stuyvesant native who said
the mural’s location in the
neighborhood was special
to him.
“It’s my home,” said
Smith. “It’s very important
to me that this piece exists
in Brooklyn.”
The mural illustrates
the “Jim Crow-like restrictions”
Smith says formerly
incarcerated Americans
are forced to navigate.
Every year, federal and
state prisons release 620,000
people from prison, according
to Department of Justice
statistics. Once they’re
released, they are subject to
44,000 individual laws and
regulations that limit their
access to employment, housing,
voting, education and
other rights, which often
leads to recidivism, criminal
justice experts believe.
Smith, who is formerly
incarcerated, said he hopes
the mural educates the community
on the challenges
faced by those with a criminal
record, and encourages
those who have criminal records
to question why they
are caught in a cycle of punishment.
“The goal is for them
to reconsider, and question
‘why am I being continuously
punished forever
even though I have served
my time?’” he said.
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