If you should ever decide to delve into the Brooklyn Sheet Music Collection,  you will be amazed at the variety of styles and genres that songwriters have used to celebrate the borough of Brooklyn. We've got Marches, Waltzes, Cake-walks, Rags and Two-Steps, celebrating everything from Coney Island to Bushwick High School; and quite possibly the first song ever written about a logjam of people crossing a bridge:The Brooklyn Daily Eagle Bridge Crush March.

The music in our collection dates from 1869 with Crossing on the Ferry all the way to 1987 with No Sleep Till Brooklyn by the Beastie Boys.  Beginning in the 1930's with the rise and popularity of motion pictures, the marriage between music and movies produced such popular titles as Take it From There, sung by Betty Grable in "Coney Island;" An Old Fashioned Love Song sung by Danny Kaye in "The Kid from Brooklyn;" and My Brooklyn Love Song immortalized by Eddie Cantor in the 1947 musical "If You Knew Susie".

The early 1900's were a period of increased immigration, and many songs were written that spoke to the immigrant experience. Our collection contains Mariutch (Make-a the Hootch-a Ma Kootch) Down at Coney Isle, and our featured song, Born and Bred in Brooklyn (Over the Bridge).

This little number comes from the musical "The Rise of Rosie O'Reilly" which opened on December 23rd, 1905 at The Liberty Theater and ran for 87 performances. Written by George M. Cohan, it tells the story of a millionaire and a beautiful young Irish girl who sells flowers under the Brooklyn Bridge, in the area now known an DUMBO. Sticking to her working-class roots she shuns the millionaire's advances and settles down with a gentleman of humbler means.

A sheet music cover is all very well, but nothing brings music--even, it must be admitted, less than sublime music--to life like a performance.  So without further ado, here for your listening and viewing pleasure is Born and Bred in Brooklyn (Over the Bridge), performed by librarians of the Brooklyn Collection and with photographs drawn from our collections.  And not to worry, we're not quitting our day jobs! 

Andy Mele, author of The Boys of Brooklyn:The Parade Grounds-Brooklyn's Field of Dreams, and The Brooklyn Dodgers Reader will be with us tomorrow evening, Wednesday, April 25th at 6:30 p.m, for our monthly series. He'll talk about the many players - famous and not so famous that played at the Parade Grounds, and of course those Brooklyn Dodgers.  Please join us. 

The Brooklyn Collection is on the 2nd floor mezzanine of Brooklyn Public Library's Central branch, at Grand Army Plaza.  A wine and cheese reception, as well as distribution of tickets is at 6:30 p.m. Seating is limited to 40.  Author talk begins promptly at 7pm.

                       illustration by June Koffi 

Brooklyn ladies have always taken pride in their hair. Whether they wear it

            long and wavy

          short and curly

Brooklyn women take full advantage of all the hair options available. And now since the weather has turned relatively warm, we can look forward to not dealing with  the dreaded "hat hair" and can release our locks from their prisons of winter hats. Each new season of course brings with it a fresh opportunity for new and inventive hair styles, as these models can attest at The National Hairdressers and Cosmetologists Association show in 1950. 

The fashion magazines are filled with the latest trends in color and cuts. This is an annual rite of Spring, not usually reserved for starting revolutions, but in the early 1920's one hairstyle did just that. It was...

             The Bob!     

Started by Irene Castle during World War I , The Bob soon caught on the world over. The hair was cut short around the head at  jaw level and could be worn straight, or curly, with bangs or parted on the side. With its ease of styling, the Bob epitomized independence, youthfulness, modernity and a boldness that women were eager to embrace.  And Brooklyn women were right in the middle of it.  There were opponents and proponents of this controversial style, and their debate was chronicled in the pages of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle throughout the 1920's.   

From this article dated August 7 1921, the manager from an employment agency is quoted as saying "...[S]omehow, there is a general feeling that the bobbed haired girl is a bit too radical and likely to be aggressive and self-assertive.  Those are not the qualifications that render her most desirable as a subordinate.  Of course, where her own personality overcomes this impression, she is just as welcome on the job as her long haired sister, but taken on the whole, I know that if a bobbed haired girl and a long haired girl were in the running for a job, and both could supply the same record of efficiency, the long haired girl would get the job every time."   Other detractors opined that it would cause baldness in women, and was not dignified enough.   

But of course there were many more in favor of this exciting turn in coiffures.  Using every argument from mental health to practicality to beauty, it seemed the Bob was here to stay. 

Quoted in the same article, Dr. Eliza M Mosher gave her thoughts on the benefits of the fad: "It is far better for the nerves, to have the hair bobbed.  Many a woman complains of nervous headaches because of the heavy coil of hair weighing down on her head and it is a decided strain on the nervous system to have combs and hair pins sticking into one's scalp all day. It is really a wonder that women have any hair left, what with the process of curling and dyeing it is popularly subjected to nowaways.  And finally bobbed hair is a great deal more sensible.  I can't for the life of me understand the attitude of an employer who would discriminate against a girl with short hair.  Doesn't he know that it takes far less time to arrange the hair when it is short than when it is long and that when a girl cuts her hair it is usually because she is sensible and not because she is vain?"  

An Abraham & Strauss barber also chimed in: "Moreover, the bob is more dignified than the old fashioned way women did their hair, because it follows the line of the head. Properly marceled, close to the head, it is the most dignified way a woman can dress her hair."   

