472 Fifth - Shoes Then & Now

Long, long before Payless was on Fifth, another shoe store operated at the same address. Here's a tradecard dated somewhere between 1875 & 1885 (I'm guessing the 1880s) for Carlile & Clement, Dealers in Ladies & Gents' Fine Shoes:

 

Brooklyn Museum Libraries Special Collection

I found this image online at the Brooklyn Visual Heritage site:

Brooklyn Visual Heritage was developed through Project CHART (Cultural Heritage, Access, Research and Technology), a collaborative effort of Pratt Institute’s School of Information and Library Science (SILS), the Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Museum and The Brooklyn Public Library, focusing on the digitization of historic images of Brooklyn and making them easily accessible to a broad and varied audience.

This is a great storehouse of historical images, and while I'm familiar with some of them, I'm continuing to make exciting discoveries as I look through the still expanding collection.  I only found out about the Visual Heritage site by attending a teacher workshop last week at the Brooklyn Collection of the BPL Central Library.  The workshop, Photography and Archives: An Interdisciplinary Approach, involved the use of photographs & primary sources in classroom teaching, and focused in particular on the resources of the Collection.   After a really well presented overview of the Collection, and of historical images archives in the city, noted Brooklyn photographer Jamel Shabazz spoke to us about his work*, and about the impact photographic images have on students.  An inspiring day.

*Check out Shabazz's exhibition, Reflections, which is currently on display in the lobby of the Central Branch.