Brooklyn Public Library presents “Building Brooklyn,” an audio journey about three neighborhoods that made Brooklyn the vibrant, diverse borough it is today. This miniseries is an off-shoot of BPL’s flagship podcast, Borrowed, and is co-hosted by two BPL librarians. Drawing from our own oral history collections, as well as new interviews with Brooklynites, it will tell some of Brooklyn’s most unique and overlooked stories.

The third episode in the series features the Sunset Park neighborhood and is about the emergence of Brooklyn’s Chinatown along 8th Avenue. The episode uses excerpts from oral histories collected in the 1990s by our Center for Brooklyn History and the Museum of Chinese in America. We’ll also hear from urban planner and scholar Tarry Hum, who wrote Brooklyn’s Sunset Park: Making a Global Immigrant Neighborhood. Visit Sunset Park Library during open hours (10am to 5pm) to to check out books related to the episode from a special OHNY book display, and then take a self-guided walk in the neighborhood while you listen to the episode – or listen from home!

This event is offered during OHNY Weekend as a part of Radical Knowledge: Libraries as Community Catalysts, an ongoing program examining how libraries serve as both vibrant learning institutions and centers for their communities, providing physical and virtual spaces to enrich civic life, expand economic opportunity, and improve the quality of place and quality of life for New Yorkers.