Archival collections often have variety of printed material and ephemera such as pamphlets, broadsides, books, and maps. Periodically, these offer unexpected perspective on an aspect of history, as is the case with a smallish, three-dimensional 1872 relief map titled Map of the White Mountains N.H. nestled in the papers of Lincoln’s assistant secretary of the navy, Gustavus Vasa Fox. As its name…

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…

The grim new numbers of the cases and deaths from COVID-19 reach us every day. As laypeople, we want to tune them out at times, but they are crucial to medical practice and public health. Certainly, we see that in history: Here is the sobering list of yellow fever deaths at Bellevue Hospital in 1795…

Food is a critical part of our daily lives, and of our history. Cuisine is passed down from generation to generation and is an expression of a shared identity. At the most basic level, it reflects ethnicity, but also lifestyle, values, and traditions.  The Duane and Wells family’s recipe book gives us a glimpse into…

The Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections in the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library is home to one of the largest cased image collections in the country, consisting largely of daguerreotype, ambrotype or tintype portraits. Cased images typically include the image plate and a cover glass wrapped together in a brass mat, placed inside a…

When Rose O’Neill’s illustrations appeared in True Magazine on September 19, 1896, she made history by becoming the first female cartoonist to publish a comic strip in America. A self-taught artist, O’Neill (1874-1944) had spent her childhood studying artists and submitting her work to various periodicals around the country. She set out for New York City at…

From the title Scholars and Gentlemen, one of the essential histories written about the New-York Historical Society and that dates from the 1980s, one might get the wrong impression, that only men played a role in the life of the institution over the course of its 216 years. Yet many women have played significant roles…

Prior to the construction of Robert Mills’ Washington Monument in 1833, proposals to erect a memorial in honor of George Washington began as early as 1783. The defeat of the British under his command and his consecutive time as the first President of the United States had thrust Washington into the public’s mind as an…

Could a subway station have a grand piano, chandeliers, and a fountain with goldfish to boot? Alfred Ely Beach certainly believed so in the years following the Civil War, and, in fact, he was not deterred in creating such a subway, one that debuted 150 years ago, on February 26, 1870. Beach (1826-1896) was an…