
Everyday here in the Milstein Division, we get questions from all over the city and around the country about the history of New York City. Questions range from the very specific, “What was the weather in Manhattan on May 7th 1864?” to the dauntingly vague, “My great-grandfather lived in New York, his name was Patrick Murphy. Could you send me information on him?” Fortunately, the library’s collection of reference material on New York City history is astounding and rare is the question that goes unanswered. But for those who don’t have direct access to our print collection and are interested in researching the history of our great metropolis, I invite you to a free research class at the library this week.
history
Digital Gotham
Posted June 25th, 2008 by Kate CordesKitty Marion, Birth Control Advocate
Posted June 19th, 2008 by Laura Ruttum
Residents of New York City, members of a metropolis that somehow simultaneously operates as a small village, are all familiar with certain “characters” who frequent public spaces. Today it is the “Naked Cowboy” one can find entertaining the tourists in Times Square, the affable gentleman selling vegetable peelers in Union Square, or even the kids who perform gravity-defying acrobatics on the A train. A similar character who was surely familiar to many in the streets of NYC during the nineteen-teens through the nineteen-thirties was Kitty Marion, hawker of the Birth Control Review.
County Atlases
Posted June 17th, 2008 by Matt KnutzenA popular collection in the NYPL's Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, and one of my personal favorites, is the county atlas series, most of which was published following the passage of a federal law commemorating the centennial of the United States. We have recently digitized 43 atlases covering New York and New Jersey from our collection of more than 420 titles printed before 1900. See this page for a list of digital holdings from this series.
Their pages are filled not only with wonderfully detailed maps on the national, state, county, township and city level, but also with interesting, flat perspective engravings depicting local business districts, prominent estates and farms. Business directories sometimes accompany the map pages that, along with the drawings, provide a glimpse into local social and economic geography of the 19th century. They also give us an idea of who provided funding for the production of these subscription based publications.
Coney Island Maps
Posted June 14th, 2008 by Matt KnutzenI've always been fascinated with landscapes changing through time as seen though the lens of the map. Shorelines, especially where there are lots of waves and tides, are particularly interesting things in that they are so clearly dynamic. These fire insurance maps of Coney Island, created between 1880 and 1907 document those changes beautifully. In addition to those covering Coney Island, the NYPL has digitized close to 2000 maps at this level of detail for all five boroughs of New York City.
G.W. Bromley, Atlas of the entire City of Brooklyn, 1880, Plate 35
E. Robinson, Robinson's atlas of Kings County, New York, 1890, Plate 20
G.W. Bromley, Atlas of the Borough of Brooklyn, 1907, Plate 28
Edith Wynner, Firecracker
Posted June 13th, 2008 by Laura Ruttum
“Is there a Jew in the House?”
Thus began a meeting of the “Great Pro-American Mass Meeting in Behalf of Free Speech and Americanism,” a gathering of several anti-immigrant, anti-Communist, reactionary organizations, on May 24, 1939. The crowd, turned away from their first meeting location at Carnegie Hall, had re-congregated at the Great Northern Hotel a few doors down 57th street. Police swarmed the lobby, shouts went around to “keep the newspapers out,” and journalists were violently jostled aside. The individual who delivered the threatening question above soon turned on a young man, menacing towards him until the man protested that he was Italian, not Jewish. Among those present at this nationalistic rally were speakers for the American Patriots, Inc; the Christian Front; the American Nationalist Party…and a diminutive, pacifist Hungarian Jew, Edith Wynner.
Craft Therapy, Then and Now.
Posted June 7th, 2008 by Jessica PigzaStaten Island's Halloran General Hospital, home of crafty recovering soldiers during World War II. (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery).
