NYPL Blogs: Archives

Remembering the First New York City Pride March Through Diana Davies' Photographs

Tal Nadan, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 10:26:41 -0400

Marching past the Jefferson Market Courthouse and Women’s House of Detention. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 58050658

Inspired by the enthusiastic response to her photojournalism during NYPL’s Love & Resistance exhibition, the Library is pleased to announce that thousands of additional images by Diana Davies are now available in our Digital Collections. These new images are the result of several months of effort by the staff of the Digital Imaging Unit and the Metadata Services Unit to transfer previously unpublished images from the original negatives in the Library’s care. These add underseen and alternate views of 1960s and 1970s New York LGBTQ activism to the few hundred Davies prints available online since 2008.

This expanded digital collection includes over three hundred photographs taken during the Christopher Street Liberation Day March on June 28, 1970, which was the first anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Activists gathered at Sheridan Square and walked up Sixth Avenue to Central Park’s Sheep Meadow for a Gay-In celebration. Through her photographs, viewers can follow Davies along on New York’s first Pride march.

Handing out signs on Christopher Street. NYPL Digital Collections Image ID: 58050529 (left) and and 58050771 (right)

Passing a crowd of onlookers at West 50th Street. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 58050613

Entering Central Park. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 58050611

Gathering in Central Park. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 58050601

These recently-available images include many new portraits of her subjects, which means that extant prints can now be interpreted in additional ways. For example, while one print of Donna Gottschalk has been widely circulated, the negatives show that this particular image was selected from five different shots—more frames than Davies usually dedicated to her subjects. The presence of so many shots helps a viewer think about the photographer’s intention, and by looking at the set together a student can see why one portrait is more successful than the others. These negatives also include lesser-seen images of Craig Rodwell and Fred Sargeant, Barbara Gittings, Marsha P. Johnson, and an attempt to break the world record for kissing.

Detail of contact sheet 6 (Image ID: 1952683)

The collection also provides insight into the working process of a photojournalist using film. Diana Davies created contact sheets (positive images of an entire reel of negatives) to organize her work and make editorial decisions. The contact sheets preserved in the collection are marked up with cropping suggestions in grease pencil.

Page 18, September-October 1970 issue of Come Out!

Davies was active in the Gay Liberation Front, and her work appears in every issue of Come Out! published in 1970. These issues are available from home in page-turnable format through the Archives of Sexuality and Gender. Come Out! published a cropped version of this particular shot in the September-October issue, across the fold from a poetic personal account of the march “by two Lesbians”. This article appears alongside coverage of police harassment and the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention organized by the Black Panthers, and commentary on gender, racial, ethnic, and political representation.

The Diana Davies photographs are significant in their own right as a pictorial history of LGBTQ political activism. However they also provide an entry point to a media history of the fight for social justice.

Welcome to the Virtual Reading Room: Digitized Archives for Home Research

Meredith Mann, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — Mon, 04 May 2020 14:10:07 -0400

As we continue to adapt to the changing circumstances of COVID-19, The New York Public Library’s librarians and archivists remain dedicated to supporting the scholarship and pedagogy of our readers. The Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room is no exception: though our in-person visits are on hiatus, we have a long history of preserving our collections through digitization, and this online corpus is freely available to the public.

Do you find yourself cut off from your planned archival research due to closures or the impossibility of travel? Are you an instructor who has been tasked with pivoting to virtual classrooms? Our digitized collections and (non-digitized, but remotely-available) staff are available as an intellectual resource. Below are several collections that have been fully (or near-fully) digitized, along with suggested areas of study. We’ve also put together a Guide to Digital Research in Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books to address common questions and practices.

As you explore and incorporate these materials into your work, you can reach out to staff for advice, requests for collaboration or virtual consultation, or just to share the products of your research. In addition to our Citation Tracker, you can contact us by email or on Twitter (@nypl_archives). Onward, together!

Brown Brothers records

19th century financial records of what would become the oldest private bank in the United States, focusing on currency exchange and international trade. Includes ledgers, invoices, account books, and other documentation for its primary New York business and its affiliated offices in Philadelphia, London, New Orleans, and Havana, Cuba.

Committee of Fifteen records

Turn-of-the-century citizen’s group investigating vice in New York City, chiefly prostitution and gambling.

Early American Manuscripts Project

Key documents from America’s Founding Era, including the papers of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, as well as business papers, personal diaries, and organizational records.

In addition to digitized images, this project features a series of contextualizing blog posts authored by former Library fellow Mark Boonschoft, making it especially well-suited to classroom application. Digitization was made possible by a lead gift from The Polonsky Foundation.

Diana Davies photographs

Images of New York gay and lesbian organizations like the Gay Liberation Front and Lavender Menace, as well as demonstrations, marches, and meetings, taken by Davies in the 1960s and 1970s.

Other collections with digitized photographs depicting LGBT history include the International Gay Information Center collection of photographs and the Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen gay history papers and photographs.

Century Company records

19th and early 20th century New York publishing house, whose primary title was the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, but also published the St. Nicholas Magazine for children and other titles. Documents the company’s editorial process through rich correspondence with contributors and authors, interoffice memoranda, and submitted manuscripts.

Augusta Melville papers

The personal papers of Herman Melville’s sister, containing correspondence with the extended Melville family and friends, as well as draft excerpts of the Melville texts “Bartleby the Scrivener” and Typee.

This collection is complemented by digitized material within the Gansevoort-Lansing collection and the Duyckinck family papers.

Menu Collection

Over 17,000 historical menus dating from 1851 to 2008. While focusing on New York City, menus represent restaurants from around the world, as well as airlines, ships, railroad cars, and commemorative celebrations. Menus can be browsed and searched by date, restaurant, and dish.

2019: The Year in Archival Research

Meredith Mann, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 11:04:10 -0500

Each year, the New York Public Library’s Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room is an intellectual home to hundreds of researchers who seek out our rich holdings of manuscripts, archives, and rare books in order to better understand the past and create new knowledge. To reflect on the wide and exciting range of work this produces, we’ve rounded up a sampling of publications whose authors relied upon the Library’s archival and rare book collections in their research. This list, like last year’s, is but a snapshot of the projects supported daily in our Reading Room. We hope that it inspires you to explore our collections and begin a project of your own! If you're able to visit us at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 42nd Street, our Made at NYPL exhibition showcasing original works created using the Library's resources is on display through July 3, 2020.

