Friday, May 1, 2009

Genteel and Durable Boots at 463 Fulton Street, Brooklyn

This old street trade card once belonged to B.L. Cornell's boot and shoe store at 463 Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn, currently occupied by Nu Castle Jewelers. Their boots and shoes were made to order, and were guaranteed to be genteel and durable.

Next door at 461 Fulton, where the Payless shoe store is now, was Barnett's Ferrotype company.

A ferrotype was a photograph made by creating a direct positive on a sheet of metal. According to Wikipedia, since they did not need drying, instant photographs could be produced only a few minutes after taking the photograph.

Note that the Barnett's card mentions that 461 Fulton St. used to be called 73 Fulton Ave.

These cards and many others can be found at the Brooklyn Public Library's Fulton Street trade card collection, 245 late 19th and early 20th century illustrated trade cards. The cards are part of the Brooklyn Collection, Brooklyn Public Library's local history division.

Here are a few more examples from the collection:

This card belonged to the D. Wulf Confectionery Company at 415 Fulton Street, between Adams and Pearl.

This was the card of the Thorburn Dry Goods Company, 419 and 421 Fulton Street.

Nicoll the Tailor, at 482 Fulton Street, had a colorful card and a sense of humor.

Go to the BPL web site to see more.

Photo by MK Metz
Go to McBrooklyn's HOME PAGE.

2 comments:

Joy said...

Glad you like our trade cards. We have more of them from different parts of Brooklyn, that are not on the web site yet. You have to come and visit in order to see them. (See
www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/
brooklyncollection for hours).
Also check out our blog at www.brooklynology.org
I love the name McBrooklyn! Why didn't I think of that!

mcbrooklyn said...

Thanks for writing in, Joy. We just added Brooklynology to our blog list, and we plan to check in frequently.