Category Archives: General
The Traveller and the Stone: John Ledyard and the Central Park Obelisk
John Ledyard’s far from a household name in his own country even though he’s arguably the United States’ first explorer, and, had Catherine the Great not abruptly ended his circumnavigation of the globe in 1787-1788, could very well have achieved what Lewis & Clark accomplished fifteen years later. Ledyard also attended Dartmouth, participated in Cook’s Third [...]
Free of an Empire, by Way of an Empress
This posting was written by Dael Norwood, a Bernard & Irene Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow at the New-York Historical Society. On February 22, 1784, a small ship with big ambitions weighed anchor, and sailed down the East River. Commanded by John Green, the Empress of China left New York on George Washington’s birthday aiming to be [...]
The Tale of the Wandering Washington, No. 2
This post was written by Mariam Touba, Reference Librarian. Last year at this time, we commemorated George Washington’s birthday by following a wooden statue of the general and President in its convoluted journey from city monument to private hands to mythologizing. It would not be the only sculpture to share such a fate, and this [...]
Almost an Alleghanian: or how N-YHS tried to change the nation’s name to the United States of Alleghania
Given the New-York Historical Society’s reluctance to change so much as the hyphen in its own name (see “It Can Hyphen Here: Why the New-York Historical Society Includes a Hyphen”), it may come as a shock to learn that in 1845, N-YHS spearheaded an effort to give an entirely new name to the whole country. [...]
Snakes in the Mail
Although he lived at the Waldorf-Astoria, died at St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital and is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery, George A. Treadwell spent the bulk of his career as a mining engineer out west, much of it in the sweltering Arizona desert. Naturally, his papers document this mining work but they also contain some curious incoming [...]
“Freely for games and recreative sports”: New York and the small municipal park
Central and Prospect Park parks dominate New York City park history. While that’s somewhat understandable, it’s time smaller parks got some attention of their own. Despite New York’s long history, small, city-owned public parks didn’t really become a common feature until the waning years of the nineteenth century. It was then that waves of immigration and [...]
The Constitution, the Java, Patrick O’Brian, and …Audubon’s Birds
This post was written by Mariam Touba, Reference Librarian. We last met “Old Ironsides” on this blog when she won her War of 1812 victory in August 1812 against the HMS Guerrière off of Massachusetts. Less than six months later, the USS Constitution had been refitted in Boston, assigned a new captain, and in late [...]
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 [...]
A Soldier’s Story of World War I in Words and Pictures
This post was created by intern Alison Dundy. The illustrated letters of Salvator Cillis are a highlight of the New-York Historical Society’s World War I Collection (MS 671). Cillis was an artist with an edgy sense of humor. His humorous letters and drawings trace the arc of this soldier’s war experience, from enthusiastic patriotism at [...]
