Brooklyn

Book excerpt: Between 1905 and 1907, Brooklyn's leading newspaper, the Daily Eagle, published a remarkable series of almost five hundred postcards, most with photographs of local scenes. Brooklyn in that era was, as it is today, a place of great variety, with imposing factories, sprawling riverfront sugar refineries, scores of public schools, elaborate mansions, and hundreds of blocks of middle-class brownstone row houses side by side with public wood yards, free-floating baths, the county jail, reformatories, and hospitals. Brooklyn was known as "the borough of churches," and grand religious edifices of all denominations stood on nearly every corner. For recreation, there were social clubs, acres of beautifully landscaped public parks graced by statues of heroes of the past, and the teeming midways and beaches of Coney Island. All of this is captured in Brooklyn: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle Postcards 1905-1907.