New-York Historical Society

Each Christmas during his presidency Franklin Roosevelt engaged the United States Government Printing Office to produce a limited edition of his writing for distribution as gifts to friends, associates and family members. In 1944, he selected his D-Day prayer, shown here, which he recited in his radio address in which he informed the American public…

In the same way that catalogers and archivists make collections accessible through improved arrangement and description, conservators work to make those same collections stable for researchers to use them. But the paper and book conservation lab at the New-York Historical Society didn’t open until the late 1980s. Instead, its predecessor was an in-house bindery that…

By now most of us no longer passively accept the popularized First Thanksgiving narrative. After all, despite its kernels of truth, the story is infused with a mixture of myth and, well, outright fabrication (as we’ve previously seen). Many elements of the story only emerged in the last century too. In fact, historian James Baker…

This post is one in a quarterly series in which the New-York Historical Society highlights the collections for which detailed finding aids were published over the prior three months. All collections receive at least a summary description in our catalog, Bobcat. But many collections have such depth or are simply so large or complex that…

One could be excused for thinking that a document certifying a Black man’s freedom in 1811 was a sign of the slow march of racial progress in the United States. Yet, given the elusiveness of true equality, it shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that looks can be deceiving. In reality, the certificate of freedom shown…

How do we document these unusual times?  We now read often of museums, historical societies, and libraries scrambling to collect materials that speak particularly of the striking events of this year.  It is, fortunately, not a new instinct, as Civil War soldiers shared in it when they collected these unique specimens drawn from a time…

Ordinarily, a postcard from a prehistoric site among the papers of the Osborn family would be curious but somewhat unremarkable. After all, the collection’s main protagonist, Henry Fairfield Osborn, was a well-known paleontologist who by its August 1923 postmark had been at the helm of the American Museum of Natural History for 15 years. Closer…

The census originated with the very birth of the nation, being incorporated into the United States Constitution for the purpose of determining representation in the House of Representatives, levying taxes, and assessing the nation’s prospective war-time mobilization. But while today we can expect that answers are confidential, this was not assumed for much of its…

Cover of the memorial volume for John David Wolfe, 1872. MS 3146, John David Wolfe Memorial Book and Case, New-York Historical Society Mixed up in the notorious Gilded Age dichotomy of incredible displays of wealth and extreme poverty, were extraordinary achievements in design and art, many of which reveal exceptional artisanship. This is especially evidenced…