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Annunciation Park is named after the nearby Church of the Annunciation. The annunciation, according to Christian doctrine, was when the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she was pregnant with the Christ child. The church, founded in 1853, originally stood on 131st Street to the east of the Boulevard (the old name for the northern section of Broadway) Read more...
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This one-story Carnegie library opened in 1908. The building features five bays, 10,000 plus square feet and a stone-trimmed doorway with a bracketed pediment. Located one block from busy Metropolitan Avenue, the Leonard Library underwent major renovations from the 1950s through the 1980s. Read more...
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Alice Wragg Kornegay (1932‑1996) was a pioneering community advocate in East Harlem for more than thirty‑five years. Born in Georgetown, South Carolina, she came to East Harlem to live with cousins at the age of ten, after her parents died. She studied social work at Baruch College, and received a Bachelor of Science degree from Antioch College in Baltimore, Maryland. Read more...
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Beginning in an “undertaking establishment,” as an unstaffed deposit station in 1910 the branch continued to move, to a shoe store, a frame shack on Kings Highway and other homes until 1954, when it opened in its own building on its present site. Kings Highway is the first branch library built in Brooklyn by the City of New York. After Read more...
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First opened in 1951 in a Nostrand Avenue storefront, Kings Bay Branch expanded into the adjacent store. In 1959, the widening of Nostrand forced the branch to move across the street. A new branch built that same year, was expanded to 11,500 square feet in 1962. A $1.9 million renovation added another 2,000 square feet to the library, among other Read more...
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The New Kensington Library opened on Thursday, November 15, 2012! Founded as a deposit station in 1908 by the Mother’s Kindergarten Club of PS 134 and the Kensington Improvement League, Kensington quickly outgrew two locations before becoming a full-fledged branch on McDonald Avenue in 1912. When it again needed more space, in 1960, it moved, to a former catering hall Read more...
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This small Lower East Side park is one of New York City’s oldest. On August 2, 1824, the Common Council agreed to take a triangular piece of land between Grand, Harman (now East Broadway), and Scammel Streets as a public place. The City acquired the parcel by condemnation the following year for $3158.23. In 1870 all of New York’s public Read more...
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In 1973, the Jamaica Bay Branch was built on a site chosen after a public hearing. Its design, by Architects Leibowitz/Badouva and Associates, won the New York Society of Architects bronze plaque for “an accomplished solution to a difficult and highly constrained construction.” In July of 2001, the branch was closed for several renovations, which included the installation of a Read more...
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The Homecrest branch is located at Coney Island Avenue. The library services four local schools and several daycare centers and nursery schools. Many of the library’s programs are geared toward the neighborhood’s youngsters. Through its information resources and programming, the Homecrest branch looks forward to serving the changing community: large population of immigrants from Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and Mexico. Read more...
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The Highlawn Branch expanded from its storefront home, opened in 1949, to an adjacent store in 1956, and then to its current building in 1972. It features a circular main room with walls of glazed block in a variety of colors, a design departure for Brooklyn libraries. The branch was renovated in 2005-06 and its new features include carpeting and Read more...
