Sewer and population maps at the BHS

My visit to the Brooklyn Historical Society started with a discussion about population, diseases, and living situations. At first we sat in our old seats with our group then after the brief discussion the groups begun to switch tables.  My group went to the last table with a map. We started with a review of the questions and then started to analyze the map. Looking at this map I saw a whole bunch of plans with hatches, easy recognizable because we have seen this in our architecture classes. The map was made for sewers for house drainage. It was made by Vanbrunt Burgen CE. We figured CE +stood for civil engineer. Looking around we found the date it was made, July 22^nd 1890. It was manuscript meaning hand written. It showed sections with hatches of sewers, sewer lines, and man holes.  The map showed us that there weren’t many sewers especially if you compare them to today. It was notarized and sealed Signed by the Board of Street and Sewer Commissionary. Next we looked at a book map of 1969. It showed different neighborhoods of Brooklyn with photos of the people in each of these neighborhoods. Some photos showed parks too. As we flipped through the book we noticed the amount of overcrowding in schools and how all the other maps surrounded the same area. The population seemed to cluster in the middle of Brooklyn. Lastly we learned that the areas with the most overcrowding the commissioners planned to renovate and help these crowded areas.