A few weeks ago at a Handmade Then and Now class (I'll teach this class next on July 16th at 2:15pm), I met a number of creative people, including a knitter named Maxine Levinson. Maxine works at the Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy Department of the Kravis Children's Hospital at Mount Sinai, where she teaches young patients and their families how to knit. I learned from Maxine how knitting, like other creative arts therapies, can reduce anxieties and provide a sense of security during sometimes long and stressful hospital stays. Maxine told me, "I am very fortunate to be able to share my love of crafts in such a unique way."
Soap Box.
Posted May 29th, 2008 by Jessica Pigza
Before Colgate and other companies like it set up industrial shop, soapmaking was a home industry--and for some DIY entrepreneurs today, it still is. (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery)
Soap making is a thriving indie business. A recent quick search on Etsy led me to over 13,000 handmade soaps from which to choose, and the creative varieties are outstanding--from bars with city maps to bone-shaped soaps for dogs, you are bound to find the perfect concoction for you. Clearly you won't have to get your own hands dirty making soap unless that's what you're into (and if it IS, take a look at the latest issue of Bust--it offers a soap-making tutorial.)
For many centuries, however, soap making was a routine household chore, done in small batches using materials collected around the house. In Susan Strasser's eye-opening social history of trash, Waste and Want, she discusses how "spare fat" and drippings, as well as ashes (used in making the lye needed to create soap) could be collected and used to make soap at home. But even as commercial soap makers appeared on the American scene, the industry remained a "small, local enterprise before the Civil War." Strasser's study of the economics of American trash is well worth reading for much more than just the soapy bits, however. It provides a startling reminder of how radically our ideas of value and re-use have changed, and how old habits of recycling lost their place in industrial America.
To learn more about soap, and about the Western world's long-held suspicion of hot sudsy baths, I recommend Katherine Ashenburg's The Dirt on Clean. This memorable book considers the rise of soap (made at home using animal fats, but also later produced as a luxury item using gentle and attractive plant oils) and how its role shifted from that of a perfumed cosmetic to become the cleansing necessity it is for us today.
Violence and/or Absurdity at Astor Place
Posted May 9th, 2008 by Sachi ClaytonHave you lived in New York City long enough to remember when it used to be dangerous? Even the Worst Case Scenario Handbook:Travel has a section on how to handle riding the subway here! While this city is now arguably a safe place to live it certainly has a history marked with violence.
Take riots for example. New York City has had many of them; in fact the anniversary of a bloody and misguided riot is upon us. On May 10, 1849 violence erupted, due not to a draft, or a food shortage, or low wages. The Astor Place Riot ensued over a petty dispute between two actors, Edwin Forest, an American and William Macready, an Englishman. The deeper issue, however, was one of nationalism and classism as expressed in this surviving broadside. You can read a very dramatic account of the riot and the events leading to it in The Great Riots of New York City, by J.T. Headley. The event was so dramatic that it actually inspired Richard Nelson's play Two Shakespearean Actors.
Can you think of a present day equivalent to the Astor Place Riot? The closest I came was a fight between the Blue Man Group of Berlin and the one working at Astor Theater over which city has the hippest art scene. But that wouldn't be dangerous, that would just be bizarre.
Rosika Schwimmer, Pacifist
Posted May 1st, 2008 by Laura Ruttum
Get the boys “out of the trenches by Christmas!
Thus began the Ford Peace Expedition of 1915, an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to convince warring European parties to make peace. The brains behind the project, short, stocky, bespeckled pacifist Rosika Schwimmer convinced automaker Henry Ford to finance the venture. Together, they chartered a ship—the Oscar II—and enticed a number of intellectuals, social and political luminaries, students, journalists, three small children, and one stowaway to join them on their voyage across the Atlantic.
The inspiration for the journey did not appear entirely out of the blue: Madame Schwimmer had met with diplomats from several of the warring countries earlier in the year, securing signed documents agreeing to consider a neutrally-brokered peace. She kept these letters safely tucked into her small leather purse, producing them when she met with President Woodrow Wilson and argued for an American role in peaceful intervention. His lingering isolationist tendencies forced her to search elsewhere.
