Then & Now: Photographer Documents How Flatbush & New York City Have Changed Over The Past 140 Years

What was Flatbush Avenue like nearly a century and a half ago? What about Prospect Park? Church Avenue?

Our neighborhood, and the city, have changed dramatically since the 19th century, and you can see how specific spots in our area have evolved since the 1870s and 1880s — when Brooklyn was still its own city, with this incredible project from photographer Jordan Liles.

Thanks to neighbor John Johansen, we just discovered this project from Liles, who recreated photographs taken by the creator of the handheld camera, George Brainerd, an accomplished photographer who documented city life in the mid- to late 1800s. All of the photos that Liles recreated were captured between 1872 and 1887 and are now stored at the Brooklyn Public Library.

It’s a fascinating glimpse into our city’s history, with the photos showing, for example, Frank Bollinger’s Meat Market at 883 Flatbush Avenue giving way to a Chase Bank, and the former Flatbush School District #1 at 2274 Church Avenue becoming a crumbling version of its former, grander self. (The old school, Brownstoner notes, was a descendant of the first Flatbush school that was believed to be the first school in Long Island and founded by Flatbush’s Dutch settlers around 1659.)

To do his research, Jordan, who lived in Crown Heights before moving to San Diego last year, poured over more than 1,000 of Brainerd’s photos and did extensive research at the Brooklyn Public Library and New York Public Library.

“It was difficult to identify the locations in the old photos,” Jordan wrote to us. “Some of them show a house without an address, or a row of trees without any information. So I reviewed more than a thousand of George Brainerd’s images and decided on concentrating about 28 of them.”

When we asked Jordan if there’s anything he’d want readers to know about the project, he told us:

The Brooklyn Collection at the Brooklyn Public Library is a very interesting room. It’s only open during specific hours, so plan ahead if you want to drop by and check it out. Also in my research I visited the even more interesting Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room in the New York Public Library. It’s a rare books room. You need to have preauthorized clearance to be able to enter and do research, so if there’s something that interests you, I recommend checking it out! When you’re in the room and they are bringing you fragile books and files that you request, you feel like Indiana Jones finding clues to lost history.

To see all of Jordan’s photos in this project, including shots of Prospect Park, Church Avenue, Snyder Avenue, and a whole lot more, you can go here.