Update on April 14, 2020: Hart Island is back in the news for the most tragic of reasons: It’s currently being used as a burial ground for victims of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the time since this post was first published, control of Hart Island was transferred to New York City’s Department of Parks and burials are no…

This post was written by Ted Houghtaling, Scanning Technician. “Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing…” — James Joyce, Ulysses On the morning of June 15th, 1904, 1,358 members and friends of the St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church chartered an…

This post was written by Mariam Touba, Reference Librarian for Printed Collections. New York City blackouts come with their own lore: There was the “Bronx is burning,” Son-of-Sam summer, and the looting of July 1977. Then there was the shadow of terrorism that hung about the darkened streets in August 2003, when suddenly the grid…

Margot Gayle is synonymous with historic preservation. A leading figure in the movement which found its voice following the tragic loss of Pennsylvania Station in 1963, Gayle played a seminal role in the creation of New York’s Landmark Preservation Law two years later. For sixteen years she penned an architecture column in the Daily News while  helping to found the Victorian…

Visitors to the New-York Historical Society (as well as many copy editors and printers throughout the ages) have often wondered why the title of our institution includes a hyphen between the “New” and “York”.  The answer is simple; when the New-York Historical Society was founded in 1804, New York was generally written as “New-York.” This…

The built environment, especially in so eclectic a place as New York City, has a way of hiding history in plain sight. With that in mind, if you have never noticed how many of the profiles of early 20th century buildings in New York retreat incrementally from the sidewalk as the building grows taller, then…

With the centennial of its sinking having arrived, the Titanic is a big ticket these days. Fittingly, most commemorations  recognize the terrible loss of life associated with its sinking but there are certainly less somber aspects of this catastrophe too. Aside from its great quantity of passengers, the Titanic also sailed with a modest cargo,…