Listen To Neighbors Share Their Stories For BPL’s Oral History Project

Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Public Library

In our rapidly changing borough, it is more important that ever to preserve and document the stories of the people who call Brooklyn home.

The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) has been doing just that through their Our Streets, Our Stories initiative. The project seeks to “explore the Brooklyn that is, and the Brooklyn that was, from the words of the community that lives here” has been collecting memorabilia and cultural cultural heritage materials, as well as recording residents’ stories.

Some of those stories have come to light and have been posted on the initiative’s Tumblr page. You can find recordings from two neighbors, Inez Spencer and Linda Kessler, who came to the Kings Bay Library to share their stories.

Kessler said she moved with her parents to Avenue W and Nostrand Avenue during the 1950s, when she was a senior in High School. “When I moved here it was so much different,” she said. “Lundy’s Restaurant was down on Emmons Avenue. That was a very famous restaurant. Everybody had gone to Lundy’s.”

Kessler worked as a clerk in a library in Gerritsen Beach and remembers going door to door collecting overdue books from neighbors. From her account, it sounds like Gerritsen’s character has changed very since then. “People that were living there, were living there for years. It was like a beach community,” she said.

Listen to Kessler share her whole story at the Kings Bay Library.

Inez Spencer, who moved to the Nostrand Houses 16 years ago, talks about exploring more of her neighborhood during retirement. She says she likes visiting the library, some of the senior centers, and a local diner. “I just wander,” she said. “It’s so good, after working so many years, to just wake up and say: ‘what am I going to do today?'”

Listen to Spencer’s full story here:

Right now, the “Our Streets, Our Stories” team is in other neighborhoods, including recent stops at Green-Wood Cemetery and Bed-Stuy. Partnerships have also been established with community groups such as Red Hook’s PioneerWorks and the Brooklyn Queens Land Trust — who documented life before and after Hurricane Sandy, and the evolution of community gardens from junkyards to gardens to city housing or luxury housing, respectively.

If you would like to schedule a session to record your or your family’s story/stories/memories and scan photographs, email EClark@bklynlibrary.org.

[Additional reporting by Alex Ellefson]