Flashback Friday: Cats Of Park Slope

Sometimes a photographer finds his subject and runs with it. And while cats may not have been the only thing that Dr. Ralph Irving Lloyd, an ophthalmologist and amateur photographer who lived and worked in Brooklyn starting in 1899, captured, they certainly seemed to be one of his favorites.

The Brooklyn Historical Society has a collection of about 400 black-and-white lantern slides — 3.5 linear feet, they note — that date from between 1890-1920.

Of these, many are of cats, and though they don’t seem to know exactly where the photos were shot, they’re all noted as “likely [shot] in Park Slope,” because Dr. Llloyd lived at 14 8th Avenue, just off of Flatbush Avenue.

Dr. Lloyd wasn’t just into cats, however. As the BHS notes, “Over the years, the subject of his photography was primarily historic 17th, 18th, and 19th century houses and homesteads located in the New York City metropolitan area, with many in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island.”

Dr. Lloyd retired in 1959, but continued his photography hobby — as well as tinkering with the repair of old clocks, according to the BHS. He passed away on May 9, 1969.

Take a look through more of Dr. Lloyd’s slides on the Brooklyn Visual Heritage site. And if you’ve got any of your own, or your family’s, old local photos that you’d like to share, contact us at editor@bklyner.com!