This book shows how modern Brooklyn's proud urban identity as an arts-friendly community
originated in the mid nineteenth century. Before and after the Civil War Brooklyn's elite
many engaged in Atlantic trade established more than a dozen cultural societies including the
Philharmonic Society Academy of Music and Art Association. The associative ethos behind
Brooklyn's fine arts flowering built upon commercial networks that joined commerce culture
and community. This innovative carefully researched and documented history employs the concept
of parallel Renaissances. It shows influences from Renaissance Italy and Liverpool then
connected to New York through regular packet service like the Black Ball Line that ferried
people ideas and cargo across the Atlantic. Civil War disrupted Brooklyn's Renaissance. The
city directed energies towards war relief efforts and the women's Sanitary Fair. The Gilded Age
saw Brooklyn's Renaissance energies diluted by financial and political corruption planning the
Brooklyn Bridge and consolidation with New York City in 1898.
