New-York Historical Society

What are fore-edge paintings? Grab the nearest book and fan the pages on the outer edge, opposite the book spine. This is the fore-edge of a book. Chances are you will see fanned-out pages and nothing more. When a book with a fore-edge painting is fanned, just as the name implies, a painting will appear….

Have you heard of a “kilostere”? How about a “glaciarium”? Or a “cassidix”? Ever seen one? Or all three? No? Then read on! (And click the thumbnails below for full-sized images.) A few years back a kind woman called the N-YHS reference desk to donate a dictionary to the library. Our collection focuses on New York and American history,…

In 1942 Clare Boothe Luce was elected as a Republican representative from Connecticut, entering the 78th United States Congress where women made up less than two percent of its membership. Already famous, her arrival in Washington attracted additional notice; local hairdressers took advantage of her popularity by advertising “the Clarette” and “the Clare Bo” styles. Tourists taking in the…

The New-York Historical Society Library has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to catalog titles from 1600 to 1801 in the library’s rare book collection. As part of this project, we will be blogging monthly about noteworthy finds. We’re cataloging books in Latin, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, English; some cover astronomy,…

The American Historical Manuscript Collection (AHMC) cataloging project, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, wrapped up on January 5, 2018. Since June 2014, when the project began, our catalogers have created searchable, electronic records for thousands of small manuscript collections and single items, racking up some impressive totals: Collections cataloged:…

Few can probably name many historically important American landscape architects outside of AJ Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted. Maybe it’s because landscape designs are often intended to be natural and inconspicuous, often leaving their creators under-recognized for their work. Whatever the reasons, it means those who are reading this and know who Jens Jensen is…

In December 1934, at a ball thrown in honor of the Broadway musical “Anything Goes,” Henry Luce was struck by what he called a “coup de foudre” (love at first sight). The object of his affection was Clare Boothe, a wealthy divorcée born on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1903. The two had met twice before…

Snow. Blizzards. We complain, dread the commute and the shoveling and—especially for New York City dwellers—the slush. But, in truth, we love the excitement, especially when the inches pile up and produce record numbers, and photographers—amateur and professional—can roam the streets. This becomes clearer when we look through the collections of the New-York Historical Society….

During the Revolutionary War, printed maps provided the public with the only pictorial representation of battles being fought in the American colonies. Through a powerful combination of text and image, maps conveyed precise details of battles and the geographic settings in which they took place. The majority of battle maps were printed in London where…