And search she did, eventually landing upon Henry Ford, who agreed to lend his considerable wealth towards her goal. Once committed to the endeavor, Ford called a press conference at which he declaimed the famous phrase above, setting in motion the exciting preparations about a month before the actual launch date of December 4. On the 4th, the ship was seen off from the Hoboken port by a cheering crowd, including William Jennings Bryan and Thomas Edison.
Adventures in Programming: You Never Know When You Will Need It
Posted April 14th, 2008 by Cynthia Chaldekas
About six years ago when I started working at the Mid-Manhattan Library in the General Reference Collection, a man came to the desk, wanting a book on New York Public Library history. He said the book was written by a woman. The first book that came to my mind was Phyllis Dain’s New York Public Library: A History of its Founding and Early Years. At that moment I did not know the call number but I knew its location on the shelf. I pulled the book from the shelf and gave it to him. I gestured for him to take a seat and with a smile he walked over to a table. I went back to my seat.
A half hour later, he came to the desk to return the book and thanked me. I asked if he found what he was looking and with that he told me he was giving a lecture at the National Arts Club that evening. He had come to Mid-Manhattan to do a last bit of fact- checking. The topic of his lecture, New York Public Library history in relation to Andrew Haswell Green. Our conversation was not long, but at the end of it I decided to ask him for his business card. “Gladly!” he replied and then pulled the card out of his wallet and handed it to me. We shook hands and said goodbye. I looked at his card carefully, looked at the name. Up to that point though we had engaged in a lively conversation, however we had not exchanged names. The card said in bold lettering “Rediscovering Andrew Haswell Green NYC’s Forgotten Visionary” and under this in small letters was the name Michael Miscione. Almost half the card was taken up with a photo of a man from the neck up, his bearded visage serene, confident. The man, no doubt, Andrew Haswell Green. Once off the desk, I put the card away in my desk and thought about what an interesting hour it had been.
Later I looked up Andrew Haswell Green. He was a very prominent figure among the movers and shakers in New York City in the late 19th century and he was integral to the establishment of Central Park and New York City as we know it today, by combining the boroughs in 1898. Green was instrumental in creating the famous grid of streets and avenues that help to define Manhattan. He also was a major participant in the establishment of The New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum. You name it--Haswell was involved in every iconic facet of what we know to be New York City for the latter part of the 19th century. Unfortunately, he was murdered by a crazed individual who mistook him for someone else and his name sank into obscurity. That is until Michael Miscione came along. Michael Miscione has been a one-man force in trying to revive the name Andrew Haswell Green and his importance in New York City History.
I kept Michael Miscione’s card in my desk along with other cards that I felt may somehow be important to me one day. That day came last year, many years after we had first met. When I was asked by my supervisor to begin doing programs in late 2006, I was at first a reluctant participant. Once I started doing programs, I discovered I really liked it and that is where my programming passion began. As I searched for interesting and dynamic programs, my thoughts went all over the place. Everything I read, saw or heard suddenly had an import beyond its initial interest. A potential program was in everything I experienced.
I decided to contact Michael Miscione to speak at the library. I knew he lectured based on our one encounter many years ago. And more important I knew he would be interesting. New York City- related programs are always a draw. We get hundreds of questions about New York City; patrons can’t get enough of the subject, me included.
After many attempts at contacting Michael Miscione, I finally reached him. I relayed the story of how we met many years ago and why I saved his card and ultimately why I was calling him that day. Initially he hesitated and then like a rubber band being shot, he remembered the encounter almost exactly as I did, except he could go onto to remember a really successful lecture he gave that evening at the National Arts Club. I thought to myself “Bingo! Cyn you just got yourself a really good program.” Michael was more than happy to come and speak at the library. I learned that he was the Borough of Manhattan Historian, that he was a filmmaker, and he was in fact as interesting as I found him to be many years before.
