Category Archives: Ephemera
The X-Rays of Melville E. Stone, Jr.
Scrapbooks are unpredictable. Each page turn may reveal some obscure, interesting piece of ephemera, photograph or letter. But it’s still a bit surprising to unearth x-rays of a man’s head and chest as we found in one of two enormous scrapbooks of Melville E. Stone Jr. Born in Chicago in 1874, Stone was an 1897 graduate of Harvard […]
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!
This post was written by Tammy Kiter, Manuscript Reference Librarian Who among us doesn’t enjoy a cold, creamy treat on a hot summer day? In honor of July being National Ice Cream month, I thought we’d take a little trip down creamery lane to celebrate ice cream in all its delicious glory. It is estimated […]
“Get Me A Radium Highball!”: New York and the Radium Craze
This post was written by Kate Burch, Library Page. Radium, a naturally occurring element first isolated by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898, fascinated the world with its radioactive and luminescent properties. With no understanding of the ill effects of radiation poisoning, radium became a fashionable trend, a medical cure-all, and an industrial wonder. Newspapers […]
Historians and America’s First Secret Societies
This posting was written by Kevin Butterfield, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the New-York Historical Society, 2012-1013. Much of what we know about the past we know for one simple reason: someone took the care to record and to preserve some record of his or her time. Thankfully, people like New York’s […]
James Vick and his Illustrated Floral Guides
Spring fever was as common 150 years ago as it is now, and for many winter-weary souls, the illustrated seed catalogs that began appearing in that era are still the closest thing to a cure. Among the many fine examples of early seed catalogs in our collections, my personal favorites were produced by James Vick, […]
A Short, Incomplete History of American Traditional Tattooing
This post is written by Joe Festa, Print Room Reference Assistant As my colleague Ted pointed out in his previous blog post, the electric tattoo machine revolutionized tattooing at the end of the 19th century. However, it wasn’t just electric current that propelled the industry; another factor can be attributed to the circulation of what’s […]
Louis Prang, Father of the American Christmas Card
This post was written by Marybeth Kavanagh, Print Room Reference Librarian. It’s widely accepted that the first Christmas card was printed in London in 1843, when Sir Henry Cole hired artist John Calcott Horsley to design a holiday card that he could send to his friends. But it was Boston-based printer Louis Prang who introduced […]
From Kilted Soldiers to Scottish Poets–The New York Caledonian Club
This post was written by N-YHS intern Alison Shore Dundy. The recently acquired New York Caledonian Club Records (MS 2923) are a gateway to gemstones from the history of Scottish immigrants in New York City. The records of the Caledonian Club document the work, activities, and membership of this society dedicated to the preservation of […]