	General Custer, Libbie Custer and Their Dogs: A Passion for Hounds, from the Civil War to Little Bighorn by Brian Patrick Duggan. McFarland & Company, Inc. This entry in the Dogs of the World publishing series follows dog enthusiasts General George and Libbie Custer and their pack of forty hunting dogs. As part of his comprehensive research, Duggan draws from the Marguerite Merington papers. Once private secretary to Libbie Custer, Merington’s research notes and drafts can be consulted alongside the published edition of letters, edited by Merington in 1950. — Tal Nadan
	Mr. Straight Arrow: The Career of John Hersey, Author of Hiroshima by Jeremy Treglown. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In this biography, Treglown approaches the work of John Hersey and his career-defining book, Hiroshima. Documentation in the New Yorker records contextualizes the creation of the work. Additionally, correspondence between editor Harold Ross and Hersey provides insight into the relationship of these two prominent forces in mid-century journalism. Treglown expands beyond the seminal work and brings light to a lifetime of contributions, often overshadowed by Hiroshima’s legacy. — Tal Nadan
	The Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World: The Twin Towers, Windows on the World, and the Rebirth of New York by Tom Roston. Abrams Press. By tracing the creation of Windows on the World, Tom Roston shows how closely food culture and the dining industry are woven into the fabric of New York’s social and economic life. He pairs archival research of the Joe Baum papers with over 100 interviews of Windows staff for a rich portrait of the glamorous restaurant and a deeply affecting account of its part in the September 11 attacks. — Meredith Mann
	Outside Looking In by T.C. Boyle. Ecco. In his most recent novel, T.C. Boyle follows a young grad student and his family at Harvard University in the early 1960s. Pulled into the orbit of Timothy Leary, they become increasingly involved with Leary’s iconoclastic psychology theories and experimentation with psilocybin and LSD. Boyle consulted Leary’s papers to gain a clearer picture of his Harvard years and time in Zihuatanejo, Mexico and Millbrook, New York. — Meredith Mann
	Remembrance of Things Present: The Invention of the Time Capsule by Nick Yablon. University of Chicago Press. What is cultural memory, and how do we preserve it? These questions are near and dear to an archivist’s heart, and also central themes of Nick Yablon’s book. By tracing the history of the time capsule, Yablon explores our hopes of documenting the present and thus communicating with the future. From the Library’s Modern Historic Records Association files, Yablon explores how an early 20th century organization attempted to document lives “writ on water” and, in so doing, grappled with the question of what was worth saving without the perspective of historical hindsight. — Meredith Mann
	Serial Encounters: Ulysses and the Little Review by Clare Hutton. Oxford University Press. In this monograph, Hutton offers a close textual analysis of James Joyce’s Ulysses in its first available form in the United States, published in installments in the Little Review. A reader of the serial version experienced a number of endings to the text, as compared to reading the 1922 first edition, published by Sylvia Beach of Shakespeare and Company in Paris. A figure in this publication history is Irish-American patron John Quinn, whose papers are available for research—including extensive letterbooks that can be perused online. —Tal Nadan
	Shadow Archives: The Lifecycles of African American Literature by Jean-Christophe Cloutier. Columbia University Press. Stemming from his participation in the discovery and publication of an unknown Claude McKay novel, Cloutier discusses the state of black literary archives in institutions, as well as the creation and use of documents by black authors in their work. The resulting study incorporates a number of manuscript collections from repositories along the East Coast. Foundational to this discussion are the efforts of Carl Van Vechten, who (along with Langston Hughes) served as a historiographer of the Harlem Renaissance. From the Van Vechten papers, Cloutier incorporates the correspondence of this prominent white advocate of black authors and liaison to university archives. —Tal Nadan
	Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot by Lauren Santangelo. Oxford University Press. Lauren Santangelo gives a vivid account of New York City and the fight for women’s suffrage. New York City is shown as the epicenter for the suffrage movement with Santangelo focusing on the years 1870 through 1917. She successfully links the urban growth of New York, particularly Manhattan, to the growing suffrage movement. Santangelo draws upon the Lillian D. Wald, National American Woman Suffrage Association and the Schwimmer-Lloyd papers to create a mesmerizing account of the women’s suffrage movement. —Cara Dellatte
	Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya Hartman. W.W. Norton. In Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman focuses on the lived experience of black women in early 20th century America, a demographic long ignored by the traditional documentary record. To overcome this lack, Hartman creatively and tenaciously scours an array of sources to reconstruct and reanimate the stories of her subjects. She dug deep into the Library’s Committee of Fourteen records—a citizen’s action group investigating brothels, speakeasies, and other sources of ‘vice’ in turn-of-the-century New York City—to surface arrest notes for a young girl named Eleanora Fagan, or as we now know her, Billie Holiday. See this document in Made at NYPL, an exhibition currently on the third floor of the Library’s Schwarzman Building. — Meredith Mann
	Who Owns the News? A History of Copyright by Will Slauter. Stanford University Press. Will Slaughter gives an engaging account of the history of news and newspapers from their inception to the modern day. He explores how copyright law and journalism are intertwined and what that means for technology, government policy, and the publishing world. To aid his research, Slauter worked with the Adolph S. Ochs papers from the New York Times Company records and the Richard Rogers Bowker papers. — Cara Dellatte

Leigh Hunt at the Library: A Birthday Evaluation

Sat, 19 Oct 2019 06:00:00 -0400

Guest Post by Timothy Gress, MA Student of English, New York University; MSLIS Student, Palmer School of Library and Information Science

Original watercolor portrait of Leigh Hunt done by Sir David Wilkie. Berg Collection.

Happy 235th birthday to English poet, journalist, and literary critic Leigh Hunt, born this day in 1784! Though not often remembered for his own writings, Hunt had a major influence on British literature of the 19th century. In 1816, he introduced the wider public to the Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley by publishing them in his literary newspaper, The Examiner. In later years, he had important friendships with Victorian writers like Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. Some remarkable materials from the collections of The New York Public Library—particularly the Pforzheimer Collection and the Berg Collection—highlight Hunt's relationships with both Romantic and Victorian writers.

The first issue of Hunt’s Examiner appeared in 1808. Hunt’s liberal opinions aroused hostility among supporters of King George III and opponents of reform, so much so that between 1808 and 1812, the government made three unsuccessful attempts to prosecute and silence The Examiner. One of these failed attempts at censorship deserves mention.

Hunt was prosecuted for an 1810 article titled “One thousand lashes!!,” which condemned military flogging (the original printing, now scarce, is available in the Pforzheimer Collection). After Hunt's acquittal, Percy Bysshe Shelley, then an undergraduate at Oxford, was moved to introduce himself with a note of “sincerest congratulations” on a “triumph so highly to be prized by men of liberality.”

First printing of "One Thousand Lashes!!" in the September 2, 1810 issue of The Examiner. Pforzheimer Collection.

But it wasn't until after Hunt served two years in Horsemonger Lane Gaol for publishing a libelous article about the Prince Regent (later George IV) that his friendship with Shelley was cemented. Hunt's inclusion of Shelley and Keats in The Examiner (which he continued to edit until 1821) soon led to his introduction of the two young poets in person. Though Hunt and Keats eventually had a falling out, Shelley quickly became Hunt’s close friend and benefactor. In 1821, Shelley, having exiled himself in Italy, convinced Hunt to move to Italy too, along with his large family. Shelley helped pay for the move, but only a week after the friends were reunited in Leghorn, Shelley drowned in a boating accident. With only lukewarm support, The Liberal, a new journal founded in Pisa by Shelley, Hunt, and Lord Byron, folded after only four issues.

After Shelley’s death, Hunt began to mentor the younger generation of emerging English writers, among them Dickens and Thackeray. In an undated letter inserted in Hunt’s own copy of the Dickens classic Oliver Twist (1838)—now in the Library’s Berg Collection—Dickens writes: "I send you herewith one of the earliest copies of Oliver Twist... I should like to have a note from you when you have skimmed over such part of Oliver as it new to you." In another letter in the Berg Collection, Thackeray welcomes Hunt’s critique of his acclaimed novel Vanity Fair (1848). Regarding a particularly emotional scene (where Amelia gives her son George into the care of his grandfather and aunt), Thackeray begs: "tell me if there isn’t a little delicate fiddle-playing in the last chapter...."

Detail of letter from Dickens to Hunt, inserted in Hunt's copy of the first edition of Oliver Twist. Berg Collection.

Although he wished to be one of the Romantic movement’s great poets, at the time of his death Hunt’s poetry was not widely read, save his most anthologized poem, “Jenny Kiss’d Me,” the manuscript of which is preserved in the Pforzheimer Collection. Hunt’s 1850 Autobiography, however, remains an important primary source for the study of late Romanticism. The Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle called it “an excellent good book, by far the best of the autobiographic kind I can remember to have read in the English language.” The Berg Collection holds the very copy of Hunt’s Autobiography that he presented “with respect and love” to Carlyle.

Hunt's friendship with Carlyle is also on display in the Pforzhiemer Collection in the form of its plaster bust of Shelley, viewable through the glass door to the Collection's reading room. The bust was sculpted by Hunt's wife, Marianne, from memory, 14 years after the poet's death.

Remnants of Hunt's rhyming inscription to Carlyle on the bust of Shelley. Left click and open image in a new tab/window for a close-up look.

The Pforzhiemer copy of the bust (one of only a few that remain) was given to Carlyle by the Hunts in 1836. You can still read what remains of Hunt's rhyming inscription to Carlyle—now mostly worn away—written on the lower right base of the bust: "Coul[d] . . . [?] . . . you would have seen a smile / . . . [?] . . . [C]arlyle. / L. H."

Note: Finding aids for the nearly 500 Leigh Hunt manuscripts available in the Pforzheimer and Berg Collections can be found here and here, respectively.

Melville at 200

Meredith Mann, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 10:56:38 -0400

“Do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?” - Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

In my experience, librarians often feel a kinship with Herman Melville. How could we not? He begins his opus, Moby-Dick, with an ode to the "poor devil of a Sub-Sub" librarian and goes on to gather cetological minutiae from literature, art, history, and science, like a magpie hunting jewels. He classifies whales by book format: folio, quarto, octavo, duodecimo. Melville himself was a voracious reader, borrowing books from his family, friends and colleagues, the ships on which he traveled, and local libraries, including the Lenox Library and potentially the Astor Library, whose collections later formed the core of The New York Public Library. So, as we approach the 200th anniversary of Melville's birth on August 1st, the Library celebrates his life and enduring influence.

The Library has long served as a key hub for Melville scholarship. Its archival collections document the affairs of Melville's extended family, the Gansevoorts and Lansings, and literary compatriots, including his agent Evert Duyckick and close friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Holdings include correspondence, personal libraries, and manuscripts that contextualize Melville's social networks and situate his authorship within the broader cultural, economic, and social history of New York.

Like a new generation of magpies, we have brought together highlights from these collections for Herman Melville at The New York Public Library, on display through August 24th on the third floor of the Library's Schwarzman Building. Those who cannot make it to New York can access some of the Library's Melvilliana through digitized portions of the Gansevoort-Lansing collection, Duyckick family papers, Augusta Melville papers, and Nathaniel Hawthorne collection of papers.

In describing Transcendentalist and fellow writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, Melville wrote, "I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more." So dive in, sub-subs — the Library is here to help you plumb the depths.

