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👋 Hi friends! We have a new name and a new look to celebrate our 220-year history!

We are changing our name to The New York Historical! Explore over 400 years of American history with us as New York’s first museum. We offer groundbreaking exhibitions, nationwide educational programs, and thought-provoking conversations to challenge us all to shape our ongoing history for the better. Learn more!

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Margaret Bourke-White never let an important moment escape her. A pioneer in the field of photojournalism, she worked across genres and was a frequent contributor to LIFE and Fortune magazines.

By 1930, Bourke-White moved into offices on the 61st floor of the Chrysler Building. She befriended the stainless steel gargoyles that lived outside of her window (affectionately nicknamed “Bill” and “Min”), and even found opportunity to take her camera out onto one of the Art Deco beasts to capture images of New York City’s changing skyline.

The Patricia D. Klingenstein Library holds a number of Bourke-White's letters from this era, all part of the Time Inc. records. What they reveal is a businesswoman and creator at work, battling to preserve the pay and credit she felt she deserved. 

On view now at the New-York Historical Society: Cocktails at Three Paces: A Closer Lens on Margaret-Bourke White

Copy of the Time Inc. company newsletter "FYI" from July 2, 1965.

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Could this floridly written recette extraordinaire for $7.5 million francs really be a receipt for the Louisiana Purchase? Read on for an investigation into a mysterious 1804 document that one of our librarians happened upon in the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library collection.

More on the blog: Recette Extraordinaire: The Paper that "Purchased" the Louisiana Purchase

Receipt from the Public Treasury of France, March 29, 1804.

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A copy of HBO On Air—a viewing guide for subscribers—from November 1975 featuring Burt Reynolds for his comedy W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings. Multiple issues of the magazine are held in the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library’s Time Inc. records

By late 1976, HBO had 243 affiliates in 35 states, which served 500,000 subscribers 12 hours of programming a day.

Read more on the blog: HBO in the Archives

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Dip into the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library’s Time Inc. records to experience the first days of Home Box Office, a new channel that launched to 365 subscribers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, one stormy night in 1972. 

“On their screens that evening, an earnest young man appeared. Welcoming the viewers to the debut of Home Box Office was Gerald 'Jerry' Levin, programming vice president for the new channel. He introduced the evening's two offerings: a hockey game between Vancouver and New York and a film starring Paul Newman and Henry Fonda. In retrospect, it now seems more than fitting that the film was titled Sometimes a Great Notion.” —The First Ten Years, a glossy booklet created for HBO staffers as they celebrated the 10th anniversary of the network in 1982

Read more on the blog: HBO in the Archives

The cover for the February 1973 entertainment calendar that was sent to HBO subscribers.

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The Van Ness-Parsons tomb, Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York City, undated (ca. 1910-1919?). Robert L. Bracklow Photograph Collection, PR 008-66000-1408.

Read more on the blog:  The Rural Cemetery: A “Peaceful, Beautiful Ideal”

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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

The motto (thought not officially) of the United States Postal Service was suggested by one of the architects of the James A. Farley Building, which serves as New York City’s main post office. The inscription can be seen carved across the entablature on the building:

“The firm of McKim, Mead & White designed the New York General Post Office, which opened to the public on Labor Day in 1914. One of the firm's architects, William Mitchell Kendall, was the son of a classics scholar and read Greek for pleasure. He selected the "Neither snow nor rain . . ." inscription, which he modified from a translation by Professor George Herbert Palmer of Harvard University, and the Post Office Department approved it.”

-Postal Service Mission and “Motto”

The Angarum, to which the original Greek line refers, were the royal riding post in the Persian Empire during the Achaemenid period, praised by Herodotus in his history of the Persian Wars, for their speed and dedication.

photographs, from top:  George P. Hall & Son, Manhattan: United States General Post Office, Eighth Avenue between W. 32nd Street and W. 31st Street, undated. (detail); Frederick Kelly, Post Office, New York City, April 19, 1962.

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After emancipation, New York State continued to disenfranchise Black voters by requiring that Black people—and only Black people—own a certain amount of property in order to vote. This petition, signed by several New Yorkers, asks for an amendment to the state constitution “abolishing for ever all distinctions of color or race as a qualification for franchise, and placing all the inhabitants of this State upon a footing of PERFECT EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW.”

To the Honorable the Legislature of the State of New York. 1866. Broadside, SY 1866 no.5. New-York Historical Society.

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Take the L train...with a lot of unattended children! 

Whether they were actually playing (or just posing) in the excavations for the subway itself; or merely hanging out on their block, the recently uploaded Subway Construction Photograph Collection. Contract Four. Route 8, 1915-1932 is particularly rich with images of children.

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Anyone else having this dream?

Browning Photograph Collection, PR 009, New-York Historical Society.

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[March of Time, Radio Index], Time Inc. Annex Files, MS 3009.RG 39. New-York Historical Society.

For more on the March of Time, read our latest From the Stacks blog post.

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Time Inc. moved its offices to the 50th and 51st floors of the Chrysler Building in the summer of 1931. While the building was modern in virtually every aspect, electrical air conditioning was not yet a standard amenity. 

