Brooklyn College, 1937. Established in 1930—with origins in earlier educational institutions—Brooklyn College was the first public coeducational liberal arts college in New York City. The college's current campus was planned by architect Randolph Evans to include a central quadrangle anchored by a library building with a tall tower, surrounded by Georgian style structures. While students attended classes in Downtown Brooklyn, ground was broken in Midwood on October 2,1935. Both of the buildings were completed within two years. While a downtown campus remained in service until 1975 (closed during the financial crisis of that decade), the south Brooklyn campus became the main facility. It was envisioned by its founders as an instrument of advancement for the city's working class and the children of its immigrant communities. The school became a member of the City University of New York system in 1961. Famous alumni include politicians Bernie Sanders, Shirley Chisholm, and Barbara Boxer, actor Jimmy Smits, and writer Frank McCourt.

In the closing decades of the 19th century, New York underwent a profound physical and cultural transformation. Fueled by the wealth of the exploding financial and manufacturing sectors, the city rapidly evolved into a world-class metropolis. The bold ambitions of civic and business leaders, architects, and engineers of the era manifested in landmarks such as the vast Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the stately U.S. Custom House, the towering Municipal Building, and the original terminus of New York City’s first official subway line—the ornate City Hall stop. The sweeping interior spaces common to all of these structures, and hundreds of others, depended upon a venerable Mediterranean building technology adapted to contemporary American construction: arched tile ceilings—or vaults—that were not only self-supporting but could also bear the weight of floors or roofs above them. These vaults were designed and built by a single New York firm, founded by Spanish immigrant Rafael Guastavino (1842-1908) and later headed by his son Rafael Jr. (1872-1950). The Guastavinos’ patented system for building domes and vaults involved multiple layers of thin ceramic tiles bonded with quick-drying mortar. The resulting structures were not only exceptionally strong, but also lightweight, easy to build, and inherently beautiful, thanks to intricate patterns of exposed tile that formed finished, decorative surfaces. Guastavino vaults figured prominently in more than 1,000 projects across the nation, including 200 in Manhattan alone. During its 73-year history, the Guastavino Company helped build some of the most impressive interior spaces in America—veritable palaces for the people. This list based on MCNY's exhibition Palaces for the People, contains many of Guastavino's masterpieces in the five boroughs, both those that remain and those that have been lost to the wrecking ball.

Throwing around the pig-skin is an all-American pastime. See what the early history of football looked like in New York City.

Eleanor Roosevelt was a noted human rights activist, longest-serving first lady of the United States and friend to knish lovers everywhere!

"Despite having the nation’s third largest population, after Manhattan and Chicago, Brooklyn did not have a public university of its own. By 1917, City College (CCNY) — the well-regarded Manhattan-based public university — began offering an evening program in Brooklyn to serve more of the city’s residents on their home turfs, the first of a number of planned centers throughout the boroughs. While students — nearly a third of whom lived in Brooklyn — welcomed the chance to reduce long commutes, residents and leaders had very little involvement in the project... Brooklyn’s politicians felt this resentment even more than Chamber of Commerce leaders. For them, a mere branch of CCNY, without any oversight by Brooklyn officials or a faculty independent of City College, was not enough…Reflecting outsized political ambitions, and based on hyperbolic estimates of Brooklyn’s current 1925 population, Joseph A. Guider, the Borough President, argued that “what Brooklyn wanted was a university of her own that would take rank with any in the country.” Noting that “many men and women from Brooklyn have attained eminence and distinction in their various professional callings,” Guider believed that Brooklyn’s residents together demonstrated the area’s intellectual prowess and potential." For more on the establishment of Brooklyn College, check out this article by Rachel A. Burstein in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History.

In October 1929, the prosperous Roaring Twenties crashed to an end. In the 1920s the Stock Market boomed. Shares in companies soared and millions of ordinary Americans invested their life savings, in the hopes of turning a profit. Some people even began taking out loans in order to invest in the Stock Market. While things looked good on the surface, the 1920s were plagued by deeper economic issues. Industrial production declined, unemployment crept upwards, and the agricultural sector struggled. The Stock Market bubble popped on what became known as "Black Tuesday." The sudden drop in value of stocks led to billions of dollars in lost revenue. Many banks shuttered as a result. This fueled panic among Americans who rushed to the banks to withdraw their lifesavings. Before the Great Depression, people's money in the bank was not insured. If the bank closed, people lost all of their savings! So many people went to the banks looking for their money and many banks simply did not have enough cash on hand to meet the demand. In a chain reaction of events, people lost their jobs, life's savings, and homes. From 1929 throughout the 1930s, the Great Depression wrecked havoc on the lives of Americans, and New Yorkers in particular. It would take the immense industrial demand of WWII and a dramatic increase in government regulation and spending to really get the United States out of this economic rut. During this decade of depression, Americans' lives transformed dramatically. New York Social Studies Scope and Sequence Standards 8.5b,c, & 11.7c. For Teachers: Great Depression Lesson Plan

One of the largest New Deal funded projects in Flatbush was the construction of a permanent campus for Brooklyn College on a forty-acre field. The College, then housed in several buildings in downtown Brooklyn, received 5 million from the federal government to build the new campus.