The photo of the week depicts the Shellens family around 1912 in front of their home in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn. Michael Shellens (pictured back left) was born in Belgium in 1854 and moved to the United States at a young age. He became a ship’s cabin boy in his teen years and worked his way to captain, taking several voyages across the globe until his retirement in 1898. He later became a successful real estate businessman in Brooklyn.

Shellens married Ella Mabel Collamore (pictured back right) in Brooklyn in 1899. Their three children Hazel, Ruth, and Marshall are pictured above with their parents. In 1905, Shellens purchased a block of 25 lots in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn. The family resided at 371 73^rd Street where the family lived for almost a century. Shellens died on April 22, 1944 and left his estate to his daughter Ruth, where she lived until her passing in 1987. Ruth Shellens bequeathed her father’s personal and business papers and a substantial monetary sum to Brooklyn Historical Society which went toward the renovation of the first floor gallery at the Pierrepont headquarters. The space is thus named the Shellens Gallery in honor of the Shellen’s family.

The photograph is from the Michael Shellens family collection comprised of personal and business correspondence, business and financial records, books, photographs, and ephemera related to Michael Shellens (1854-1944) and his family. The materials date from 1865 to 1984 and are principally about Shellens’s life and career as a mariner and businessman.

Interested in seeing more photos from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images. Interested in seeing even more historic Brooklyn images? Visit our Brooklyn Visual Heritage website here. To search BHS’s entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections visit BHS’s Othmer Library Wed-Sat, 1:00-5:00 p.m. library@brooklynhistory.org

We hope you’re having a fun and relaxing summer so far! The photo of the week is from the Charles (Karl) Blieffert photograph album depicting summer social activities, including boating, fishing, and sunbathing, from 1908 to 1917 in the Coney Island, Sheepshead Bay, and Brighton Beach neighborhoods of Brooklyn. To see more pages from this album, check out this page.

Charles (Karl) Blieffert was born on May 10, 1891 in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. His parents immigrated to the United States from Nuremberg, Germany. The family lived at 18^th Avenue near Gravesend Avenue where Charles spent his childhood. In an effort to Americanize his name, he changed his name from “Karl” to “Charlie” and pronounced his last name “Bly-furt” rather than “Blee-furt.” During the Great Depression, Charles moved out of Brooklyn to Milwaukee where he found work in the insurance business. He did not marry until his widowed mother died in 1940.

While a family day at the beach is common today, this kind of urban leisure was a relatively new phenomenon in the late 19^th century. Earlier in the century, elite and wealthy Americans began taking excursions to places like Saratoga Springs, but you don’t  see middle class people or immigrants like the Blieffert’s partaking in this kind of recreation until the turn of the century. That makes this album particularly interesting!

Interested in seeing more photos from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images. Interested in seeing even more historic Brooklyn images? Visit our Brooklyn Visual Heritage website here. To search BHS’s entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections visit BHS’s Othmer Library Wed-Sat, 1:00-5:00 p.m. library@brooklynhistory.org