A week with Rudy Perez

Thu, 07 Mar 2019 13:56:09 -0500

Since 1974, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has been conducting a Dance Oral History Project with renowned dance professionals. As the Oral History Archivist, I oversee this remarkable collection of over 450 voices and continue to add to it annually. These unedited and in-depth audio interviews capture the personalities, creative process, and relationships in the dance field that are not always evident in other forms of historical documents such as videos, programs, or articles.

Rudy Perez (center), Sarah Swenson (right), Alessia Patregnani, Anne Grimaldo (left)

During the past few years as Archivist, I'd hoped to include Rudy Perez's story in the Dance Oral History Project because of his importance as a post-modern dance artist whose experimental work expands the field of what dance is and can be. In May of 2018, when I met his longtime dancer Sarah Swenson at the Reference Desk, it serendipitously began a process by which she helped connect me with Rudy in order to set up his oral history. We wished to capture testimony from Rudy himself about his journey: coming of age as an artist in the Judson Dance Theater scene; presenting his unique performance works for over 15 years in NYC; and moving to Los Angeles in 1979 where he has been highly influential in the dance/performance community ever since.

I had the great honor to interview Rudy in his apartment this past February 5th-7th, 2019, for a total of nearly 4 hours. Yet interviewing Rudy was so much more than the moments in which we were sitting down recording. In the six months leading up to Rudy’s interviews, we spoke by phone frequently and Rudy began to share his memories with me. I combed through the Dance Division’s collection in New York which contains videos, photographs, and clippings on Rudy’s life and career - mostly while he was based in NYC. I also visited the recently closed MoMA exhibition on Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done, where Rudy’s first piece from 1963, Take Your Alligator with You, was featured in the exhibit. I followed these archival traces of his work to our eventual in-person meeting in early February.

Rudy Perez Archives, USC

Once I was in L.A., Rudy graciously opened up his home and life to me. I observed his Sunday morning workshop class at the Westside Academy of Dance - as Rudy described it in the interview, “Structural moves dealing with energy and space and time.” While taking in Rudy’s approach and process, I wanted to join his longtime students in following his prompts such as “fly a kite,” or “run to catch a bus,” - and then his directive, “try to find a different way that you’ve never done it before.” As the class continued, Rudy continued to develop the sequence of prompts through new directives such as doing them in place, or using them as a warm up. They then performed a new, in-process piece for me - an audience of one - my first time seeing Rudy’s work live. I was struck by the honest presence of each performer and the simple but interwoven beauty of the patterns they moved through - with chairs and in the space with one another. I was further moved when Anne Grimaldo demonstrated and taught the other students a phrase from Take Your Alligator with You. The next day I looked through articles and watched videos in the Rudy Perez Archives at the University of Southern California’s Special Collections in order to further my understanding of Rudy’s life and works while in the LA area.

Cassie Mey and Emma Rose Brown, Doheny Memorial Library, USC

Rudy Perez and Cassie Mey in his building's library

During the recording sessions, each day began with Rudy giving myself and Emma Rose Brown, the Oral History Assistant, a tour of his building. He’d orient us to different rooms and views of his neighborhood, introducing us to neighbors that we encountered along the way. We were immersed in his daily reality before we sat down to talk about his past. For example, while talking in the sunny library space before our recording session one day, Rudy remarked that he’d like to title this interview, “When does a hobby become a career.” Emma and I noticed that Rudy has a fine tuned clarity about the blurring of art and life, a sensibility that can be shocking to many of us who refuse to let this sort of blurring happen on a daily basis.

Rudy Perez and Cassie Mey, February 6, 2019

Rudy is truthful about where he is at in any given present moment - and this interview was no exception. He shared frankly both on and off the record about his current concerns around his health and facing the end of his life. He disclosed that he had hoped for an interview years ago, when his energy and outlook were better suited for this kind of project. Yet he understood the enormous value of recording his story, and, as he said many times throughout the week, was making the best of the situation at hand. He reflected on this several times during the interviews when he said, “That’s part of being a professional. You do whatever the situation asks you to do.” The resulting conversation was a compelling opening into his current perspective at the age of 89 and what it felt like for him to look back over his life through this process.

Interviewing Rudy Perez was an unforgettable and moving experience. I’m certain that this candid and revealing oral history will lead current and future scholars to new insights into his resonant life, personality, and artistry.

Stay tuned! In the upcoming year, Rudy's oral history will be processed for the Library. The transcripts will always be publicly available at the Library for the Performing Arts in the 3rd floor research area, while the audio will be streaming through the Library’s Digital Collections pages.

Annie Proulx’s Visibility through Violence

Jamie Crosswhite, Short-Term Research Fellow — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 09:16:51 -0500

Annie Proulx papers, box 63

As a short-term fellow, I spent several weeks this summer sifting through Annie Proulx's papers, tracing how her body of work makes visible the usually unseen rural landscapes, communities, histories, and daily lives of "rougher" American regions. To read Annie Proulx’s work is to visit some of the most remote and untraveled locales in North America, including my own homeplace, the dusty panhandle of Texas. How strange and delightful it was to learn about Proulx and nuances of my own region within the beautifully crafted space of The New York Public Library, right in the midst of one of the most diverse, compact, and vastly populated cities in America.

Within her working archive, the extent of Proulx’s research is staggering. She has pages of typed notes and scribbled bits of paper discussing local histories and daily lives; she comments on museum showcases and shortcomings, jots down observations on distinctions in local dialect(s), analyzes homegrown menus, keeps clippings from a wide range of newspapers, and assembles her own libraries of history books and reading lists, alongside her travel journals with observations about light and land, numerous photographs, character sketches in words and pencil drawings, and beautifully crafted watercolors. Within the depth of her process, Proulx seeks to understand the places she represents through her chosen narrative art, making visible the people and places most often unnoticed.

Proulx consistently explores how the local is altered from the outside, shaped by the national and/or global (economics, environment, social constructs, etc.). No matter the rurality of the region from whence she writes, her work reflects a sense of moral geography, questioning to what degree "we" are responsible for the destruction of places and people who dwell far from us. Asking, do we (and/or should we) seek to understand other lived landscapes from a distance? By rendering visible the usually paraphrased accounts of violence, Proulx does not allow for the concealment of human suffering by means of skewed data and sparse detail; she fashions a veritable portrait of the places, lives, and landscapes she wishes to be seen.

Annie Proulx papers, box 150

In so doing, she is drawn to the details of violence, often highlighting statistics of death, or misuse of the equipment under the guise of "progress," or the oddities of regional deaths not covered in national narratives, or the violence done on far-away landscapes through the dumping of chemicals, extraction of resources, or slaughtering of animals.

Proulx takes these obscure details of violence and explodes them in her published forms: she encourages readers to ask questions about the moral implications of pig farms in small town communities (That Old Ace in the Hole), inquire about the scant news coverage of lynching in New Orleans (Accordion Crimes), acknowledge the countless deaths and natural destruction due to profit margins within the logging industry (Barkskins), and respond to the enduring abuse and assault of those not fitting into the sexual norm of western cowboy culture (Close Range). At its core, the question of violence extends to the landscape itself, in particular, the racialized and gendered disappearances of persons as well as their absence of voice along both lines of the border, structuring the "American" landscape. By shading in these narratives of rural landscapes through historical details of violence, Proulx demands an accounting for realities too easily shadowed in the rhetoric of obscurity.

One such example is found in Proulx’s notes for Accordion Crimes. While researching race relations and regional culture within Louisiana, Proulx explored newspapers and documentation of the Thibodaux Massacre of November 23, 1887. The newspaper accounting was as follows: "at least fifty blacks dead." In her notes, Proulx records, "The lynching! Wretched coverage." (Proulx papers, box 18, folder 10).

Within her own fictionalized account in Accordion Crimes, Proulx writes artfully of the violence experienced by immigrants across the country from the southern border delineating the U.S. from Mexico, to the northern lines of New England and Canada. In lieu of printing the numbers of lives lost, she includes unsettling, but visually demanding, statements such as the following: "the corpses of the Italians had been arranged in a display like a butcher’s cutlets" (Accordion Crimes, 57) as well as, "They stripped him raw, prodded him up and down the muddy streets forcing him to kiss the American flag again and again… calling for tar and feathers but finding a rope and, drunk and inept and deadly, hauling the wretched man up into the air by his neck until at last he strangled" (89). Her details of violence make visible the otherwise emotionless death count.

Annie Proulx papers, box 149

This project becomes vivid in the midst of her massive archive, the traces of her excavations made available for us to excavate likewise. Yet nowhere is this spirit more evident than in her correspondence, for an interview via letter to Jensen at The Atlantic, dated October 29, 1997, acknowledging that "the point of writing in layers of bitter deaths and misadventures that befall characters is to illustrate American violence which is real, deep, and vast" (b. 145, f. 2).