This trend-setting style also provided a decided economic boon to the borough. By 1924 women were bobbing there hair at a rate of 2,000 a day. The 474 beauty parlors in Brooklyn were filled with women waiting to be shorn, as well as the countless barbers who were having difficulty keeping up with the demand.  "We are bobbing 400 heads daily," said Benny, head barber at Frederick Loeser & Co.  "Everybody is having it done and age is no handicap.  Among our patrons are many women of 50 and 60 years of age, for the younger women did it a year ago.  We have never been so busy," 

Not every young woman was happy with the current trend.  Unable to find an Easter hat to fit her locks, she wrote the Daily Eagle: "Is there a single milliner or department store proprietor who desires to cater to the normal woman of today?  I have spent three days in a harassing search of Manhattan and Brooklyn for a hat.  I have found no store which has hats save for the bobbed-haired women.  These peanut contraptions are offered with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude.  Sales women announce airily that they have "calls for no other kind."  I still have the hair which Nature have to me and which I hope to retain.  I have not found a single hat I could squeeze on my head.  I shall not bob.  What am I to do? - Flatbush" 

 In addition to the close-fitting cloche hat, the new style also inspired bobby pins, innovations in permanent wave technology, as well as encouraging beauticians to adapt hair-cutting skills formerly the domain of male barbers.

By the 1930's the bob had run its course and women began to grow their hair longer again. But because of this revolutionary hair do, women were freer than ever to adopt the styles of their choice, for their hair and their life.

As you mount the granite steps to enter the Central Library, your gaze may be drawn to two imposing columns sculpted by C. Paul Jennewein on each side of the doorway. Look up, and you will see above this entrance an enormous grille that rises some fifty feet, adorned with fifteen panels in black and gold, created by another sculptor, Thomas Hudson, depicting some of the great characters of American literature. The columns  and gilded bas-relief panels announce to the visitor that the library is a special place of learning and imagination  

           .

Thomas Hudson was already well-known when he was commissioned to complete the grand front entranceway in 1938. He along with Brooklynite Lorimer Rich had already won a competition, and completed the design for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Virginia, which commemorated the triumph and courage of the Allies in World War I.  As a member of The United States Army Institute of Heraldy he created various medals for the armed forces.  A quiet unassumming man, Jones was born in the upstate city of Buffalo and graduated from Syracuse University.  His work was produced in a studio in Greenwich Village where he lived with his wife.  

Arranged on the magnificent grille that awaits each visitor to the Central Library are characters from adult and children's fiction, as well as two distinguished men of letters: Walt Whitman dressed nattily and robed all in gold, as well as journalist Charles Dana. 

 There is Jack London's "White Fang" howling under the moon.   

Melville's "Moby Dick", still free, riding atop a harpoon.        

 Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer looking for mischief with his bucket of white paint.

And my favorite, Poe's "The Raven" biding its time before Lenore's ex goes completely mad.  

Every day as I come into the library I see visitors from Brooklyn and around the world snapping pictures and pointing to the figures above the door--delighting in a warm artistic welcome to the place of stories.     

 a schoolgroup from 1953

 Thomas Hudson Jones died in 1969 but his artistic legacy continues to stir the imagination and is an extraordinary example of public art.    

Click here for an explanation of the Central Library symbols.

To find the birth records for Kings County during the 19th century, we usually refer people to the Municipal Archives.  There you will find the names of people born in Brooklyn from 1866  to 1909.  But here we are fortunate to have some earlier records as well.  Donated by St. Francis College some years ago, these microfilmed records span the years 1799 - 1801 and they chronicle births in Flatbush, which at the time was its own municipality.  The records are written in meticulous, precise calligraphic handwriting.  John Vanderveer, the town clerk at that time, put pen to paper using succinct and efficient language, recording each birth for posterity.  The ledger contains the usual suspects of Brooklyn's early farmocracy, names that would in later years distinguish our streets, schools, and buildings.  Entry after entry, month after month, one can imagine Vanderveer as he inscribes the names for the Lefferts, Remsen, Ditmars, Rapelye, Bergen, Lott, Martense, Gerritsen et al. households. 

But what sets these births records apart from the better known files at the Municipal Archives is that these are the lists of slave births in Flatbush.  They begin with the names of all slaveholders in Flatbush, and with the numbers of slaves owned--page after page with a businesslike formality that masks the human impact of the events.

"I Jannite Lott of the new Lots in the town of Flatbush, widow do certify that a Female child named, Suke, aged Five Months, was born of a Slave belonging to me.  Witness my hand this thirieth day of August, one thousand Eight hundred. Jannitie Lott

To the Town Clk of Flatbush Recorded the 2nd Sept. 1800 by me John C. Vanderveer Clk." 

There is no mention of the mother's name--just the property owner and the name of the child.  Names like Dine, Sukey, Jafta, Henry, Bett, who as newborns in that turn of the 19th century would grow up seeing the light at the end of the darkened tunnel. In 1799 the state legislature passed the "Act for Gradual Abolition of Slavery" which decreed that any slave child born after July 4th, 1799 would be free -- in 28 years for men, and 25 years for women.  Sadly the mothers of these children would remain a slaves for life, but would be called indentured servants.

"I Court Vanbrunt of the new lots in the Town of Flatbush, Farmer do hereby certify that a female child named Poll, aged eight Months, was born of a slave belonging to me.  Witness my hand this thirtieth day of August one thousand eight hundred.  Court Vanbrunt      To the town Clerk of Flatbush   Recorded the 2nd of September 1800    John C Vanderveer Clk.

Where did they go after slavery was abolished in 1827?  Some may have stayed on at the farms where they worked. Still others were kidnapped and sold South. And more remained, raising families and starting the work that led to the many African-American institutions in Brooklyn. We don't know for sure, but we have their names. 

   Mike with the gray horse and Roy, April 1884 - Vanderveer Farm Collection