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Photos: This is what pre-gentrified Brooklyn looked like

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It’s the Brooklyn Academy of Music, before David Byrne’s weird back racks. All images via NYPL

Like anyone in the borough avoiding actual responsibility, we’ve spent an inexcusable amount of time looking at old-timey photos of Brooklyn. And the New York Public Library — which we’re sure you don’t visit enough — recently announced that for the first time, anyone can download and reuse any of the over 100,000 high-resolution images in its public domain digital collection.

Now that we don’t have to worry about the NYPL suing us, we wanted to share our favorite classic photographs of Brooklyn available in their digital archives. Click through the gallery on the next page to see our top picks of the borough we love best, from a time you never knew.

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