A Different Booth: William Henry Seward corresponds with Mary L. Booth
This post was written by Maureen Maryanski, Reference Librarian for General Collections. Where we start is not necessarily where we end. This statement is quite true of my research into William Henry...
View ArticleSpring Fashion, circa 1890’s
“Fashion is unfolding, just like nature,” reads the caption for a recent On the Street column by famed New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham (whose work is currently on exhibit at N-YHS). Now...
View Article“Little Ethiopians:” 19th Century Photography of African Americans
To kick off Black History Month, here is a cabinet card that has fascinated me ever since I stumbled across it in our Portrait File. Titled “Little Ethiopians,” it’s a composite of 21 portraits of...
View Article“People generally are improving in their knowledge of good Tea”: 19th Century...
This post was written by Samantha Walsh, Reference Assistant in the Department of Prints, Photographs & Architectural Collections On September 9, 1828, a member of the Townsend family attended a...
View ArticleAHMC of the Month: Was he mad? The sensational Guiteau trial and the...
This post was written by AHMC cataloger Miranda Schwartz. A small, bright-red trial pass from the American Historical Manuscript Collection leads us to look back at a sensational 19th-century...
View ArticleN-YHS Institutional Archives Finding Aids Now On-line (Part 2)
This post was written by Project Archivist Larry Weimer. In Part 1 of this blog posted last week, I introduced N-YHS’ institutional archives project now underway thanks to a generous grant from the...
View ArticleFrom the Lab: Ambrotypes Abound
This post was written by Sara Belasco, Enhanced Conservation Work Experience conservation assistant. For the last six months, I have been working on rehousing a collection of cased images in the...
View ArticleThe Declaration of Sentiments: “No more or less radical than the American...
This post was written by Maureen Maryanski, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections. As Women’s History Month draws to a close, let’s focus on one of the founding documents of American feminism:...
View ArticleSketches of New York
This post was written by Marybeth Kavanagh, Reference Archivist, Deptartment Of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections. Today there is nothing remarkable about the idea of New York as a...
View Article“A Supply of Pure and Wholesome Water:” Views of the Old Croton Aqueduct
This blog post was written by Marybeth Kavanagh, Reference Archivist for Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections. “A supply of pure and wholesome water is an object so essential to the health...
View ArticleAHMC of the Month: Pictorial Excursions
This post was written by Christine Calvo, American Historical Manuscript Collection Processing Assistant. “I came to a dead halt, — It was like translation to another planet — all the mountains, I had...
View ArticleFrom the Lab: Civil War Blood
The Story . . . While processing the records of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, New York Commandery, we came across a poignant relic of the Civil War: a note passed between...
View ArticleCelebrating Yellowstone Park
This post was written by Marybeth Kavanagh, Reference Archivist As a previous blog post has explained, Yellowstone National Park was established by Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S....
View ArticleAHMC of the Month: Keeping Watch
This post is by Christine Calvo, Cataloger, American Historical Manuscript Collection. This month’s selection from the American Historical Manuscript Collection focuses on two early nineteenth century...
View ArticleÆrostatic Ascension by Mr. Guillé.
This post is by Anne Boissonnault, Archives Intern August 2nd marks a particularly lofty day in New York’s history of aeronautics. On that date in 1819, Louis Charles Guillé ascended in a balloon full...
View ArticleAHMC of the Month: Central Park’s First Monument
This post is by AHMC Cataloger Noa Kasman. The American Historical Manuscript Collection (AHMC) includes a folder of material related to poet, dramatist, and philosopher, Johann Christoph Friedrich von...
View ArticleThomas Nast: Father of the American Political Cartoon
Born in Germany on September 27, 1840, Thomas Nast moved to New York with his family as a young boy. While Nast did not excel in his studies, he did show a great deal of aptitude for drawing at an...
View ArticleOur New View of Central Park
Generous members of the New-York Historical Society’s Library Committee made possible our recent acquisition of John Bachmann’s lithograph, View of Central Park, New York, printed around 1875. It joins...
View ArticleTreasure Trove: Constructing the Central Park Reservoir
A series of remarkable photographs from the library’s Geographic File (PR20) documents the construction of the Central Park Reservoir, located between 86th and 96th streets. Built between 1858 and...
View ArticleCopying History: A Handmade Facsimile of a Rare Franklin Imprint
In 1725, a then unknown nineteen-year-old journeyman printer named Benjamin Franklin printed A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain, responding to William Wollaston’s The Religion...
View ArticleLaura Morgan, M.D.
New-York Historical recently acquired a small set of documents related to a 19th century medical doctor, one Laura Morgan. The documents are mostly ephemera dating from the 1860s-1880s, such as...
View ArticleBears and Pie: The Illustrated Letters of Frederick Stuart Church
“Dear Gellatly, Did you leave a pair of dark leather gloves here? Church.” Writing to his friends, the artist Frederick Stuart Church (1842-1924) was a man of few words. Most of his letters were full...
View ArticleNew Finding Aids, 1st quarter, 2019
With this post, the New-York Historical Society Library introduces a new quarterly feature in which we will highlight the collections for which detailed finding aids were published over the prior three...
View ArticleThe Struggle for the Reclamation of the Amistad
“Se confundió el gozo en el pozo”― “he confused the joy in the well”; which is simply a way of saying that something went wrong which was expected to go right. This was the expression that Saturnino...
View ArticleNew Finding Aids, 3rd Quarter 2019
This post is the third in a quarterly series in which the New-York Historical Society highlights the collections for which detailed finding aids were published over the prior three months. All...
View ArticleJohn Trumbull’s Clapback*
Since its completion in 1818, John Trumbull’s “Signing of the Declaration of Independence” remains one of the most recognizable paintings among Americans. Commissioned by Congress with the intent of...
View ArticleBenjamin West’s Memorial to Washington
Prior to the construction of Robert Mills’ Washington Monument in 1833, proposals to erect a memorial in honor of George Washington began as early as 1783. The defeat of the British under his command...
View Article“How Various and How Strange” — The World of Caroline Hyde Butler-Laing
How various and how strange are the events of life. What unexpected changes occur in the course of a few short years, or even months. How little I dreamed one year since, that I should ever make a...
View ArticleNew Finding Aids, 3rd Quarter 2020
This post is one in a quarterly series in which the New-York Historical Society highlights the collections for which detailed finding aids were published over the prior three months. All collections...
View ArticleNew Finding Aids, 4th Quarter 2020
This post is one in a quarterly series in which the New-York Historical Society highlights the collections for which detailed finding aids were published over the prior three months. All collections...
View ArticleNew Finding Aids, 2nd Quarter 2021
This post is one in a quarterly series in which the New-York Historical Society highlights the collections for which detailed finding aids were published over the prior three months. All collections...
View ArticleNew Finding Aids, 3rd Quarter 2021
This post is one in a quarterly series in which the New-York Historical Society highlights the collections for which detailed finding aids were published over the prior three months. All collections...
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