My Archive Spring 2019 "My great-grandfather Solomon Silverman, on the porch of his house at 43 Fuller Place, Brooklyn. circa 1916." —Ellen Wallenstein

U.S. Post Office, Prospect Park West Station, 1961. Formerly Ninth Avenue, this street became Prospect Park West in 1895 when residents, sick of having their mail mis-delivered, petitioned the Board of Aldermen for a name change. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described Brooklyn’s confusing lack of a street naming convention: “Let us look at the case of Ninth avenue alone. There are in Brooklyn, beside an avenue bearing this number, a Ninth street, a North Ninth street, and a South Ninth street. In New York there are Ninth avenue, and East Ninth street and West ninth street. There are seven streets with the same number and distinguished from each other only by use of the word avenue instead of street or by prefixing one of the points of the compass. It is surprising there are not a Northwest Ninth street and a Southeast Tenth avenue.”

View of Bartel-Pritchard Square, 1951. Dedicated in 1923, the Bartel-Pritchard Square was named for two local boys who perished in the First World War. Emil Bartel and William Pritchard were good friends who enlisted in Brooklyn’s 13th Regiment of the National Guard and served in the 59th Regiment, Coast Artillery. In 1965 a local VFW post erected an additional memorial. The polished black granite monument honors in memory of the men of the community who gave their lives in wartime defense of their country.

Holy Name of Jesus Roman Catholic Church, 1961. By 1961, the vine-covered Holy Name was part of a changed neighborhood: the six-lane Prospect Expressway, completed in 1954, displaced residents of demolished apartment buildings on 18th and 19th Streets, including Italian-American parishioners of Holy Name.

Fire at the Booth Felt Company factory, January 12, 1929. A fire broke out at 5am and spread throughout the felt manufacturer's 19th Street building, causing residents of nearby tenements to evacuate.