Michael Miscione has come twice to speak at the library. The first program he presented in the spring of 2007 was The Combining of the Boroughs of 1898 and the Establishment of New York City. He presented his second program this past February: The People vs. Wayne Boyd: The Murder Trail That Nearly Redrew The Map of New York City.
Both talks were the best that programming could offer. Slide lectures with wonderful historic photographs were supported by a dynamic speaker whose command of his subject takes the viewer on a most exciting intellectual ride. One hundred people attended each program. Michael Miscione will be speaking again on Monday, November 17, 2008. I encourage New York City history enthusiasts to mark their calendars now. You won’t be disappointed!
Ireland's Cottage Crafts.
Posted March 18th, 2008 by Jessica Pigza
Happy St. Patrick's Day! (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery.)
The legacy of handmade crafts--tweed, lace, baskets, woolen knits, and more--has been sustained in Ireland over centuries. These handmade traditions are tied both to individual makers' efforts as well as organizations that worked to revive and sustain interest in cottage crafts and industries in the 1880s. Janice Helland's British and Irish Home Arts and Industries, 1880-1914: Marketing Craft, Making Fashion provides an illuminating overview of the organizations that fostered this revival, and the complex issues of class and politics that shaped the movement.
One cottage crafts revival organization was the Donegal Industrial Fund, founded in 1883 by Alice Rowland Hart, a London merchant's daughter. Hart had become committed to finding urban markets for rural Irish handicrafts after touring destitute Irish communities of Donegal. As Helland explains, Hart held exhibitions, opened shops, and managed sales of handmade Irish goods. Hart's efforts focused upon assisting Irish women in creating livelihoods, but she shared the some of the same romantic notions of pre-industrial craft held by William Morris and John Ruskin.
And what of cottage crafts today? The traditions are alive and well in Ireland today, as Betsy Klein shows in Cottage Industry: Portraits of Irish Artisans. A few of the many devoted artisans celebrated in Klein's book are Kevin Donaghy, who makes woolen tweeds; Rory Conner, who creates knives; Áine & Tarlach de Blácam, who produce woolen knits; and Sadie Chowen, who operates the Burren Perfumery.
To find more Library resources on Irish handicrafts, simply look in catnyp under the subjects Artisans--Ireland and Handicraft--Ireland. And online, the Crafts Council of Ireland is a good place to explore Irish makers active today.
The Girl in Green.
Posted March 13th, 2008 by Jessica Pigza
The Girl Scouts have been planting trees for almost 100 years. (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery.)
Yesterday, March 12th, marked the 96th anniversary of the first meeting of the Girl Scouts in the United States. Since Juliette Gordon Low's first gathering of "girls in green" in Savannah, Georgia, in 1912, Girl Scouts have been doing good deeds and learning in both the "outdoor laboratory of the camp" as well as the "indoor laboratory of homemaking" (as these two realms were called in the 1937 publication, Twenty-Five Years of Girl Scouting).
Girl Scouting always sought to offer girls more than just lessons in bee keeping and first aid. Low, who based her American Girl Scouts on the British Girl Guides (whose existence grew out of the British Boy Scouts organization), wanted to offer girls the chance to develop their individual "aptitudes through recreation," and the opportunities have grown over the decades. Although homemaking and pioneering were considered to be worthy skills to master, Girl Scouts were soon encouraged to embark on--among dozens of activities--nature study, handicrafts, rifle shooting, birding, dancing, and ambulance driving as well. For instance, the 1923 Scouting for Girls handbook outlined how Girl Scouts could earn proficiency badges in everything from electrician to dressmaker, from dairy maid to handy-woman. And in the realm of handicrafts, Arts & Crafts with Inexpensive Materials opens a particularly wonderful window to Girl Scouts' crafts aesthetic of the 1940s.
And, as revealed in Brave Girls by Harriett Philmus, Girl Scouts and Girl Guides heroically set aside their block printing and pottery (skills once needed to earn a proficiency badge as craftsman) during World War II. These women were saboteurs, secret couriers, nurses, barricade builders, fighters, wire tappers, and supply distributors. And they risked, and sometimes lost, their lives through this work.
