Arthur Wilmott photograph collection

The Arthur Wilmott photograph collection spans the period circa 1890 to 1910 and contains original prints, copy prints, and glass plate negatives of various Brooklyn scenes, locales, and monuments. The collection covers many areas of turn-of-the-century Brooklyn: though the majority of the photographs represent the neighborhoods of Flatbush and Flatlands, as well as Prospect Park, they also represent the neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Gerritsen Beach, Gravesend, Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay, Williamsburg, Mill Basin, Midwood, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Fort Greene, as well as Grand Army Plaza and Marine Park.

The large number of photographs pertaining to Flatbush and Flatlands mostly depict unidentified houses, churches, and landscapes, as well as one unidentified schoolhouse. The subjects of some photographs, however, have been identified, and these include the Flatbush locales of Erasmus Hall High School and parts of Vanderveer Park, and the Flatlands locales of the Protestant Dutch Reformed Church, Public School 119 at the corner of East 38th Street and Avenue K, and a section of Kouwenhoven Place showing a windmill. Photographs pertaining to Prospect Park depict Prospect Park Lake, the Boathouse (converted into the Audubon Center at the Boathouse in 2002), the Vale of Cashmere, and several bridges, as well as such monuments as the Abraham Lincoln statue, the Prospect Park War Memorial, and the Lioness and Cubs sculpture. General landscape shots taken in various areas of Prospect Park are also included.

Additional Brooklyn scenes, locales, and monuments depicted in the collection include the General Ulysses S. Grant memorial in Crown Heights, the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza; Gerritsen's Gristmill, located in present-day Marine Park in Gerritsen Beach and destroyed by fire in the mid-1930s; a promenade of horse-drawn carriages on Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights; the Brevoort Savings Bank on Fulton Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant; crowds fishing off a pier in Sheepshead Bay; an automobile race at Brighton Beach Racetrack; beachgoers at Brighton Beach; a Coney Island-bound trolley car; partially-completed sections of the Williamsburg Bridge; an unidentified church in Williamsburg; the J. Muller Antique Shop (location unknown); a mill and a pond in Mill Basin; a building labeled as a "Vincentian Club House" (most likely the clubhouse of the Vincentian Union, a Catholic social club, at the corner of Dekalb and Lewis Avenues); a house on East 28th Street between Avenues L and M in Midwood; a section of the Fulton Street elevated railroad in Fort Greene; a plot of land off Dean Street (specific location unknown); a house on East 34th Street near Glenwood Road in East Flatbush; an aerial view of the Brooklyn waterfront and the East River; and a milestone in Gravesend reading "8 Miles and 3 Quarters to Brooklyn Ferry."

Finally, the collection also includes two notebooks in which Wilmott recorded consistent information for each of his photographs, including date and time taken, subject or location, strength of the sun, shutter speed and aperture, and his perception of the resulting photographic quality.