Though some do not care to see the realities of a clouded past and continued viciousness, Proulx asserts, "I [am] writing about the U.S., and… violence is a fact of life in our country and in immigrant lives. None of the violent episodes… were invented, they were all real things that happened to real people in the past found in pioneer accounts, travel diaries, dull labor statistics—all over the place… I used the kernels of real experience to create a fictional episode" (b. 145, f. 2). Through Proulx’s papers, we too may encounter the depth of research that informs her craft—and our own accountability on the violent soil we still traverse.

Ambasciatrice, Activist, Auntie, Author: Caroline Crane Marsh

Etta Madden, Short-Term Research Fellow — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 11:22:15 -0500

Etta Madden is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in English at Missouri State University. She received a New York Public Library Short-Term Fellowship in support of a book project that illuminates the political activism, personal transformations, and diversity of 19th century American women in Italy. In addition to Caroline Crane Marsh (1816-1901), the book examines New Yorker Emily Bliss Gould (1822-75), who established an industrial school and orphanage in Rome, and Philadelphian Anne Hampton Brewster (1819-92), a newspaper correspondent.

An Affluent Orbit

Mrs. Astor calling card, c. 1868-1871; Crane family papers, NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division

In early winter of 1870, wealthy New York philanthropist Mrs. Augusta John J. Astor scribbled a note on a calling card she left at the home of Caroline Crane Marsh. The embossed calling card, among the vast Crane family papers in the Library's Manuscripts and Archives Division, reminds us of one method of communication in the days before electronic social media.

This day, Astor gladly noted that she was taking her "first drive" after an illness and had "stopped by" Marsh’s door in passing, assuming it would give her friend "real pleasure to know" that Astor had "advanced from her convalescence." Astor likely left the card at the Villa Forini of Florence, where Caroline lived with her husband, George Perkins Marsh, then US Minister Plenipotentiary to the newly unified Kingdom of Italy.

Portrait of Caroline Crane Marsh, Crane family papers, NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division

Astor was one among many Americans abroad who orbited Marsh in her position of ambasciatrice, or wife of the ambassador. Correspondence between "Mrs. Astor" and "Mrs. Marsh" would follow for more than a decade. Astor noted in 1879, for example, that she would contribute to one of Marsh’s activist causes—the orfontrofio, or orphanage and school associated with Italy ‘s "Free Church" movement, established in the 1860s.

Marsh’s activism went beyond asking Astor for financial support. She garnered contributions from Anglos abroad, as well as from Americans at home. In New York, Cyrus W. Field, who famously completed the first transatlantic telegraph cable, wrote that he was enclosing funds and a list of subscribers to the cause, gathered by his wife.

In a cumbersome path that marks the ways in which women’s work was often subjected to control by men, Field sent the collection through Marsh’s nephew, Alexander B. Crane. Another highly successful New York businessman and attorney, Crane then sent the money abroad to his "Uncle George" (as he is addressed in many letters of the collection), where it finally reached Marsh and her cause.

The "circuitous pathway of contributions," 1871-1873 ; Crane family papers, NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division

These communications about a project supporting female education suggest only one reason for exploring documents associated with Marsh: Defying the label of "invalid," bestowed upon her because of the inability at times to walk and to see, Marsh was not only an activist but also a teacher, author and beloved “auntie”—well before her marriage to George in 1839 and continuing long after his death in 1882.

Her multifaceted life comes to light through the more-than 500 letters to and from her within the Crane papers.

"Dear Alick"… "Dear Auntie"

"Dear Alick"; Crane family papers, NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division

Many of the letters are from Alexander, or "Alick," as Marsh fondly referred to her successful nephew. More frequently than he addressed his uncle, Crane communicated with his "Dear Auntie," confiding in her and seeking advice about romantic relationships, career, and family life.

Alick assisted his aunt with shipping the Marshes’ books to Italy, where they enhanced the Villa Forini library and supported the couple’s literary endeavors. Alick and his children would visit the Marshes not long before George’s death. Afterward, the supportive nephew would help the widowed Marsh with the books once again, as she arranged for the return and sale of the massive library (its home now is the University of Vermont).

Finally, Marsh lived with Crane and his large family on his Scarsdale estate, Holmhurst, upon her return from Italy and up through her death in 1901.

An Aspiring and Inspiring Author

References to reading in the family letters reveal how Marsh was immersed in the literary world, even as she offered advice and guidance as a teaching aunt. They also point to her literary inclinations, as she not only wrote letters and kept journals but also wrote and translated poetry and prose.

Letter from Boston publishers Gould & Lincoln to George Perkins Marsh, explaining they have written to “Mrs. Marsh” stating that she should not “hesitate to complete” her translation of The Hallig, which they published in 1856. Crane family papers, NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division

Marsh’s correspondence with her husband—while she managed their home in Burlington, Vermont, and he was involved with political negotiations in Washington, DC—illustrate how the two encouraged each other. George supported Caroline’s two published translations, "The Hallig" (1856) and "The Wolfe of the Knoll and other Poems" (1859), coaching her through negotiations with Gould and Lincoln, her first publisher, and then Scribner’s. Caroline’s books caught the attention of both men and women, the correspondence indicates, with other authors looking to her for support and friendship.

These mutually beneficial relationships lie at the heart of this project on Marsh, who today remains overshadowed by the better-known work of her husband, a co-founder of the Smithsonian Institution and an early conservationist, as well as a US ambassador for more than 25 years, first to Turkey and then to Italy.

Marsh did much more than support her husband and his career. From her early years as a teacher in Vermont, and then in New York in Miss Martha Mitchell’s school in lower Manhattan in 1838, this insightful and sensitive woman read, wrote, and shared ideas in a way that inspired people of all ages, and across gendered and cultural boundaries. Her life, revisited today, should likewise be an inspiration to those who may deem themselves invalid because little-known but who engage those around them.

Notes on the Crane Family Papers

Aside from Caroline Crane Marsh’s work abroad, the Crane family papers contain information about a number of enduring research topics. Letters and journals contain contemporary commentary about romantic relationships, reading and readership, fashion and shopping, national crisis, mortality, births—and are all available for research.

Piecing Together the Early Musical History of the Yaddo Artist Colony

Caitlin E. Brown, Short-Term Research Fellow — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 11:18:28 -0500

Caitlin E. Brown is a doctoral candidate in Musicology at Indiana University and was a Short-Term Research Fellow at New York Public Library in 2018. She is currently working on her dissertation which explores musical activity at American artist colonies in the early twentieth century.

I had the pleasure of spending three weeks working with materials from the Yaddo records of the Manuscripts and Archives Division at The New York Public Library for my dissertation on musical life at American artist colonies in the early 20th century. The first thing to know about the Yaddo collection is it contains a staggering amount of material. The library holds over 500 boxes of items detailing the history of the Yaddo artist colony, including founding legal documents, personal correspondence, concert programs, tickets, photographs, newspaper clippings, and original works of art. Simply considering the breadth and size of the collection, it is easy to see that Yaddo has played a major role in the cultivation of American art over the last century.

Yaddo mansion; NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: ps_mss_cd21_315

Yaddo was originally the late 19th century retreat of wealthy philanthropists Spencer and Katrina Trask in Saratoga Springs, New York. The Trasks first leased the property for the summer of 1881 and eventually purchased it for their permanent vacation home. The impressive estate was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2013 and consists of nearly 40 acres of woods, lakes, countryside, gardens, and a Queen Anne Revival Mansion.

Spencer and his wife Katrina were generous patrons of the arts and cultivated a salon-like atmosphere at Yaddo, inviting artists and intellectuals from all over the world to take part in their lavish house parties and discuss contemporary art, music, philosophy, and science.

Tragically, Spencer and Katrina lost all four of their children before the turn of the 20th century and decided to turn their beloved home into a retreat for artists. The Trasks envisioned a place of "rest and refreshment [for] authors, painters, sculptors, musicians and other artists both men and women, few in number but chosen for their creative gifts" where they could work uninterrupted for long swaths of time and draw inspiration from the beautiful grounds. Yaddo welcomed its first group of creative guests in 1926, including painters, writers, sculptors, and composers.

I spent much of my time at NYPL sifting through administrative records and guest files, looking for items specifically related to Yaddo’s musical history. A particularly difficult task was piecing together details about lesser-known composers and musicians, so stumbling across information linking more familiar composers to Yaddo's early history was a welcome opportunity to expand my previous knowledge of well-known figures. It was a lovely surprise when I stumbled upon Leonard Bernstein’s name on a notecard (and how to reach him), as seen here:

Yaddo records, box 539; NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division; photograph by author

Executive Director Elizabeth Ames kept detailed notes on Yaddo guests and their whereabouts after leaving the colony. This particular set of notecards is the remains of a guest card catalog that Ames and her secretaries created in Yaddo’s early decades. I was delighted to discover that many of the cards contained vivid details about guests’ stays, their food preferences, how they got along with other guests (or did not), outstanding long-distance phone bills, and any conflicts that occurred. It does not appear that any personal details from Leonard Bernstein’s residency made it onto his notecard, but it inspired me to conduct a small investigation into Bernstein’s connections to Yaddo.