Today's Girl Scouts continue to look beyond their own circles of friends. As Trefoil Round the World explains, recent Girl Scout projects have included supporting education and health efforts in foreign countries, embarking on tree planting, and starting recycling programs. To learn more about the Girl Scouts today, a visit their site is a great place to start. And among the many histories of this movement available at the Library, Susan Miller's Growing Girls: The Natural Origins of Girls' Organizations in America provides a satisfying critical look.
Hand press propaganda.
Posted February 18th, 2008 by Jessica Pigza(William brought a traveling mint along too, to speed the creation of coins with the new kingly and queenly mugs. Image from the NYPL Digital Gallery.)
I've been making an effort to sort out my English history once and for all, and lately have been reading my way around the seventeenth century. And what have I learned? All about William of Orange's use, in the year 1688, of a traveling hand press to churn out political propaganda.
William of Orange, along with his wife Mary, tidily orchestrated what has come to be known as England's Glorious Revolution of 1688. This transfer of power unfolded through both military and propaganda campaigns. And, as one might imagine, that traveling printing press was part of the latter. As William moved across England on his way to London to claim the English crown for himself and his wife (who was English royalty,incidentally), he arranged for pamphlets, broadsides, and declarations, and even early comics of a sort to be printed and distributed across the countryside. Copies were given to local printers and booksellers to distribute to townspeople, and the texts were read aloud at public venues as well.
Historian Lois Schwoerer has shown in her research that on-the-fly media creation was just one element of a long and savvy print campaign on the part of William of Orange to lay the groundwork for his claim of rightful possession of the crown. In her article "Propaganda in the Revolution of 1688-89," Schwoerer explains the prominence of printing as a campaign element: "William was really prepared to keep the presses rolling for his cause after he landed in England. What better proof is there of this intention and his interest in propaganda than the fact that he brought a printing press with him--along with soldiers and horses--as part of his invasion equipment?" "Propaganda in the Revolution of 1688-89" appeared in American Historical Review's vol. 82, no. 4, p. 843-874, and is available via JSTOR at the Library.
Other sources of information on the history of this period include Britain's Bloodless Revolution, William III and the Godly Revolution, Arts and Society in England Under William and Mary, The Declaration of Rights 1689, and The Age of William and Mary. Additionally, digital editions of documents created during this propaganda campaign are ready to be viewed in Early English Books Online (EEBO), a database available at the Library.
Cast your vote and bring a camera
Posted February 4th, 2008 by Sachi ClaytonThe above photograph is part of the "By Popular Demand: Votes for Women," a digitized collection in the Library of Congress' American Memory Project. I love the details of this one: the ink well in the bottom left hand corner, the wooden ballot box, the look on the face of the voter to the right and how the photograph was taken just as the women in the middle is tearing her ballot.
Details like these are exactly what the Polling Places Photo Project are hoping to archive and share. "Polling Places" is a collaboration between the New York Times and AIGA. It is described as a "nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that encourages voters to capture, post and share photographs of this year’s primaries, caucuses and general election." I really like this one - A campaigner devoted enough to run into moving traffic.
So, don't forget to vote tomorrow and if you think to, bring your camera!
A private press at the public library.
Posted January 30th, 2008 by Jessica Pigza
(The private act of reading in the very public space of Bryant Park in the 1930s, a heyday for private presses. From the NYPL Digital Gallery.)
In 1929, Giovanni Mardersteig, the head of the Italian private press Officina Bodoni, offered this explanation of his press's ideals: "A book consists of five elements: the text, the type, the ink, the paper, and the binding. To create a unity from these five elements in such a way that the result is not a passing product of fashion, but assumes the validity of permanent value--that is our desire." Private presses--those small publishing houses that devoted loving attention to type, design, illustration, and (usually*) adherence to handpress production--blossomed on both sides of the Atlantic in the early twentieth century. Often, as Geoffrey Glaister explains in his Encyclopedia of the Book, the bibliophiles and typophiles who ran private presses published limited editions of books which were then distributed to subscribers or to members of an associated club.
