The Mergenthaler Linotype Company set the standard for printing companies in the late 19th century and early 20th century with a design so robust it remained unchanged for almost a century. Ottmar Mergenthaler, a German-born clock designer, invented the linotype machine to replace the arduous process of hand-setting individual characters lines for printing newspapers, books, magazines, and posters. Linotype, or "line-o-type," cast a line, or "slug," of characters which were entered by a typist on a 90-character keyboard. The line, or "matrix," would serve as the mold for a molten metal alloy to be cast into it. The final result of the process was a metal slug, ready print on a letterpress. Mergenthaler built his company's factory in the neighborhood of Wallabout, in proximity to both the Brooklyn Harbor and the newly minted Myrtle Avenue El. The original factory building, on Ryerson Street between Flushing Avenue and Park Avenue, was updated in 1906 for an Albert Kahn design reinforced-concrete structure. By 1916, Mergenthaler's factories grew to take over the blocks spanning Hall and Grand Streets to the east and west and Vanderbilt and Park Avenue to the north and south. The Mergenthaler Linotype Company's buildings still exist, though the linotype company was pushed into oblivion by the invention of phototypesetting, and later, computerized typesetting programs.

Spanning 219 acres, the Brooklyn Navy Yard was the largest shipbuilding facility in the country. It supplied the Navy with floating workshops, tank-landing ships (LSTs), aircraft carriers, and battleships. At the height of wartime production, the Yard operated 24 hours a day, employing 75,000 men and women.

Women in Brooklyn have been leaders of social change on every conceivable political front, from the fight for racial justice and the right to vote, to equality around labor and reproductive rights. Women have also been at the forefront of protest efforts against the Vietnam War and for environmental justice. In this story, the Center for Brooklyn History highlights Brooklyn women with powerful activist legacies, from ordinary women joining the workforce during World War II to the formation of a barmaids union to icons like Lena Horne.

“The Sacred Heart Church, near the northeast corner of Park Avenue. October 10, 1940.” This tower marks the entrance to what was then the Sacred Heart Institute, the school of the Roman Catholic Sacred Heart Church, completed 1877, located one block over on Clermont Avenue. To the right at 41 Adelphi Street is the church rectory.

275 Park Avenue, ca. 1918. This building was erected in 1890 as home to The Van Glahn Brothers, one of several large wholesale grocery supply businesses located in Brooklyn that developed at the end of the 19th century. In 1907, the brothers sold the property to their growing neighbor, Rockwood & Co. Chocolate Company, whose factories were located just behind this building on Waverly and Park. The company produced Tootsie Rolls, among other candies, in this plant until 1967. Like many properties located along Brookyn's waterfront between 1960 and 2000, this building sat empty for more than 20 years before converted into a rental property in 2002.

The wood-frame home seen on the far side of the intersection is 69 Vanderbilt Avenue, ca.1945. No. 69 was an 1850-built wood-frame home that matched its immediate neighbor at no. 71. Master carpenter, Richard P. Pease, built both homes in 1850. This photograph was captured before the construction of the BQE which runs over the middle of Park Avenue at this location. During the construction of that highway in the late 1950s, the main beam in the basement cracked, compromising the foundation of the house. Over the next decades, the home sank and warped and was largely neglected, despite being occupied. The final resident of the house lived there from childhood in the 1930s until he was evicted from the dangerously unstable house (which was also filled junk) in 2009. Despite the homes' landmark status, the safety issues trumped the designation, and the city demolished the house in 2015. Given the proximity of the neighboring house and to control asbestos, workers took the house down with hand tools like hammers rather than wrecking balls.

In 1884, a market grew out of the bustling up-and-coming neighborhood adjacent to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The wholesale market sold produce, meat, fish, and provisions until the 1940s when it was shut down. This was in part to make room for factories to produce weaponry and war materials for World War II, but also due to fear that spies could infiltrate the yard next door.

Wallabout Market was a wholesale produce, meat, fish, and provisions market that operated from 1884 until the 1940's. The market, designed by William B. Tubby, was the second-largest wholesale market in the world during its lifespan. Its Flemish stepped roofs and decorative spires reference the neighborhood's Walloon and Dutch past.

Walt Whitman circa 1890. Whitman lived at 99 Ryerson Street in 1855, the year he published Leaves of Grass. It was here that he received a letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson, calling Leaves of Grass the “most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” “I greet you at the beginning of a great career,” he wrote. Whitman lived in several buildings in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill for over 28 years, but this is the only home of his still standing. He longed for a more permanent home: “My good daddy used to say: ‘Oh! what a comfort it is to lie down on your own floor, a floor laid with your own hands, in a house which represents your own handiwork—cellar and walls and roof!’”

Drake's Cake Building, ca. 1915. Constructed in 1913 for the Drake Bakeries, this factory structure with an Arts and Craft style facade was designed by the firm of Dodge & Morrison. One of the largest commercial cake bakeries in the region, Drake was producing 15 tons of pound cake a day by 1914 and was becoming well known for their ring dings, yodels, devil-dogs and coffee cakes. The business was so successful that they expanded this factory building all the way to Waverly Avenue in 1925. In 1960 the company was sold to a large food conglomerate. Today it is part of Hostess, who still make some of the Drake favorites and the building on Clinton Avenue is a charter school.

Mark R. Wilson charts the history of the Brooklyn Navy Yard with the Gotham Center for New York City History.