Category Archives: General
Combating Crime through Community Organizing: The Story of the Westside Crime Prevention Program
This post was written by N-YHS intern Erin Shaw. The Westside Crime Prevention Program Records are now available to researchers at the New-York Historical Society’s library. Although crime has always been an issue for New York City residents, an unprecedented rash starting in the 1970s began to terrorize the Upper West Side of Manhattan — a [...]
“Don’t Give Up the Ship”
Written by Mariam Touba, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections Such a challenge seems unheard of in modern warfare, but, nearly a year into the War of 1812, Captain Philip Bowes Vere Broke of the British frigate Shannon wrote to Captain James Lawrence of the United States frigate Chesapeake promising that their ships could duel outside [...]
“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 [...]
“Fleeting Magic Designs”: Arnold Genthe and the Dance
Written by Maureen Maryanski, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections. In the early 20th century, a new form of dance was emerging, one fostered by periods of experimentation in European cities and transferred to American stages by impassioned personalities led by Isadora Duncan. As this new, modern dance both challenged and influenced other dances from ballet [...]
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 [...]
Happy 100th Anniversary, Woolworth Building!
Written by Marybeth Kavanagh, Print Room Reference Librarian April 24, 1913, 7:30pm: President Woodrow Wilson presses a telegraphic button in Washington, DC, illuminating eighty thousand bulbs in the newly constructed Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway in New York City, and ushering in the era of the modern skyscraper. Constructed in neo-Gothic style by architect Cass [...]
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, [...]
Beyond “A Photographic Mask”: An Introduction to Arnold Genthe
This post was written by Maureen Maryanski, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections. One of the best known American photographers of the early 20th century, Arnold Genthe (1869-1942) taught himself photography, experimenting with focus, retouching, and color processes along the way. Trained as an academic in his native Germany, it wasn’t until he moved to San [...]
Enlightenment in the Cemetery: The Adams Memorial and Buddhism in 19th Century America
Even in a city with as many monuments as Washington, D.C., the Adams Memorial is exceptional. Commissioned on the death of his wife by Henry Adams, it is one of the most widely celebrated pieces of American funerary art. Adams’ wife Clover committed suicide in December 1885. The loss so shook Adams that she is [...]
