Bridgeport History Center – Special collections and archives for Bridgeport, Connecticut history and genealogy research.

Archival collections - featuring original documents, records, and primary sources from a variety of Bridgeport sources
Historic Photos of Bridgeport collection - featuring images of Bridgeport from the 1800s to the present
Oral Histories Collection - interviews featuring residents of Bridgeport and their experiences living in the city
Research guides - dedicated guides with extensive resources on popular topics to make research easier

BHC Special Events/Announcements

My Town, My Story – A Community Archive You Can Build!

Saturday, January 11 - December 31, 2025

All Day

MTMS is a digital community archiving platform created to preserve your community’s history and highlight the voices that make it special. We value your perspective and your potential to shape Bridgeport’s history. Click the link to the MTMS page and upload material.

My Town, My Story- Bridgeport

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Connecticut Innovation and Industry: Sikorsky Aircraft with Art Gottlieb

Saturday, April 5, 2025

1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Art Gottlieb discusses Connecticut as a center for industry and technological innovation for several centuries. Sikorsky Aircraft is just one of several Connecticut-based aeronautics companies. It was founded by Russian immigrant Igor Sikorsky in the first part of the 20th Century and grew to be a major force in helicopter production, including for the U.S. military.

Burroughs-Saden, 3rd floor Community Room

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Memoir Writing Workshop

Saturday, April 26, 2025

10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Wendy Wallace, M.F.A., leads the class which will include free form writing exercises and an exploration of the nature of memoirs, and examining voice and perspective. Drop in any month!

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Tracing Your Irish Ancestors with Nora Galvin

Saturday, April 26, 2025

2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Due to the disastrous fire at the Four Courts, Dublin, a century ago, Irish genealogy research can be challenging. Come and learn what records survived and how to use them, and how modern techniques, such as DNA testing and Facebook, can get you back to your roots in Ireland. Nora Galvin is a professional genealogist, specializing in Irish and Connecticut research and DNA methodology. In addition to research and lecturing, she has been the editor of the journal Connecticut Ancestry for eleven years.

Burroughs-Saden Library, 3rd floor Community Room

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BHC News

BHC x CTDA: Bridgeport’s history, now more searchable than ever

Find BHC Materials ONLINE
The Bridgeport History Center has been a proud part of the Connecticut Digital Archive for years now, taking advantage of this unique digital preservation platform that invites cultural institutions from all around Connecticut to share digitized material. Since March of 2020, BHC has worked hard to take advantage of CTDA’s hosting, search features, and support in order to make more of it’s holdings available and easier to search.

BHC is proud to share its updated CTDA space. Explore Black Bridgeport. Get to know our Archives and Manuscripts better. Did you know we have yearbooks digitized? All of our Grassroots Historians articles are available too, along with postcards and Mary Witkowski’s newspaper articles. You can search within the Bridgeport History Center’s collections only, or expand it to all of CTDA in order to find more material.

New and Noteworthy at BHC

The Bridgeport History Center updates our new and noteworthy page on a regular basis! Check back to see what we’ve added and you can come in and use. This page was last updated on April 22, 2022.

New Oral Histories
Bridgeport and New Haven Puerto Rican Oral Histories, 2023-2024
Fifth year Yale University doctoral candidate Amanda Rivera conducts oral histories to facilitate her research on the bilingual education movement in Bridgeport as led by Puerto Ricans in the 1970s. Rivera interviews community members about this topic in both Bridgeport and New Haven from 2023-2024. The interviews she conducted are now part of the History Center holdings as an oral history collection.

New Special Collections
BHC has long held biographical newspaper clipping files. Now researchers can view the list of names included in this substantial collection.

New Photographs
BHC has been continuing to add photographs to the Connecticut Digital Archive. There are over one thousand images available, with more on the way! Don’t see what you’re looking for? Contact us on our contact form.

New Digital Collections
BHC has one of the best newspaper clippings collections in the state. Explore some of the initial offerings from this vast resource.

Maps online!

Historic Map Works

Plat maps with details of lot apportionments and street details for cities across the United States

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps

Maps with details on buildings prepared for the insurance industry

New Research Guides

Hot off the heels of finishing up the Records of the Warner Brothers Company, the Bridgeport History Center is pleased to present not one, not two, but three brand new research guides! Our women’s suffrage guide will help you celebrate a century of voting rights, the belatedly spooky guide to local witchcraft and hauntings will provide a different kind of January chill, and our comprehensive guide to material related to the Warner Brothers Company and the family will assist researchers who are keen to know more about one of Bridgeport’s biggest manufacturers.

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