However, as seen in the memo above, the Chrysler Corporation did develop a novel air conditioning system which it offered to building tenants in 1934. Referring most likely to what became known as Airtemp, the product was not immediately embraced by Time vice president and general manager Roy Larsen, who responded with his concern that an air conditioned office might make him “get soft.”

Charles Douglas Jackson. Memo to Henry R. Luce and Roy E. Larsen regarding air conditioning. June 4, 1934. Time Inc. Records, Roy E. Larsen Bio File, New-York Historical Society.   

Irving Browning.  Upper stories, tower, and spire of Chrysler Building, 405 Lexington Avenue, New York City. circa 1931. New-York Historical Society

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In “Little Annie Leslie,” a story from Caroline Hyde Butler-Laing’s collection of children’s stories The Ice King, and the Sweet South Wind, Mrs. Morland tells a story about a bear and a dog to her two children and peevish niece. The two animals dislike each other but are nevertheless stuck together during a long ocean journey.  In the end, shown here in manuscript, they agree to set aside their differences for the duration of the voyage, and this resolution serves as an example for the children to get along as well. 

But where did Butler-Laing find the inspiration for the bear and the dog? A peek into her journals reveals that she herself, on a long ocean trip to China, observed a bear and a dog interacting—albeit not speaking as in the story. You can read more about her life and work in this week’s From the Stacks post! 

Caroline H. Butler Laing, Writings, 1849-1857. Butler-Laing Papers, MS 95, volume 4B. New-York Historical Society.

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Jane Campbell Bannerman (1910-2014) first spent substantial time abroad in 1929 as a student at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (now Parsons School of Design at The New School), at the school’s Paris Atelier. The experience kickstarted her lifelong love of travel, which she embarked on wholeheartedly in the 1950s, after having spent the intervening years raising a daughter and working as an interior designer.

Bannerman was rarely without her sketchbook, even in her hometown of New York City, so if these images give you wanderlust, perhaps you can instead be inspired to take a new look at your everyday surroundings!

For more on Jane and her travels, please visit our From the Stacks blog.

A finding aid of Jane’s sketchbooks in the New-York Historical Society Collection can be found here.

And a small digital collection at The New School is here.

images from top:  Horta, Azores. Jane Bannerman Travel Sketchbooks Collection, PR 298 (Box 10, Folder 4); Times Square circa 1960, with famous Camel cigarettes advertisement that blew smoke rings. Jane Bannerman Travel Sketchbooks Collection, PR 298 (Box 1, Folder 3); Jane with her sketchbook, n.d. Jane Bannerman Travel Sketchbooks Collection, PR 298 (Egypt, Box 5, Folder 1).

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Thomas Longworth remarked in his 1829 New York City directory that Manhattan is “an intermingling variety and a regular state of beautiful confusion.” It’s an apt comment from someone who was attempting to nail down the names and addresses of an ever-shifting city. 

One aspect of New York’s changing streetscapes is the way that cross streets have moved relative to addresses over time. To understand this phenomenon, one may look to a feature of the directories called “The Runner’s Vade Mecum.” Readers interested in figuring out where exactly an address like these pictured above on Pearl Street would have been relative to other streets at a given time can consult Longworth’s index.

See this week’s From the Stacks post for more on the Runner’s Vade Mecum and how it works. 

William D. Hassler.  379 Pearl Street, New York City, May 27, 1916. Photographed for Joseph P. Day. El tracks to the left. glass negative. New-York Historical Society.

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From 1964 to 1974, the Time magazine advertising department mailed out Fourth of July gift packages that included paper lanterns, plastic kites, and even a small letterpress printing plate. Recipients included sales representatives, corporate clients, and government officials.

These pieces of Americana served to weave the name of Time into a patriotic historical narrative as seen in the copy accompanying a set of replica military buttons:

But it was not the Trappings of Uniform that launched the Republic. It was the Spirit and Decision of Men—just as it is the Knowledge and Judgment of today’s Citizens that sustain it. And to provide the Information to preserve and advance this hard-won Democracy is still, as it has been for Decades, the principal Purpose of Time, The Weekly Newsmagazine.

Similarly, a set of red, white, and blue pencils links the editors of Time to the writers of the Declaration of Independence through a shared commitment to the written word.

Patriotic advertising ephemera. 1964-1974. Time Inc. Records. Time Inc. Advertising Promotion and Circulation Promotion Files, MS 3009.RG 21. New-York Historical Society.

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Ebenezer Sibly’s A complete illustration of the celestial science of astrology, or, The art of foretelling future events and contingencies, by the aspects, positions, and influences of the heavenly bodies: founded on natural philosophy, scripture, reason, and the mathematics: in four parts (whew!) is notable for how it unites scientific and occult fields of inquiry.

Published in 1788, it includes an astrological chart for the infant nation America which concludes that “the state of America shall in time have an extensive and flourishing commerce, an advantageous and universal traffic to every quarter of the globe, with great fecundity and prosperity amongst the people.”

While the book was generally ignored by the more learned circles of its era, Sibly did find an interested audience among the middle classes, for whom the distinction between astronomy and astrology was less rigid.

You can read more about Sibly and his work on the From the Stacks blog.

Ebenezer Sibly. A Complete Illustration of the Celestial Science of Astrology. 1788. pages 1053 and 1055. Y-q 1788 .Sibl, New-York Historical Society.