Coming to America: Work & Play in Brooklyn's Industrial Age
Historical Hint:
In the second half of 19th century, hundreds of thousands of people immigrated to Brooklyn. The large majority became part of America's Industrial Revolution, working in hundreds of Brooklyn factories, many of them built close to the waterfront. But it wasn't all work and no play; before radio, movies, or TV... many of these immigrants found ways relax and enjoy their leisure time.
Mission:
At the Brooklyn Historical Society, students from The Green School in Williamsburg are shown a piece of wood that's been carved with precisely spaced groves. They're also shown an item that could very well be mistaken for the head of a mop. What are these items and how are they significant to Brooklyn's 19th century immigrant population?
How the Mystery was Solved:
With cameras rolling, The Green Wood School students took a tour through Brooklyn's historic Greenpoint and learned how it served as an epicenter for manufacturing and trade. There, they visited the Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory (one of America's first businesses to use an assembly line) and the American Manufacturing Company--the fifth largest employer in Brooklyn in the 1900s. Who made up the majority of workers at these factories? You guessed it: immigrants!
So how would these workers relax in their spare time? Many would picnic in the Green-Wood Cemetery-- a hugely popular site for both the living and the dead in the mid-1800s. But after a visit to Brooklyn Public Library's Brooklyn Collection and a trip to the Coney Island Museum, Green Wood students learned that the development of Coney Island amusement parks gave the cemetery some stiff competition: many Brooklyn immigrants flocked to the beachfront site for well-deserved fun in the sun.
Their heads brimming with facts about Brooklyn immigrants and their role in the Industrial Revolution, The Green Wood students figure out how the two artifacts presented to them at the beginning of their historical adventure are related. The grooved piece of wood? It was part of the assembly line at Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory. And the mop-like item? It was a hunk of rope from one of the many enormous rope factories located in Brooklyn. Case closed!