Undated portrait of Leonard Bernstein; NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: psnypl_the_5221

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was an American conductor and composer known globally for his charisma and unique style, both on the podium and in his original compositions. Incidentally, this year the music world is celebrating the centennial of Bernstein’s birth and many historians have been inspired to revisit his biography, filling in details and bringing more of his work to concert halls.

After I came across this Bernstein item in the Yaddo collection, I wondered if he had any involvement with Yaddo before 1952. Through his personal letters, I learned that Bernstein had long been familiar with Yaddo and other musicians who spent time there. In August 1940, he wrote to fellow composer Aaron Copland:

"Might Yaddo on Sept. 7 & 8 be interesting? Are you planning to go? I was thinking of upping to Lenox next week or so to see the Kouss [conductor Sergei Koussevitzky]. Perhaps I could combine both."

In this letter, Bernstein refers to the 1940 Yaddo Music Festival of contemporary American music, which featured performances of new compositions by American composers.

A significant challenge for American classical music composers in the early 20th century was finding opportunities in the United States for their music to be performed. In 1932, Aaron Copland and Elizabeth Ames pioneered the Yaddo festivals, which brought young American composers, musicians, and critics together for a few weeks in the summer to play and discuss new American compositions, and culminated in a series of concerts.

The 1940 festival events consisted of four concerts over two days, portions of which were broadcasted nationally on NBC radio. The programs included works by Roy Harris, Charles Ives, Paul Bowles, Richard Donovan, Quincy Porter, Henry Cowell, David Diamond, Arthur Cohn, and many others. If Bernstein was able to make the trip to Yaddo for the festival, he would have had the opportunity to meet many musical peers and hear several American compositions performed for the very first time.

Festival orchestra photographed in Yaddo mansion, circa 1949 from Yaddo records, box 368, folder 7; NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division

Yaddo no longer mounts a contemporary music festival each summer, but the colony is still in operation and making plans for its continued support of the arts. Yaddo recently announced plans for the stabilization and restoration of the historic mansion, as well as a recommitment to "aesthetic daring, social egalitarianism, and internationalism, and the support of artists at political risk." Yaddo artists have collectively won 74 Pulitzer Prizes, 29 MacArthur Fellowships, 68 National Book Awards, and a Nobel Prize, making the work of any researcher interested in Yaddo’s history quite fruitful. I am eager to see what treasures are uncovered by other researchers in this collection.

Notes
Quotations from Bernstein's letters are from The Leonard Bernstein Letters, ed. Nigel Simeone (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013). For more about the festivals, see Rudy Shackelford, "The Yaddo Festivals of American Music, 1932–1952," Perspectives of New Music 17, no. 1 (Autumn-Winter, 1978): 92–125, or Tim Page, "The trailblazer: Aaron Copland and the Festivals of American Music" in Yaddo: Making of American Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

The Yaddo records are open for research. For more information or to arrange access, email manuscripts@nypl.org.

A Road to Peace and Freedom: An Interview with Robert Zecker

Tal Nadan, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — Tue, 06 Nov 2018 10:16:08 -0500

Robert Zecker is an associate professor of history at Saint Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. His teaching and research interests include immigration to the U.S., race and ethnicity, and urban history. His book, "A Road to Peace and Freedom": The International Workers Order and the Struggle for Economic Justice and Civil Rights, 1930-1954, published by Temple University Press in 2018, is the culmination of years of research and incorporates many resources found at The New York Public Library. All images within this post are from the Vito Marcantonio Papers, series III, boxes 45-47, from the NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division.

For those not familiar, please briefly introduce the subject of your study, the International Workers Order.

Zecker: The International Workers Order (IWO) was a consortium of left-wing ethnic self-insurance societies that was born in 1930 in the "languages division" of the Communist Party USA. The Order envisioned its mission as more capacious than writing accident and death policies and, at its height, enlisted more than 188,000 black, white, Hispanic, and Arabic members.
The IWO was a militant champion of interracial solidarity, black civil rights, strong industrial unions, and rigorous social security programs for working-class Americans.

I look at the activities the IWO pursued during the 1930s-1950s: why these activities landed them in trouble with the House Un-American Activities Committee and U.S. Justice Department; whether these activities really were a threat to U.S. security; and how the IWO defended itself against being labeled subversive.

Can you speak a bit about how you conducted your research, and what led you to NYPL’s archival holdings?

Zecker: As I was finishing a previous book, I started reading about left-wing ethnic organizations such as the IWO, that resisted embracing whiteness at the expense of African Americans. I then started diving into various archives to see where I could find the papers of such organizations, reading a lot of material that eventually didn’t find its way into the book!

At one point I did a lot of work at the New York Public Library looking at the issues of Labor Defender, which was the monthly magazine of the International Labor Defense, an organization that provided legal representation to union organizers and civil-rights activists.

Congressman Vito Marcantonio was president of the ILD, as well as a vice president of the International Workers Order. Marcantonio was a tireless defender of labor and civil rights, and I was delighted to discover that the Vito Marcantonio papers are held at the NYPL’s Manuscripts and Archives Division.

In looking through the organizational files in the Marcantonio papers here, I was surprised to see the names of so many prominent cultural figures on the letterheads—Rockwell Kent, for example.

Zecker: Rockwell Kent was the president of the IWO following World War II. Kent was a painter, printmaker, and prolific artist in other media. The IWO sponsored workers’ schools and various recreational activities for its members, such as painting classes, sports teams, theater troupes and choirs, and mandolin orchestras, so it’s not surprising to discover a prominent artist such as Kent in the IWO.

Marcantonio supported the IWO in its development of ethnic festivals and dance troupes, singing groups, etc., for its members. In his East Harlem congressional district, he often attended such IWO musical galas for Italian and "Spanish"—primarily Puerto Rican—members.

Kent was an artist, but also a progressive. When he ran for Congress from upstate New York on the Progressive Party line in 1948, he proudly noted he was a member of three unions. Kent also noted his all-American, colonial Massachusetts pedigree, perhaps to counter anti-Communists’ stigmatization of the IWO as "foreign" and "un-American."

Kent, as well as another prominent IWO member, African American actor-singer Paul Robeson, suffered for their activism and IWO membership. Both were denied passports by the State Department for eight years in the 1950s until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Kent’s case, it was unconstitutional to deny a citizen a passport because of his political beliefs.

Can you discuss further the IWO and how it was structured? How did Marcantonio work in tandem with the brotherhood in his role as a Congressman?

Zecker: The IWO was a consortium of ethnic societies that eventually grew to number fifteen language branches. Many of its members were immigrants, so lodges often conducted meetings in Yiddish, Italian, Slovak, Spanish, and other languages. The Order also, however, recruited African American workers from its beginning and eventually a Lincoln-Douglass Society was founded for African American members.
However, "English" lodges, for 2nd-generation white ethnics and other members, were established, too, and many such lodges had white and black members meeting in the same lodge. The Order had a national president and general secretary, but the language societies and the African American Lincoln-Douglass Society and "Spanish" Cervantes Society were granted a lot of autonomy.

When it was founded in 1930, the IWO brought together several pre-existing left-wing societies such as the Slovak Workers Society and the American Russian Fraternal Society. The IWO provided members with sickness, old-age, and death and burial insurance. At the time of its founding, there was no government program to aid the unemployed, aged, or destitute, so there was a real need.

But from its beginning the IWO saw its mission as lobbying for more systemic changes. Foreign-language newspapers ran calls for new members that stressed the Order’s lobbying the government on "the struggle for unemployment, accident, sick, and old age insurance and death benefit."

The IWO was fortunate to have an ally in Congress. Vito Marcantonio was the leader of the Order’s Garibaldi Society for Italian members, and worked in tandem with the Order lobbying for measures eventually enacted during the New Deal. The NYPL Marcantonio papers contain letters and petitions from IWO members urging him to demand more funding for Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects. Marcantonio was an advocate of universal health care, worker safety, and the extension of Social Security.

In 1944 the IWO embraced Franklin Roosevelt’s call for a guarantee of the Four Freedoms and an economic Bill of Rights for all Americans. Consequently, the Order published a pamphlet by Marcantonio, "Security with FDR," which called for the president’s re-election and the implementation of further social-democratic measures.

And although there were branches along ethnic lines, the IWO ultimately promoted multiculturalism.

Zecker: The IWO celebrated the ethnic heritage of Slavic, Italian, and Jewish members, and also lauded the contributions African Americans and Hispanics made to the nation. White members sponsored events during Black History Week, and Slovak, Hungarian and other "ethnic" lodges often socialized with black and Hispanic IWO members at festivals, sporting events, camp outings, and theater evenings.

