The Southern Brooklyn Scrapbook

Growing up, I never felt like my identity was defined by being a New Yorker; it was more that I just happened to be growing up in New York City. The idea of “The City” invokes images of Times Square, Wall Street, and Manhattan’s skyline, but not the low-lying, open space that 2.5 million Brooklynites call home.

I grew up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, a quiet, local neighborhood that presents itself unassumingly. Some time ago, I found myself poring over the history of Sheepshead to see what existed before I came and found the Southern Brooklyn Scrapbook, a Facebook group dedicated to the documentation and discussion of the neighborhoods of Southern Brooklyn.

The Scrapbook, created in 2015, currently sits at more than 25,900 members and is comprised of both current residents and those who live miles away, sharing and discussing photos of neighborhood mainstays, childhood houses, schools, restaurants, and more as they existed in the past (often adjacent to modern-day photos).

In an interview with Anthony DeVito, K C Van Sandt, the founder of The Scrapbook Facebook group, talked about the concept of a niche, domestic history and how the nature of discussion allows for a closer look at the photos being shared. Van Sandt highlighted the importance of history and how the casual format of the Scrapbook became a proper outlet for the preservation of history.

Looking through The Scrapbook now, the feeling of personal connection to the photos shared remains apparent even six years after its founding. Often when scrolling through The Scrapbook, one can find stories of school experiences, particular details of food prices and addresses, or the simple “I remember” (and of course, the classic lamentations on “The Good Old Days”).

A sense of people’s personalities and the way Southern Brooklyn has touched them on a foundational level can be felt from the sheer variety of details that remain fond memories decades after the fact. A recent commenter on The Scrapbook described a childhood excursion to Kings Highway for ice cream, the flavor of which was described in immaculate detail—cherry instead of chocolate and served from a mobile street vendor. While The Scrapbook may be a document of the comings-and-goings of Southern Brooklyn, its collection of photos and personal accounts also presents a visceral, emotional sense of growing up in the past.

I am a newcomer to the scene of Southern Brooklyn and life in general. In fact, I am at the age that many in The Scrapbook tend to reminisce about. To a fair extent, part of my experience with The Scrapbook is vicarious—imagining from personal accounts what it might have been like to experience “ago,” picturing what it may have been like to be to take a walk in the time and circumstance pictured in a photo, or experiencing a childhood described in a stream of consciousness comment.

However, the other end of the experience is the way it reframes the era of Sheepshead Bay that I have grown up in. There is something so novel yet poignant about seeing a long-past snow day in the same intersection I pass on the ride home from my afterschool, an ice cream-seafood bar once near the footbridge I cross on evening walks, or a sunny day in the 1960s in the same strip mall where I had buffet with friends on the night of the SHSAT.

It is things like The Scrapbook that remind me that I share a common identity with many before me and many after in the places where I spent my childhood. Whether or not a building was once a record store then, is a nail salon now, or will be a bodega three decades down the line, the feeling that I occupy a space that has and will continue to house those formative moments is humbling.

Taking a look at New York’s past, especially its local communities, is an easy enough endeavor for its value. Resources like the NYC Municipal Archives collection of property photos, the NYPL’s digital collections, the Forgotten NY Blog, and many others provide for a storied look at many aspects of NYC history and culture. The Scrapbook, while exemplary for its size and the format of community-driven documentation, is not the only community of its kind, with groups like Al Ponte’s Time Machine - New York inviting discussion of the city at large.

A sense of self is often tied to the ways it is created—around foundational experiences, people, and places. To be able to explore those facets of identity in new perspectives and to see the contexts in which they exist is a greatly rewarding exercise, one that I could not recommend enough.