“I am large, I contain multitudes.” We continue to remember that self-declared truth about Walt Whitman in this, his 200th birth year. In our American and New York imaginations, he does loom so much larger than simply poet and journalist. We have, in the past, explored on this blog his service as a comforter and…

On June 22, 1881, Eliza Seaman Leggett, a New York City native, sat down to pen a letter to her dear, lifelong correspondent, Walt Whitman. She wrote from her home at 169 East Elizabeth Street in Detroit, about 40 miles from her Waterford Township house that had served as a stop on the Underground Railroad….

As preservationists push to landmark 99 Ryerson Street, the only surviving Brooklyn residence of poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892), the question arises what, if anything, the New-York Historical Society Library holds on the building or the man, whose birthday is May 31st. Sadly, we haven’t got a whole lot on the building. There are insurance maps, which show the…

Today marks the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. As is fitting for our most eloquent president, Lincoln’s death, and life, have inspired a torrent of writing. The memorializing began at the moment of Lincoln’s death, when his friend and Secretary of State, Edward Stanton, famously said, “Now he belongs to the ages” (or, as…

This post was written by Jonah Estess, Digital Project Intern in the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library. In the N-YHS collections are three letters addressed from Walt Whitman to the parents of Erastus E. Haskell, Samuel and Rosalinda Haskell. He writes to them about their son’s condition at a military hospital in Washington D.C. Walt had…

Many New Yorkers are likely unaware that a collection of ancient Egyptian items once resided on Broadway near Astor Place. From 1853-1860 the Abbott Collection, displayed as the Egyptian Museum, was located at the Stuyvesant Institute at 659 Broadway.  Dr. Henry Abbott was a British physician who lived in Cairo for over 20 years and…