“Victory depends in large measure on the increased war production we are able to get from our factories and arsenals…This is total war. We are all under fire…soldiers and civilians alike-no one is a spectator. To win we must fight, and to fight we must produce.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Army Navy “E” Award,…

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…

New-York Historical recently acquired a small set of documents related to a 19th century medical doctor, one Laura Morgan. The documents are mostly ephemera dating from the 1860s-1880s, such as admission tickets, business cards, programs. But still waters run deep and these simple fragments lie on the surface of a rich history of women pioneers…

Travel diaries have long been a popular form of self-expression, and can provide us with unique perspectives on cities in the past. The New-York Historical Society holds a number of these diaries within our manuscript collections, with several dating back to the 18th century. Mabel Newton Betticher is one diarist whose collection exists in our holdings. Between…

Dancing geishas, ancient palaces, drifting over misty rivers in a houseboat. The adventures of a businessman traveling through China, Japan, and Korea in 1923 are captured within the detailed correspondence and ephemera saved by Myron S. Falk (1878-1945), an engineer from New York City who was sent on a trip to Asia with the American Silk…

This post was written by Jill Reichenbach, Reference Librarian, Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections. At this time of year, many people fantasize about going on a relaxing vacation somewhere exotic, or at least warm. And while some lucky people actually do get to go on vacation, still more might receive a postcard from…

This post was written by Karen Hammer, a CUNY graduate fellow at the New-York Historical Society who helped to process the James G. Harbord Papers. As a CUNY graduate fellow at the New-York Historical Society, I’ve been helping to process the James G. Harbord Papers. Lieutenant General James Guthrie Harbord (1866-1947) retired in 1922 from a…

  Today there is nothing remarkable about the idea of New York as a large, diverse, cosmopolitan city. But to mid-19th century New Yorkers,  the rapid growth of New York  from a small, walkable city to a bustling, sprawling metropolis must have been a bit disorienting.  In 1800, there were 60,515 residents of New York City, and more than half the…

This post was written by Project Archivist Larry Weimer. In Part 1 of this blog posted last week, I introduced N-YHS’ institutional archives project now underway thanks to a generous grant from the Leon Levy Foundation. Several finding aids are now online, and in this Part 2, I would like to give you a short…