Recall the Bygone Industrial Days of Brooklyn's Waterfront

The Brooklyn waterfront's industrial past will be on full display in its very epicenter come September 10, when Photoville returns to the uplands of Brooklyn Bridge Park Pier 5. The NYC Municipal Archives' contribution to the massive two-week-long free event will be called A Century On the Brooklyn Waterfront and will focus on 100 years of the East River's shifting use, from 1870 to 1974. "When you look at Brooklyn Bridge Park and you see the piers, the majority of people today don't realize those were actually used for shipping, and that Brooklyn's waterfront was a lively transportation hub," Quinn Berkman, a photographer and program coordinator at the New York City Municipal Archives told Brooklyn Daily, who first reported the exhibition. The images, many of which come from glass lantern slides, glass plate negatives, and silver gelatin prints, underscore the Brooklyn Bridge Park of today, where tourists and New Yorkers flock for everything from scenery to gardens.

The exhibit uses images commissioned by a handful of government agencies to depict the areas transformation—in the words of Photoville's organizers—"from industrial chaos to urban oasis" (although an argument can be made that the area these days is now something of a hybrid "urban chaos.") A Century on the Brooklyn Waterfront and the rest of the displays in Photoville will be on view until September 24.