On April 1, 1949, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle was full of news of workers on strike. The headline for the day announced that a taxi strike was on and "90% tied up," meaning that all but 701 of the city's 11,510 taxicabs had refused to start their engines. Meanwhile, CIO radio operators at Pan-American Airways had launched a strike over deadlocked contract negotiations, and in a slim article further down the page, readers learned that 7,000 brewery workers from Brooklyn's 14 major breweries--still at the top of its game in '49--had also organized and begun picketing. On the brewery workers' list of demands were an increase in pay, a shorter workweek, a pension plan, and a new, mandatory two-person model for deliveries

Williamsburg Power Station on Kent Avenue, ca. 1905. The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company Power Station was completed in 1905, at the far northeastern corner of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It provided power to BRT lines until 1950, when it was converted for use by Consolidated Edison. The station ceased operations in 1999 and was demolished in 2008, over the objections of preservationists.

411-415 Bedford Avenue, ca. 1975. Cast iron architecture is most well known in New York City in the SoHo and a few excellent examples in Fulton Ferry and Downtown Brooklyn. Williamsburg also had a smattering of cast iron building, including most notably the Smith, Gray & Co. building on Broadway and Bedford Avenue. This pair of cast iron facades, seen here in a 1970s era photograph, are unfortunately, no longer extant. The buildings still stand but the facades are now brick, and the fenestration (the arrangement of windows) has been drastically altered.

Smith, Gray & Company Building ARCHITECT: attributed to William H. Gaynor DATE: 1870 STYLE: Cast-iron The Smith, Gray & Co. Building is an early, significantly intact, 5-story and 25-foot-wide cast-iron-fronted store-and-loft building in Brooklyn. The firm was founded by tailor Edward Smith, who began his business in 1833. This structure, constructed in 1870, is attributed to William H. Gaylor, a prominent Brooklyn architect who designed three other cast-iron-fronted structures for Smith between 1873 and 1884. This iron front was fabricated by George R. Jackson & Sons, and the builders were probably Thomas and William Lamb who, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, built all of Smith, Gray’s stores. Typical of cast iron designs in the Second Empire style, the building’s main facade features tiered upper stories with segmental-arched fenestration framed by Corinthian columns and pilasters.

99 Broadway entrance detail, ca. 1975.

View of the Williamsburg Bridge from South 6th and Berry Streets. Berenice Abbott, April 28, 1937.