Brooklyn Today for May 7
Good morning. Today is the 127th day of the year. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 7, 1860, carried an article titled, “A Glance Backwards at Brooklyn 60 Years Ago.”
At that time, in 1800, the City of Brooklyn hadn’t been incorporated, and the borough was made up mainly of small villages. The Eagle names several of them: Brooklyn Ferry (today’s Fulton Ferry Landing area), Bedford, Gowanus, Wallabout (near what is now the Navy Yard), Red Hook and Brooklyn Village itself, which the writer situated as being in the vicinity of City Hall (today’s Borough Hall). In 1800, he says, Brooklyn Township, which was the overall name for these villages, had a population of 1,603 people, most of whom were employed in agriculture. About 400 or those 1,603 people were slaves.
Well-known people who were born today include filmmaker Amy Heckerling (“Fast Times at Ridgemont High”), Utah Gov. Gary Herberg, basketball player Shawn Marion and actor Peter Reckell (“Days of Our Lives”).
Brooklyn Boro
View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.