Browse the Brooklyn City Directories on archive
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2025 4:01 am
The directories also contain items like this – an advertisement showing this architect and builder’s office on Schermerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn. This part of Brooklyn looks very different now, and this insight into what it looked like pre-photography is invaluable, particularly for people conducting house, building, and neighborhood research.
The directories are linked on our Search Our Collections page. We also have a tutorial for using the digitized directories. Additionally, we have several related research guides which assist researchers in exploring various topics. These materials are in the public domain, and we hope they will be used for a broad spectrum of applications, from family research to demographic research to writing to artwork. We are grateful to Community Webs, the Internet Archive, and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for making this material available and searchable online and allowing us to expand access across the borough, city, and beyond.
The Internet Archive and Community Webs are special database for the support from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission for Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections, which will digitize and provide access to a diverse range of local history archives that represent the experiences of immigrant, indigenous, and African American communities throughout the United States.
The following guest post from film archivist Mark O’Brien is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age.
Eastman stock filmstrip, with its chemical binder in the process of breaking down.
In 1999, I was working in information technology at a school district in rural upstate New York, and dreaming of writing angst-ridden, sample-laden music that might help people understand what it felt like to be me. Autism was not well-understood when I was a child, and I was simply left to try to pretend to be normal. One day I walked into the school’s library and saw an entire wall of shelves being emptied. The district was getting rid of old educational multimedia, most of it filmstrips.
The directories are linked on our Search Our Collections page. We also have a tutorial for using the digitized directories. Additionally, we have several related research guides which assist researchers in exploring various topics. These materials are in the public domain, and we hope they will be used for a broad spectrum of applications, from family research to demographic research to writing to artwork. We are grateful to Community Webs, the Internet Archive, and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for making this material available and searchable online and allowing us to expand access across the borough, city, and beyond.
The Internet Archive and Community Webs are special database for the support from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission for Collaborative Access to Diverse Public Library Local History Collections, which will digitize and provide access to a diverse range of local history archives that represent the experiences of immigrant, indigenous, and African American communities throughout the United States.
The following guest post from film archivist Mark O’Brien is part of our Vanishing Culture series, highlighting the power and importance of preservation in our digital age.
Eastman stock filmstrip, with its chemical binder in the process of breaking down.
In 1999, I was working in information technology at a school district in rural upstate New York, and dreaming of writing angst-ridden, sample-laden music that might help people understand what it felt like to be me. Autism was not well-understood when I was a child, and I was simply left to try to pretend to be normal. One day I walked into the school’s library and saw an entire wall of shelves being emptied. The district was getting rid of old educational multimedia, most of it filmstrips.