I’ve spent the last few days at the New York Public Library Performing Arts Collection which is located at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. All of my research here has been going through their vast collection of playbills, photographs, architectural plans, newspaper clippings about the various theaters that I’ve determined will be the focus of my study. I’m not a stranger to research libraries, but I had never before used an actual card catalog before – of the analog sort where one has to pull out a drawer and search for related information. I was a little shocked when the librarian suggested this was the easiest way to find all materials related to theaters in Brooklyn, but I ended up really enjoying the process and it made my research feel more like a fun scavenger hunt. I also got to use microfilm for the first time when I was looking at old vaudeville programs from 1912-13 from the Bushwick Theater and the Greenpoint Theater.
Thus far I’ve done two major steps in my archival retrieval. The first being the research at the New York Public Library that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Second is, although it isn’t technically archival, I’ve logged and mapped the various sites of theaters that I’ve found and taken photographs of their current condition (or if the theater doesn’t exist – which almost none of them do, I’ve taken photos of the current buildings that are situated on the former theater sites. These photographs will provide the last point in the timeline that I’m creating and more importantly, help to address some of the major questions have arisen since starting this project: With such a plethora of former theaters in the area, how were these entertainment sites repurposed? Why did almost all of the movie theaters close in the 1970’s (as my research seems to suggest)? Was this due to some sort of radical shift going on in the neighborhood or in cinema itself?
There are three more phases of research left to do that include going to the Brooklyn Public Library and looking for more photographs of the theaters. I also need to look at the deeds for each property to get a bigger picture for just how use has changed over the years. The deeds are located at the Municipal Records Office. And lastly I think it would be interesting to see how the demographics of the neighborhood shifted over the course of time and thus altered the need and availability of theaters. This can be done by looking at old census data.
http://www.bandtoband.com
“mapping the rock n roll genome”
Band2Band is an interesting user created map taking the form of a family tree and is meant to show the interconnected relationships between musicians and bands. Unlike websites like Pandora, which are able to aggregate not only musicians, but genres of music resulting in an accurate forecast of musical taste, Band2Band is set up to visually display connections between groups.
It is possible to submit bands to the website that haven’t yet been listed, but to do so requires the adherence to a very strict set of rules. These rules, which (to name just a few) range from what to do when a band changes its name, when an artist changes their name, how to categorize super-groups and jam bands which have revolving cast of musicians – could be the reason why there is a real lack of bands and musicians listed on the site. When trying the map out, the first two bands that I wanted to check out weren’t in the database. Both of the bands, Dirty Projectors and Bon Iver, are less than ten years old so I decided to try something a little bit older and my next input, Smog, a band from the 90’s, did show up. With Smog, the first page that the search feature takes you to contains a photographic list of all the albums that the band produced. When I scrolled down I was also able to see that the site only listed Bill Callahan as the sole member of the band. And upon further scrolling I could see the family tree with 119 bands stemming from Smog. The bands are hyperlinked, so you can go into each of their specific sites and explore.
I checked to see when the site was last updated and found that the copyright was current. How could it be that there was such a lack of bands in the database? Couldn’t Band2Band hook up with a website like last.fm or myspace music to automatically create a database of bands, band members, and albums to then create a visual map using that data?
This site, in my opinion, requires a major revamp. Although there is a link that allows you to play a short preview of songs by the artist whose page you are on, it would be nice if it could do that within the map, instead of on the sidebar. I’d also like to know more about band history that could be located on a subpage. I’d also like the map to be the central feature of the site, instead of having it placed at the bottom of the page.
As far as the map itself, perhaps it would be better to create an interactive web. This way it is possible to see the larger picture of the various connections within the music industry. Facebook, in its very early days, had a feature that I absolutely loved: you could map out how all of your friends were connected and through whom. You could then see who were the key members of groups of friends, an activity that I remember spending hours on until it was mysteriously taken down. Perhaps it could even have two options for viewing: if you want to get lost in music connections, a sort of “choose your own adventure” click-through flash application could work best. But if you wanted to see the overall picture, perhaps a full web could be shown with the closest 150 connections related to the artist of your choosing.
