Brooklyn in Blue

Today's Photo of the Week is a cyanotype created by New York City photographer Julius Wilcox. Wilcox was born in Vermont in 1837, moving to New York at the age of 29 and settling in Brooklyn. He made his living as a writer for the New York Evening Gazette and as part owner of a bicycle business. He seems to have taken up photography as a hobby, photographing mostly in Manhattan, favoring architecture and the city’s working-class and poor. His album of original cyanotypes with handwritten captions was donated to the library, presumably after his death in 1924.  

Named for the cyan color of the final print, the cyanotype is a photographic process discovered by Sir John Herschel 1842. The simple recipe requires a mixture of potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate which can be applied to any porous surface, although watercolor paper is usually preferred. An image can be made by creating a contact print with a large format negative or placing an object directly on the surface to create a photogram. Several minutes of sun exposure followed by a freshwater rinse will produce a Prussian blue print.  

This photo is an interior view of the Central Presbyterian Church, also known as the Tabernacle on Marcy and Jefferson Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant, photographed in 1892. This is one of the few examples of a Brooklyn interior in Wilcox's collection. 

Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page, or access the resources of the former Brooklyn Collection. Our reference staff are still available to help with your research! You can reach us at [email protected].