Wilensky Hardware on Mermaid Avenue is an anchor of the community and the oldest family-owned business in Coney Island. The store survived a century of urban renewal, arson, hurricanes, crime waves, and the civic neglect that led to the closing of...
Content type: Oral History Item
Steve Campanella is the owner of what's known as "The Bensonhurst Statue House" on 85th Street in Brooklyn. The private home is locally famous for his collection of "life size personalities" outside as well as collectibles inside the home and...
Content type: Oral History Item
Stan Fox's family operated arcades in Coney Island from 1949 through 1981, including Playland Arcade. Born in 1944, Stan recalls his earliest memories of living in a railroad flat on Mermaid Avenue, watching the trolley cars go by, and playing in...
Content type: Oral History Item
This interview was conducted in Mandarin Chinese with Master Lin by oral historian Yiyi Zhang on May 6th 2019. This is an edited version of the interview due to the interruptions and length of the original one. Below is the interview’s description...
Content type: Oral History Item
This interview was conducted and recorded in Russian. Read Julia Kanin's transcript and translation below. Интервью проведено и записано на русском языке. Вы можете ознакомиться с траснскриптом и переводом Юлии Ханиной ниже.
Yeva Novik, 90, an...
Content type: Oral History Item
Patrick Phillips recalls the summer of 1964, when he was a college student from Florida spending his summer working at Astroland's Neptune Diving Bells for his father's friend, Robert Coffey. He describes his job maintaining the complicated...
Content type: Oral History Item
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville is a graphic designer, artist and educator who graduated in 1959 from Lincoln High School, where she was mentored by Leon Friend, the much lauded chair of Lincoln's art department. She recalls her work as head of the...
Content type: Oral History Item
On a sunny day in January on the Boardwalk, Stanley Fox, whose family operated arcades in Coney Island from 1949 through 1981, recalls the names of businesses that were open in the winter back in the day: The Oceanside, Playland, Stauch's and Faber...
Content type: Oral History Item
When Ciro Conte founded Bensonhurst's SAS Italian Records in 1967, he named it after his children: Silvana, Adrianne and Silverio Conte. Fifty-one years later, the siblings share vivid memories of growing up in the store, which they still operate...
Content type: Oral History Item
"Anyone who knows me fairly well has been to Coney Island with me," says Arthur Nintzel, who grew up in Brooklyn on East 37th Street at Nostrand and Flatbush Avenues. On a visit back to Coney Island with his daughter, Arthur Nintzel shared boyhood...
Content type: Oral History Item