Just such a club here in New York City was the Limited Editions Club, founded by George Macy in 1929 and credited (in Grove Art Online, an excellent resource available at the Library) as one of the most influential private presses to promote the creation of finely illustrated books. Macy recruited the period's greatest artists, designers, and illustrators--including Bruce Rogers and Thomas Hart Benton--to contribute to the Club's luxurious editions of classic literary texts.
For students of the craft of printing and illustration, NYPL's collection of Limited Editions Club publications is a treasure trove (a search for Limited Editions Club in Catnyp brings up over two hundred titles). And to get the big picture concerning the scope of the Limited Editions Club's printing efforts, you can also look at a bibliographical catalogue of the Club's publications, entitled Great and Good Books.
*As Glaister reports, some presses did not limit themselves to small handpress runs and instead sought to deliver finely designed and produced volumes to the masses. One such press was Nonesuch Press, established in England 1923. Nonesuch aimed "to adapt mechanical methods to the production of finely made books which were to be sold at modest cost through normal trade channels." And indeed, Nonesuch had tremendous success with The Week-End Book, a lovely volume in decorated cloth covered boards, endpapers printed with whimsical (and useful) gameboards, and jaunty illustrations throughout.
Spalding Baseball Photos Online at The New York Public Library
Posted January 23rd, 2008 by Virginia Bartow"
Nostalgia for the past is what leads many of us to pour over our old pictures. Recently The New York Public Library posted several thousand old baseball pictures on its website. Known as the NYPL Digital Gallery, the website contains millions of digital images of pictures taken from books and archives found throughout the vast collections of the NYPL.One of the more recent image collections to go live in the NYPL Digital Gallery was the Albert G. Spalding Collection. While not all of the A.G. Spalding Collection is currently available online, we at last have a window through which to see some of the incredible things that Spalding, who must have been a real packrat, collected. The Manuscripts and Archives Division at NYPL posted a description of the A.G. Spalding collection, and although they describe things that are not in the NYPL Digital Gallery, their site has information about Spalding and all of the stuff that he collected during his time as a ball player, manager, and promoter of the sport.A word about the image, above. It is photograph of the trophies collected by the Atlantics of Brooklyn (1857-1875). The wooden frame holds a baseball from every game won by the team. The A.G. Spalding Collection contains only the photograph, not the baseballs.
Team photos and the press
Posted January 23rd, 2008 by Virginia Bartow
At first glance, this picture looks like it has seen better days. To a trained eye, it looks like a remarkable survival.
Which is it?This picture of the Atlantic Base Ball Club in 1869, from the Albert G. Spalding Collection, is an albumen photographic print, mounted on thin paper board.
Two words come to mind, “fugitive materials.” Because of the albumen photographic printing process, the image will fade every time it is exposed to light. Imagine how many times this picture has been viewed since it was printed in 1869! The wood pulp that formed the photograph’s mounting backboard is also highly unstable. Stanford University has a website devoted to the albumen photographic print and there you can learn all about the printing process and the stability of early photographic prints. For information about preserving photographs and working with acidic papers and board stock, see the American Institute of Conservators (AIC) website. The AIC documentation explains some of the common problems encountered in the preservation of historical artworks.If you’d like to learn about the team, check out the site maintained by their modern-day equivalents, the Atlantic Base Ball Club. Maybe you’ve heard of or participated in re-creation events (i.e. Civil War battles, or Renaissance fairs). Well there is a group of guys in New York who dress up in base ball uniforms just like those in the picture above and play ball.
