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 was written by Jonah Estess, former digital projects intern in the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library. Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York familiarized audiences with the New York Draft Riots, a tumultuous, multi-partied conflict including Five Points neighborhood residents, the uptown elite, Union soldiers, rioters, as well as New York’s African American population. From a sketchbook filled…

This post is written by Joe Festa, Manuscript Reference Librarian. Mural artist Edwin Howland Blashfield, born in Brooklyn in 1848, is perhaps best known for adorning the dome of the Library of Congress Main Reading Room in Washington, DC. His work can be characterized by his formal European apprenticeship in the classical arts, which greatly…

This post was written by Deborah Tint, cataloging assistant.   At the start of the Civil War Harper’s Weekly, then known as a journal of news, culture and serial fiction, sprang into action to provide striking images of the conflict to those at home and at the front. Articles appeared to inform readers that a corps of “Regular Artist-Correspondents”…