In special education the Long Island College Hospital and the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy occupy an important place. The Long Island College Hospital and Training School for Nurses was chartered in 1858. Its history as a hospital and as a college has been notable. The graduates in 1893 numbered 60, bringing the total list of graduates nearly to 1500.
It frequently has been lamented that Brooklyn has no great free library, and the deficiency is one for which the city deserves a mark of discredit. But it is due to Brooklyn to observe that she is by no means without excellent opportunities for those who wish to read.
The Brooklyn Library, which succeeded the old Mercantile Library, is not free to the public, but the subscription rate is so low in comparison with the privileges that the institution is in many respects to be regarded as a great public library. The building on Montague Street was finished in 1868 at a cost of $227,000, and its beautiful Gothic front forms one of the genuine ornaments of the city.
The library contains nearly 200,000 volumes, admirably selected. The catalogue compiled by Stephen B. Noyes was of a character to bring honor alike to library and librarian. Upon the death of Mr. Noyes the management of the library came into the competent hands of W. A. Bardwell, who became librarian in 1888. The reading-rooms are furnished with 300 periodicals and newspapers. In the reference departments there were 75,000 readers in 1893, and in the reading-rooms 100,000 readers. The Brooklyn Library has, indeed, performed an immensely important service in the development of the city.
The Brooklyn Institute Free Library, formerly in the old Institute Building on Washington Street, and now at 502 Fulton Street, contains 16,000 well-selected volumes, and is efficiently managed. Pratt Institute Free Library is a notable instance of a great public service through a private agency. The library of 42,000 volumes includes 2000 German and 2000 French books. There are an Astral Branch at Franklin Avenue and Java Street, and delivery stations at Froebel Academy and 754 Driggs Avenue. Reading-room and library are free to the use of all residents of Brooklyn. The Long Island Free Library, at 571 Atlantic Avenue, is the result of a well-directed movement. There are but 15,000 volumes, but method of selection and distribution have assured the usefulness of the work. To this must be added the free public school libraries, and the substantial free library of the Union for Christian Work on Schermerhorn Street.
The free library of the Long Island Historical Society naturally occupies an important place. The reference department of 48,000 volumes includes the noteworthy publications of the society itself. The Law Library in the Court House contains 15,000 volumes, and there are 7000 volumes in the library of the Kings County Medical Society.
In addition to the libraries of the Young Men's and the Young Women's Christian associations,[47] there are over twenty-five special free reading-rooms throughout the city, most of them connected with churches.
The large number of churches, and the emphasis laid upon church interests, once gave to Brooklyn the title of the City of Churches. The proportion between the number of churches and the population no longer is so exceptional as to justify such a title, but church life in Brooklyn is, in many respects, of unique prominence. The greatest preacher the United States has produced, Henry Ward Beecher,[48] occupied the pulpit of Plymouth Church during a great formative period in the city's history. The Rev. Richard S. Storrs, D. D., pastor of the Congregational Church of the Pilgrims since 1846, the descendant of a distinguished family of preachers and orators, who has been called the "Chrysostom of Brooklyn," occupies a place among the most scholarly of American orators. The popularity of the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle since 1869, has been unexampled in the church history of the country. The thirty years' pastorate of the Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, constituted a notable force in the advancement of the community. The enlightened leadership of the Catholic Church by the Right Reverend John Loughlin, first bishop of Brooklyn, who was succeeded in 1892 by the Right Reverend Charles E. McDonnell, has been a matter for congratulation in the Catholic Church; and the Episcopal Church has been under no less obligation to the first bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, the Right Reverend A. N. Littlejohn, D. D. When Dr. Littlejohn was elected bishop in 1869, he was succeeded as rector of Holy Trinity Church by the Rev. Charles Henry Hall, D. D., who has been one of Brooklyn's strongest preachers.
St. James' Church, at Jay and Chapel streets, has been the cathedral church of the Catholic diocese for nearly half a century. The corner-stone of a great cathedral, to occupy the block bounded by Lafayette, Clermont, Greene, and Vanderbilt avenues, was laid in 1868, but only a part of the structure has been completed.
In 1893 the following were the numbers of churches of different denominations in Brooklyn: Baptist, 40; Congregational, 26; German Evangelical Association, 5; Jewish, 10; Lutheran, 27; Methodist Episcopal, 53; Primitive Methodist, 4; Methodist Free, 1; Methodist Protestant, 1; Presbyterian, 33; Roman Catholic, 63; Reformed Presbyterian, 1; United Presbyterian, 3; Protestant Episcopal, 45; Reformed Episcopal, 2; Dutch Reformed, 19; Unitarian, 4; Universalist, 5; miscellaneous, 23.