I do like how the site allows you to link to amazon to purchase albums. I also like that it is possible to generate random maps between artists and bands but so much redesign needs to go into creating a useful interactive map.
by Douglas Gomery
My neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn is full of old movie theaters that have been repurposed into other important community centers, be it a bank, pharmacy, or even a church. While I’ve bemoaned the lack of a proper cinema in north Brooklyn, new, ultra indie movie theaters are starting to pop up in storefronts, apartment buildings and other non traditional spaces in the neighborhood.
I’m assuming that it was a lack of profitability, due to a shift to a vertical production and distribution method by Hollywood that led to the shuttering of the neighborhood’s original theaters, whose ornately decorated ceilings and walls allow for a glimpse into the past. North Brooklyn’s new population of working creatives, who desire more venues of entertainment within the neighborhood, are clearly what are driving the current surge in boutique film venues today.
By analyzing the history of both the neighborhood (in terms of demographics) and film production within the United States, I believe that I’ll be able to quantify just how the two waves of movie theater existence came to happen. My research will begin by looking at the locations of the old theaters as well as their specific neighborhood’s demographic at the time of establishment. I’ll gather not only the data, but also images from the archives of the interior and exterior of the buildings at (hopefully) the time of their establishment and time of closing. I’ll juxtapose those images with ones of what the buildings look like now. This will in turn show if they had been torn down or repurposed. It is possible to do this with today’s theaters, showing what they were originally and what they are today while also studying the current demographic of the specific area within north Brooklyn in which they are located.
Even with some preliminary investigation that included looking at maps of my neighborhood on the New York Public Library’s digital archive site, I learned that several places I frequent, including my grocery store, were, in 1916, theaters. So why study these two waves of theaters in the neighborhood? Entertainment’s, and the various buildings that house centers of entertainment, use in society can be seen as a marker for the healthiness of the economy and also can help to pinpoint major changes within the demographics of a city (or within a city, a specific neighborhood). It is also important to chart how the failing of Hollywood to achieve the monetary success that it once had in the 1980’s and 90’s has contributed, on a more localized level, to the development of a stronger independent movement within cinema.
Besides for having archival and recent images, the interactive map should also be able to convey the changing demographics of the neighborhood. Perhaps the best way to show this would be with some sort of color overlay that could represent the amount of recent immigrants or median income or even what job sector residents resided in, with a different color for a different decade. And when placed with the other maps from class, a portrait of New York City should emerge; one that traces nearly every element of urban life since, let’s assume, the era of industrialization.
Possible Bibliography:
Dunn, Angela Fox. “William Fox: Cinema Czar.” Westways. 73.11 (1981): 35. Print.
Hiler, Mary Louise. [1973] The Beginnings of the Cinema in Brooklyn: the Vitagraph Company of America, 1898-2925. Thesis (BA) St. Joseph’s College. USA.
Levy, Emanual. Cinema of Outsiders: The rise of American independent film. New York, NY: New York University Press, 1999.
Musser, Charles. “American Vitagraph: 1897-1901.” Cinema Journal. 22.3 (1983): 4-46
Newman, Michael. “Indie Culture: In pursuit of the Authentic Autonomous Alternative.” Cinema Journal. 48.3 (2009): 16-34.
Perera, L.A.D. The rise, decline, and fall of Hollywood’s mighty empires. 1st. New York, NY: Vantage Press, 1992.
Torrence, Bruce. Hollywood, the fist hundred years. New York, NY: Zoetrope, 1979.
Other sources:
The NYC Department of Records – Municipal Archives’ Collection includes original census documents from 1905 and 1915. These are organized by Ward. It also has assessed values of real estate from 1789 – 1979. This could be an interesting marker for inflation and the changing value of property within neighborhoods. The collection also includes the archives of the WPA FEDERAL WRITERS’ PROJECT (NYC UNIT) which lasted from 1936-1943.
Brooklyn College has one specific archive that could be of use called Brooklyniana. This includes photographs and maps.
BrooklynPix.com has a collection of photographs of old theaters.