For more history on the Atlantics, check out an early account of their won/loss record from1858 to 1866 that appeared in The Book of American Pastimes by Charles H. Peverelley (New York, the author, 1866). According to George Touhey, in his A history of the Boston Base Ball Club (Boston: Quinn, 1897), the stars of the team in 1870 were “Ferguson, Zittlein, Start, Pike, Pearce, Chapman, and George Hall.”At the top of the photograph, right in the middle is a small label, pasted right onto the photographic print. Hard to read at this resolution, I think it says,“FROM: This picture”“TO: Get photos of [Gump?, Grant?], Zittlein, Pearce, Start, Ferguson“These appear to be instructions to the photo editor of a publication. So it would seem that this photographic print was part of a publisher’s archive, and not something that would have been framed and hung on the wall as an artistic or documentary memento of the 1869 Atlantics of Brooklyn.
Happy Birthday, Ben!
Posted January 17th, 2008 by Jessica PigzaI admit it—I love Benjamin Franklin. A printer, a founding father of democracies and libraries, a good-natured autodidact who maintained his curiosity to a wise old age, and a fellow charming enough to sway the ladies of France. Really, what’s not to like? And the fact that he labored as one of the country's most renowned early printers of the hand press period more than qualifies him for mention here.
Today is the ingenious Dr. Franklin’s birthday, and in his honor I’d like to suggest that you come to the Library and browse our digital collection of his works. At any branch or research library in the NYPL system, you can browse the Early American Imprints (Series I) database for works written or printed by Franklin. And this database allows you to read, print, and save for yourself the full text images of any books, pamphlets, broadsides and periodicals that strike your fancy.
Another option for Franklinophiles out there is a visit the Grolier Club, which currently has on offer an exhibition called Benjamin Franklin, Writer and Printer. The curators, James N. Green and Peter Stallybrass, are scheduled to give a lecture on their exhibition at 2:00pm on January 23rd. And NYPL holds a copy of the curators’ accompanying book, so you can come long after the lecture and exhibition have passed and still take it all in. There’s plenty of Franklin to go around, as you’ll see, and I’m willing to share. Happy Birthday!
New Additions to the Digital Gallery
Posted December 20th, 2007 by Kate Cordes
Additional images from the NYC Tenement House Department collection of photographic negatives have been added to the Digital Gallery recently. This Summer a number of images from the collection were uploaded, most of which showed the outhouses the Tenement Department photographed for their records. With the new images, we get to see some interiors of the buildings. Having these images on the Digital Gallery is especially good news as this collection cannot be fully accessed by the public due to the delicate nature of the glass plate negatives.
Another new collection in the Digital Gallery is a scrapbook of photographs taken around 1900. The title given to the scrapbook, Frank E. Downs. Trip to Nome, Alaska, May to Sept. 1900, is slightly misleading as less than a quarter of the images are of Downs’ gold-mining expedition to Nome. The other photographs depict travels all over the United States and Mexico, from Mount Desert Island to Mexico City. The quality of the snapshots sometimes leaves a bit to be desired, but where else could you so easily find turn of the century photos of street scenes from an Alaskan mining town or a picture of the “Hot Springs’ Nine” baseball team playing against a women’s team? Nowhere else, I’d wager.
With a bit of research I found that the scrapbook which belonged to Florence D. Muzzy from Connecticut was bequeathed to the library by Florence’s daughter Adrienne, a librarian at the New York Public Library who, according to her obituary, also left the library her household furnishings.
Revisiting Governor’s Island
Posted December 20th, 2007 by Sachi ClaytonHave any of you wondered what will become of governor’s island? It was the subject of an entry on this blog a couple of months ago while the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation were discussing five different proposals for the island’s future. Well, you may have caught it in the news yesterday that a plan was approved to create a lush, green park, which may include amenities such as bicycles to use free of charge and perhaps building space for future cultural or academic institutions. What do you think of this decision? I have to say, I’m thrilled they didn’t choose to make it a golf course.
Sachi

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