New-York Historical Society

Gordon Guild Burris (1903–1988) was a Canadian-born civil engineer for the New York-based Turner Construction Company in the 1920s and ’30s. Among the iconic Manhattan structures he helped build are Bloomingdale’s (Lexington Avenue at 59th Street), the Hotel Lexington (511 Lexington Avenue), and the massive Port of New York Authority Commerce Building (111 Eighth Avenue), now home to Google’s New York…

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 early age.  By the time he was 12, Nast was enrolled as a student at…

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 Schiller (1759-1805), better known as Friedrich Schiller. While cataloging the collection, I was surprised to learn that Schiller’s monument was the very first in Central Park. It…

This post is by Ted O’Reilly, Curator & Head of the Manuscript Department Shoemaker John Azzimonti (1865-1946) was a “poet of the sole.” At least that’s how an article in the March 24, 1909 issue of Boot and Shoe Recorder (reprinted from the New York Herald) described him. Azzimonti was, by all accounts, a much sought-after…

This post (the second of two; read part one here) is by Sarah Levy, an intern at the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, who is compiling a bibliography of Judaica printed in America from the early colonial period until the mid 1800s. Even though Jews made up a tiny percentage of the population of early America, this time period still boasts…

This post is by Henry Felix Raine, Director of the Library Digital Program and Institutional Digital Repository For the past several years, the New-York Historical Society Library has been ramping up its digitization program, from single manuscripts to very large archival collections of photographs, personal papers, and institutional records. It has now built a database…

This post is by Ted O’Reilly, Curator & Head of the Manuscript Department William Sulzer is now remembered, if at all, for being the only New York governor to have been impeached. Despite his nickname, “Plain Bill” was a bit more interesting, especially if you believe a rambling typescript autobiography that survives in his papers. Regardless,…

This post (the first of two) is by Sarah Levy, an intern at the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, who is compiling a bibliography of Judaica printed in America from the early colonial period until the mid 1800s. The first Jewish prayer book to be published in North America was also the first ever complete Jewish prayer…

This post is by Christine Calvo, AHMC Cataloger. The American Historical Manuscript Collection (AHMC) includes a folder of material from Lillian Jaffe Salt’s days at the Hebrew Technical School for Girls during the first half of the twentieth century. Lillian (originally Leiba) Jaffe Salt was born in 1905 near Glasmonka, Russia, and originally a citizen of Latvia….