Beyond advocating interracial socializing—itself anathema to many conservative Americans—the IWO campaigned for civil rights measures such as a federal anti-lynching bill, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), integration of the armed forces, an end to Jim Crow segregation of public facilities, and protection of black voting rights. In all of these campaigns, the IWO had a vocal ally in Marcantonio, whose unfashionable—for 1930-40s America—advocacy of racial equality is amply documented in the NYPL’s Marcantonio papers.

The Baltimore Afro-American approvingly noted an IWO anti-discrimination rally and Marcantonio’s introduction of a bill barring discrimination in war work. Rubin Saltzman of the IWO’s Jewish section similarly demanded Army base recreational facilities be integrated.

Marcantonio also decried the wartime internment of Japanese Americans, for which he received letters of thanks from Nissei, including a letter from an internee that may have been dearest to his heart.

"I believe that I am expressing the innermost feelings of all the 110,000 evacuees (90% of whom are citizens) in saying that we are greatly heartened and encouraged in the knowledge that you have the vision and courage to look at fundamental issues realistically," George Yoshioka wrote from a camp in Amache, Colorado, "and that you have taken steps to correct an unjust condition that has existed for these many years."

Marcantonio proposed a bill to remove the bar on Asian naturalization, a move that earned him congratulations from the Japanese American Committee for Democracy. Letters in the NYPL Marcantonio papers, though, reveal that other white Americans did not appreciate Marcantonio and the IWO’s efforts. Letter-writers expressed fear of "race mixing" should the ban be lifted.

It seems like the IWO’s radicalism played out not only in the political realms, but also in everyday life—such as the integration of baseball.

Zecker: The IWO afforded members a dizzying array of social activities; they created a kind of lived progressive milieu. Their own sports leagues were integrated, with black, white, and Hispanic baseball players competing in IWO leagues in places as varied as Los Angeles, Providence, Jersey City, and Canton, Ohio, as early as the 1930s. During these IWO games, petitions demanding the integration of the Major Leagues were passed through the stands. In other sporting events, fun, interracialism and radical identity mixed, too. The African American Chicago Defender publicized these tournaments.

Both the IWO and Marcantonio would find themselves under government scrutiny in the post-war and 1950s.

Zecker: The IWO was often in the crosshairs of various anti-Communist investigators. The House Un-American Activities Committee raided the Order’s Philadelphia offices in 1940, a seizure denounced by Marcantonio and later overturned by a federal judge. Marcantonio’s activities, while left-progressive, seemed to be protected even though the FBI continued to keep tabs on the congressman during the 1930s and ‘40s.

Still, during World War II, "Marc" and his IWO comrades could laugh off the shenanigans of red-baiters such as HUAC Chairman Martin Dies. Marcantonio addressed the IWO’s 1944 convention in a speech frequently interrupted by "applause" and "laughter," predicting, "I hope that the day is not far off when I will not be the only member of Congress who is a member of the International Workers Order. In fact, I am confident… very soon there will be less Dieses, less Rankins, and more members of the IWO in the halls of Congress!"

After World War II, Marc’s confidence may have been shaken. The FBI had already in 1941 recommended that this sitting congressman be rounded up in the event the FBI deemed there to be a national emergency warranting the establishment of security concentration camps. When the McCarran-Walter Act of 1950 provided for the establishment of internal detention lists and security detention camps, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wanted Marcantonio placed on the list of those to be rounded up for detention. An assistant attorney general pointed out to Hoover that Marcantonio was still a sitting congressman.

Within days of losing his seat in November 1950, though, Marcantonio was added to the list of security detainees; one of the marks against him in the FBI’s internal security memo was his attendance at an anti-lynching rally.

Foreign-born IWO members were stripped of their citizenship and deported. Those IWO members who worked for government agencies—even the post office—were required to sign loyalty oaths. In 1951, the New York State Insurance Department used the IWO’s placement on the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations as a pretext to strip the Order of its insurance license, declaring the IWO to be a "hazard."

New York State’s Supreme Court affirmed the liquidation order three years later. When the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear its appeal, the International Workers Order was disbanded. The IWO, with its bands, choirs, and militant advocacy of workers’ rights and racial justice was done.

Also, in 1954, Vito Marcantonio, campaigning to reclaim his congressional seat, expired, succumbing to a heart attack on the campaign trail at age 52.

Many of the social welfare and rights issues addressed by the IWO are still issues at large today. What lessons does the rise and fall of the organization have for 21st century America?

Zecker: The IWO presents an example of an organization that resisted the dangerous call of white privilege. The members seem to have recognized that stigmatizing blacks or immigrants as intruders into America, or as those unfairly "taking" jobs or social benefits from "real" Americans, was a zero-sum game that would ultimately depress the living standards and working condition of all Americans.

The common cause that white ethnics made with African Americans, Hispanics, and even Arab Americans may have been easier to envision in the 1930s and ‘40s than today, because even Slavic and Italian immigrants in that era were still often stigmatized as permanent outsiders. But the twinning of issues of racial justice and social-democratic economic advances by the IWO seems a timely reminder to avoid divide and conquer tactics or the dismissal of others’ causes. The IWO genuinely believed in interracialism, and even used the term "intersectionality" when referring to its activism on gender, racial and class issues, and this back in the 1930s.

Advocacy of universal health care in the late 1930s and 1940s by the IWO seems like an issue whose time has come once again. Also, the story of the IWO demonstrates the enormity of the hurdles the group, or any group in our own day, has to overcome when confronting the surveillance state and a militarized national security state. The FBI files on the IWO, and on Marcantonio, reveal a panopticon of official spying on advocates of racial justice and unionized workers’ rights. The voluminous files on Marcantonio, and on the IWO as an organization, were tabulated decades before WikiLeaks, but they demonstrate how the security state has always tried to contain and limit democratic dissent. This is an ominous lesson for the 21st century.

The anti-immigrant ethos behind much of the Red Scare of the 1940s and '50s, too, resonates with the current distressing official war on the foreign-born by ICE. It might be a lesson worth pondering by Slavic, Italian, and other white ethnic Americans that, 60 years ago, one’s own ancestors were characterized by officeholders and the media as the foreign menace polluting America.

More optimistically, the IWO did achieve gains that we now take for granted on economic rights as well as racial equality. Although IWO members were deported, and the organization liquidated, other IWO activists continued their work in the struggle for racial and class equality.

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Marcantonio’s career in the IWO and Congress is vividly recounted in letters, speeches, papers, and other documents held at the NYPL. In addition to textual documents, the Vito Marcantonio papers also include photographs and sound recordings. All photographs depict material from the subjects' correspondence and papers series, boxes 45-47. This collection is supplemented by NYPL's rich database resources, such as the Communist Historical Newspapers Collection and the U.S. Declassified Documents Online, both of which are available online with an NYPL library card.

Reflecting on Early Republic Maternal Roles Through the Lens of Spanish Culture

Kaitlin Tonti, Short-Term Research Fellow — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 09:52:53 -0400

Kaitlin Tonti is a PhD Candidate (ABD) in Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation, Burning Letters, Keeping Diaries, and Circulating Poetry: Conceptualizing the Fluidity of Spheres in Early American Women’s Life Writing 1750-1810, considers how life-writing provided early American women more agency through journals, diaries, and manuscript culture, which allowed them textual fluidity between the public and private spheres.

Transatlantic studies have been increasingly popular as early Americanists look outside the New England experience to understand 17th and 18th century culture. In the Wainright family papers in The New York Public Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division, letters addressed to Eliza Mayhew Wainwright offer some insight into early Americans' conceptualization of women in international cultures, and their own domestic roles in America.

Four letters sent from Havana, Cuba, addressed to "Dear Sister" and signed "H.B. Howard" between December 23, 1809 and March 17, 1810 reveal Howard’s condemnation of Spanish women, but also how she views American women as superior in juxtaposition with her international sisters.

Her first description of Cuban women references their appearance, as she notices that women do not walk the streets during daylight hours unless fashioned in black, churchgoing attire. She writes, "it is conceived… improper to appear in the street in any other habit you are liable to be insulted if you do." Later, in the same letter, she makes the point of stating that the wife of her American host, Mrs. Gorhms, has "never had the smallest acquaintance with any of the Spanish women." Howard’s later descriptions are consistent with her first analysis of Spanish women as inapproachable, oppressed, and limited in their public appearances.

"Dear Sister" letter from H.B. Howard, box 4, Wainwright family papers, NYPL Manuscripts and Archives Division

Howard’s fourth letter is particularly ostentatious in her descriptions and disdain for Spanish women, as she claims they have no maternal instincts in juxtaposition with American women. She begins by observing that babes often cling to exposed breasts of black women, "while their mothers are at a great deal of trouble to get rid of the nourishment which nature kindly gave for the support of their offspring." Howard adds that because of what she perceives as a lack of maternal nature, the Spanish are a "groveling set of people."

Addressing her several observations of Spanish culture, Howard insists that Spanish people are entirely consumed by "church and the card table" and that they "do not surpass" the United States in appropriately pricing their meat, fruits, and vegetables. One might read her letters as simply indicative of a white woman’s view on race in the early 19th century.

