My group was given the Vinegar Hill area in the time period of 1870-1920. In that time period there were many changes to Brooklyn most notably the change from Brooklyn being a city, to it be acquired into New York City, The Manhatten bridge was also built during this time period. The Manhatten bridge changed the landscape of downtown brooklyn extremely it change many streets in the neighborhood, so the people of the neighborhood were had more accessibility. Some of the key names in Brooklyn at this time were James Howell the mayor from 1872 to 1882, Patrick Keely who was an architect who greatly shaped brooklyn during this time period.
LIB 2205 / ARCH 2205 Learning Places
Professors Almeida and Montgomery Spring 2016
James Howell and Patrick Keely might be good starting places for additional research about this time period. For example, this source, which I found cited in the Wikipedia entry about Howell, indicates that he was also President of the Trustees of New York and Brooklyn Bridge http://www.waltergrutchfield.net/howell2.htm and you might follow that lead to see if the records of the Trustees of New York and Brooklyn Bridge are accessible online or in an archive. A quick google search reveals that records related to this entity are held at a college in Troy, NY: http://archon.server.rpi.edu/archon/?p=creators/creator&id=76 I also found a digitized case file from a constrution related lawsuite against the New York Brooklyn Bridge https://casetext.com/case/rogers-v-new-york-brooklyn-bridge
And could continue down this rabbit hole…