However, it is through her contempt of Spanish women—specifically, their maternal instincts—that makes evident her own insecurities concerning her role as an American woman. By 1810, the Republican Motherhood ideal attempted to define women’s identity in the new Republic; thus, when Howard decries that Spanish women do not feed their own babies, she is likely confused as to how she should perceive their contributions to the larger public. Howard might have also realized that if her role as mother were taken from her, she would lose what contributes to her political, social, but most significantly, national identity.

Howard’s letters to Wainwright depict a transatlantic communication that explores Spanish culture from a New Englander’s perspective. Early Americanists, feminist scholars, and researchers interested in the complicated nature of transatlantic observations and correspondences would do well in visiting the New York Public Library to view this communication.

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For more information on Republican Motherhood, see any of the following:
Linda K. Kerber’s Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America
Mary Beth Norton’s Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800
Carol Berkin’s Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence.

Remembering John Coltrane

NYPL Staff — Tue, 17 Jul 2018 15:58:28 -0400

Written By: Jillian Peprah-Frimpong
Pre-Professional, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Student, New York City Museum School

John Coltrane, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, Image ID 1693577

On July 17, we commemorate 51 years since the death of American jazz composer and saxophonist John Coltrane who passed away in 1967. Coltrane is responsible for pioneering what we call today modal jazz during the 1950s, a more melodic and whimsical form of jazz music, which was also performed by his contemporary, Miles Davis. Compared to other forms of jazz, the modal style was described as honest, organic and free flowing.

Coltrane’s earliest introduction to music was to revered jazz musicians Lester Young and Count Basie and the occasional musical musings of his father, who played several instruments while working as a tailor. When he received his first alto saxophone from his mother when he was seventeen. He had volunteered in local community bands, often playing the alto saxophone or clarinet.

In 1958 Coltrane recorded the album he regarded as his favorite, “Blue Train”, which was certified gold 50 years after its release. “Blue Train” features Coltrane’s first lead on a record. With Coltrane on tenor saxophone and his band members Lee Morgan and Curtis Fuller on trumpet and trombone, the band created a 42 minute energetic piece. Coltrane’s musical legacy during the 1940s and 1950s would go on to inspire 70’s rock guitarists Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, and continues to inspire musicians in all genres today.

Visit the Schomburg Center to learn more about John Coltrane through these items in our collections:

John Coltrane in our Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
John Coltrane Portrait Collection
The John Coltrane reference
John Coltrane Speaks

Jacob Riis & Americanization Campaigns in Progressive Era New York City

Elizabeth Verklan, Short-Term Research Fellow — Wed, 16 May 2018 13:13:31 -0400

Elizabeth Verklan was a Short-Term Research Fellow at NYPL in 2017, and is an assistant professor in women, gender, and sexuality studies at Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri. She is currently working on her book (tentatively titled) Objects of Desire: Transnational Feminism, Feminist Inquiry, and Global Fashion, under contract with the University of Illinois Press, that explores the ways in which sweatshops are framed and represented in and to the U.S.

There is perhaps no better place to study the early workings of the U.S. garment industry than New York City, and most especially the Manuscripts and Archives Division at NYPL. Last summer, I spent four weeks at the Manuscripts and Archives Division hoping to learn how some of the nation’s earliest anti-sweatshop campaigns narrated the problem of sweatshops. This research is part of my larger book project wherein I examine how sweatshops are represented in and throughout U.S. media, throughout history. In particular, my second chapter, “The Politics of Labor and Immigration in the Shadow of the Sweatshop,” examines the role of news media in explaining and conveying the importance of sweatshops to the U.S. public. Part of this chapter examines the anti-sweatshop discourse of Progressive Era (1890-1920) New York City specifically, and I came to the Manuscripts and Archives Division to explore the records of Jacob Riis.

The Jacob Riis papers and the Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement records from 1891 to 1916 provided me with some historical context into one of the early twentieth century’s most influential anti-sweatshop advocates. Jacob Riis played a crucial role in publicizing the issue of sweatshops to the public with his exposé-style book, How the Other Half Lives (1890). As Daniel Bender’s Sweated Work, Sweated Bodies: Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns and Languages of Labor outlines, many social reformers and consumer groups of the time came to cite Riis’ prominent text as inspiring their work. Riis’s text is also cited in several government reports and hearings concerning sweatshops, and Riis himself accompanied government officials on tours and sanitation inspections during this time. In sum, Riis’ role in the development of how people in the U.S. think and speak about sweatshops is significant, and my ability to explore some of his personal papers at the Manuscripts and Archives Division was very important to helping me understand who he was and how he thought about the “social good.”

A letter printed on stationery advertising free classes and training in domestic and garment work. The left- hand column lists the courses in detail. Jacob Riis is listed as an officer of the People’s University Extension Society of New York, the organization offering the courses. From the Jacob Riis papers. Photo credit: Elizabeth Verklan. (click to enlarge)

As Daniel Bender and Richard Greenwald argue in Sweatshop USA, the way people discussed and thought about sweatshops at the time they emerged (~1890-5) is inseparable from other social anxieties concerning race, immigration, and labor. The wave of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe between 1880 and 1920 ignited cultural anxieties about job loss, disease, and social unrest on the part of U.S. citizens. Many social reformers of the time felt that the perceived ills of immigration and immigrants could be remedied through efforts to “Americanize” the foreign-born. While I was aware of these kinds of social welfare campaigns, I was unaware that many of these campaigns actually trained and recruited immigrants into working in the garment factories and sweatshops themselves. Oddly enough, the efforts of Jacob Riis and the Jacob Riis Settlement house undertook some of these very campaigns.

Through my research in the Jacob Riis papers and Jacob Riis Neighborhood Settlement records I learned that despite his prominent role in documenting the conditions in sweatshops, Riis also promoted education and training for work in garment factories, and placed girls in jobs within New York’s factories. This aspect of Riis’ work is interesting because while he definitely took issue with the kinds of work happening within tenements in the garment industry (which came to be known as sweatshops), he also simultaneously extolled the merits of factory work, including garment work. Riis, like many of his contemporaries, perceived manual labor as necessary for immigrants, because it was believed to “Americanize” them; it was thought that this labor and training could transform the immigrant (often xenophobically presumed lazy) into a productive American worker.

A letter addressed to the Jacob Riis Settlement seeking girls to work in a New York City factory. Jacob A. Riis Settlement records. Photo credit: Elizabeth Verklan. (click to enlarge)

Riis’ work is interesting because it demonstrates how perceptions of who is thought of as “American,” and what being “American” constitutes. In Riis’ time, while social reformers took issue with sweatshops, they still perceived garment work as an immigrant’s job that could provide the training and discipline necessary to “Americanizing” the foreign-born. As Bender and Greenwald argue, sweatshops were defined against the American factory system, which was considered efficient, clean, and emblematic of an “American” way of working. Promoting training for immigrants in factory work was a way to both curb sweatshop exploitation, but also “Americanize” people deemed foreign to an American way of life. As I argue in my book, understanding how social reformers thought about labor then is important to understanding how people think about sweatshops and labor violations now, because we have inherited the concept from people like Riis.

My time in the Manuscripts and Archives Division, made possible by my New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship, has enriched my understanding of how social reformers like Riis were thinking about immigration as a problem, and how best to remedy it. Were it not for my time at NYPL I would never have known of Riis’ involvement in Americanization campaigns, or the dual role he occupies in U.S. garment industry history.

Supermoon over Manhattan

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:14:54 -0500

On January 31, the full moon will shine for the second time this month, a phenomenon commonly known as a "blue moon." Of course, despite this expression—originally applied to a fourth full moon in a calendar season—the moon won't actually look blue.

Another notable lunar event will coincide with this blue moon: a total lunar eclipse. Unfortunately, New York City will miss most of it because the moon will set here just before sunrise on the 31st, shortly after the eclipse begins.

This leads us to more lunar description and terminology. A moon in total eclipse appears reddish, and is sometimes called a "blood moon." Additionally (and even better), this full moon will be near perigee, meaning it is at its closest approach to Earth, making it very close to the status of "supermoon;" a supermoon appears around 7% larger than an average full moon.

Add this all up, and we have a "Super Blue Blood Moon." Got it?

Lewis Morris Rutherfurd; source: Wikidata

Shooting the Moon

Despite the saying “once in a blue moon,” a blue moon isn’t all that rare. Regardless of which framework you use to define a blue moon, it occurs once every two to three years.

However a “blue blood moon” is indeed rare. In North America, the last one occurred on March 31, 1866, leading us to the extraordinary lunar photographs of pioneering astrophotographer and astrophysicist, Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (1816-1892).

Rutherfurd, a lawyer by training, abandoned his law practice to devote himself to his joint passions of astronomy and photography. He took his first photographs of the moon in 1858 and, by 1866, had taken dozens, most with an 11 1/4-inch equatorial refracting telescope he designed and constructed.

Rutherfurd's observatory and astrophotography studio were located on the grounds of his spacious mansion, on the corner of Second Avenue and East 10th Street in Manhattan. Here's how the building looked a few decades after Rutherfurd’s death:

Second Avenue at East 10th Street, by Irving Underhill, 1922. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 1508679

[For an earlier view, see Old Buildings of New York City (1907).]

Although it doesn't appear that Rutherfurd photographed the 1866 eclipse or any full moon that year, in 1865, he immortalized the full moon of January 11. The photograph below is one of three large-scale original Rutherfurd lunar photographs in The New York Public Library's Photography Collection. We believe it to be the January 1865 full moon, since the other two, showing the first and last quarters, bear dates from January 1865 and March 1865, respectively.

The originals are large, about 22 x 20 inches each. Even with this greatly reduced image, I hope you can get an idea of what a truly super moon shone over Manhattan that night.

Photograph by Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, probably taken January 11, 1865; NYPL Photography Collection

A couple decades later, Rutherfurd’s associate, O.G. Mason, described one of his nocturnal photography sessions for the Photographic Section of the American Institute. The talk was published in the Scientific American Supplement, no. 606 (August 13, 1887), pages 9684-9685, under the evocative title “A Voyage to the Moon.”

I can’t resist quoting Mason's description at length here:

"Our party consisted of three persons, whom we will designate as numbers one, two, and three.

At 10:30 P.M. number two entered one of the computing rooms across the lawn and called "time," by reporting the zenith clear and the air still favorable for first-class work, a coincidence averaging about twice a year in New York City.

Upon this announcement numbers one and three bundle up in heavy clothing as though about to visit the north pole. They know the weather is crisp and cold where the next few hours are to be passed.

As they enter the door leading to the dome, under which stands the great equatorial, the silence is broken only by the escapement wheel of the tall sidereal clock standing against the western wall, as its heavy pendulum swings to and fro with an accuracy most wonderful.

No other sound. Not a word is spoken; each known his assigned duty, and to it he gives his undivided attention. All feel that such time is beyond value, and must be utilized to the fullest extent.

Number one has charge of the telescope. The dome is revolved into position, and a long, narrow section, from base to apex, swung open, leaving a strip of clear sky visible, in the center of which the moon glistens like a disk of burnished silver. The great instrument is swung into approximate position; the driving clock, constructed to run one hour, is wound; and while number one is busy making his final adjustments, we will watch number two, who has charge of the photographic department of the expedition. He has lifted a trap door in the floor near the stone pier, passed down a short ladder, and entered what may well be called a troglodyte’s laboratory, lighted by one small wax candle, as care is necessary to keep the temperature low. After a few minutes the pupils of his eyes are expanded sufficiently to permit seeing the bottles, baths, and dishes required for his work. But we have no time to describe his chemicals or his method of using them.

Meanwhile number three, the timekeeper, has adjusted the chronograph (in whose record there will be no personal equation), placed his small, dim lights where they will illuminate the clock and the room just enough to see what is going on, and then taken his position, where he can hear distinctly the beat of the long pendulum, as its lower end, terminating in a hair-like wire, swings at each vibration through a glistening drop of mercury, closing the battery current uniting chronograph, clock, and shutter adjustment on the telescope.

All is now ready for action. Upon a signal being given by number one, a sensitized plate is handed up from the cave, placed in its receptacle at the ocular end of the great instrument, just as it would be put into an ordinary camera.

The touch of an electric button, and away we go, or rather, we all keep very still.

The great clock says one, two, three, and the plate holder is opened to the light of the full moon, whose image the great glass eye, fourteen feet away, has condensed to a circle of 1 2/15 inches. The buzz of the chronograph wheels is just audible as it records the time in hundredths of a second. The heavy pendulum has beat one, and the long focused eye is closed, the plate holder is returned to the troglodyte, who reaches from below to receive it, as he hands another up.

And so the work goes on until early morning, when the weary and thoroughly chilled party seek rest in a comfortable temperature and among surroundings which their animal natures deem far more enjoyable."

I hope you have enjoyed this voyage through time and space, to the moon over Manhattan, just as she appeared to an inventive scientist's eyes in 1865.

Diamonds in the Rough: Barbara Epstein at the New York Review of Books

Robyn Hjermstad — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 16:14:00 -0500

By Robyn Hjermstad and Kit Fluker, Archives Unit

When the New York Review of Books records arrived at NYPL's Library Services Center in early 2016, we were a little apprehensive. We had to wear Tyvek suits, respirators, and goggles to unload over 1,500 boxes into our disaster recovery room to rehouse one of the dirtiest collections many of us had seen to date. One week and dozens of vinyl gloves and dust-cloths later, we had successfully transferred the collection into clean, color-coded boxes. The files of Review editor Barbara Epstein were coded mango. Perhaps we should've just called it orange, because when unpeeled, we were delighted to find neat, juicy segments, ripe for processing.

Barbara Epstein in her office. The New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division.

Epstein was one of the founders of the New York Review of Books and its co-editor until her death in 2006. Her files, forming one series of the New York Review of Books records, contain correspondence and annotated manuscripts dating from 1963 to 2003, documenting 40 years spent at the office and a lifetime shaping and improving the Review.

Epstein was a dedicated and meticulous editor. The manuscripts in her files often went through three or four or more iterations, with drafts marked “ms A,” “ms B,” “ms C,” and so on as the work progressed. Like her co-editor Robert Silvers, Epstein had a reputation for being politely persistent in demanding the best from the writers she worked with.

Best didn’t mean perfect; Epstein was willing to let a manuscript rest when she thought there was no more that could be done with it, as long as it reached a certain standard. In the margin of one manuscript, Epstein gave her consent to have it published with a brief note to Silvers: “Zzzzz but OK by me.” Her annotations show what sort of prose she thought belonged in the Review. Contributors received their pieces back from Epstein with requests to cite examples and to make implied connections explicit. She didn't like mushy prose or gratuitous complexity.

In this note to Robert Silvers, Epstein suggests taking a chance on a young writer whom she considers flawed but promising. 1970s. The New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division.

As an editor of the Review, Epstein was a significant figure in the formation of what many would consider to be the literary elite. Epstein and Silvers each had “their” writers -- contributors whom they worked with consistently, over a long period of time, and who were often friends as well as colleagues. Epstein edited pieces by established figures like Alison Lurie, Joyce Carol Oates, and Gore Vidal, but she also worked to bring less experienced writers into the paper’s fold. When one novice writer suggested that Epstein would do better to seek out a published expert on the topic, Epstein wrote back, "I'd really rather have you.”

As archivists working on the papers of individuals like Epstein, we hope that the creator of the papers was as organized as they were accomplished. Epstein’s papers came to us in filing-cabinet order, arranged by year and then alphabetically within the year. But the files also illuminate the living, bustling office environment with accents that seem almost calculated: a perfectly imperfect coffee cup ring fixed on a heavily annotated draft; a document covered in mystery fingerprint smears, perhaps from take-out during a late night at the office.

Epstein’s files make up a relatively small portion of the Review’s extensive records, but they illustrate the paper’s growth and development from its beginnings through the turn of the millennium. You can find a guide to Barbara Epstein’s files in NYPL’s Archives & Manuscripts portal. More information will be added to the guide as further materials from the New York Review of Books records become available.

Informed Archives: The Straphangers Campaign and the NYC Subway System

Meredith Mann, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 09:56:18 -0400

We are being held in the station due to train traffic ahead of us. We apologize for the inconvenience and should be moving shortly. Thank you for your patience.

These words are familiar to New York City residents and visitors, likely summoning unpleasant memories of a recent commute gone wrong. Much attention has been paid lately to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) during what has been termed the “Summer of Hell,” months marked by constant service interruptions, delays, and infrastructural failures. Instead of simply bemoaning the current state of affairs, we can look to a citizen’s group that has been actively working toward improving the City transit system for almost forty years. The Straphangers Campaign, affiliated with the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), formed in 1979 during another nadir of subway service. It saw a system so beset with crime and inefficiencies that it had riders abandoning mass transit in droves. The Manuscripts and Archives Division holds the records of the Straphangers Campaign, through which we can see the situation they inherited, the work they performed, and the accomplishments they achieved. Examining their documented activity may suggest to us a light at the end of the tunnel that isn’t, as their newsletter once joked, “just a train on fire.”

Brochure. NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign records. Manuscripts and Archives Division.

Subway token. 1990s. Privately owned.

The first series of the Straphangers Campaign records chronicle the early years of the organization, and are mostly organized by issue. Many of these are likely familiar to today’s straphanger: air conditioning, fare prices, crime, safety, and subway announcements. Digging into these folders, however, reveals a transit dystopia far beyond current conditions. In 1979, the year the Campaign was founded, there were sixteen homicides in transit stations, over thirty recorded sexual assaults, and almost 10,000 cases of theft. In 1981, only 40% of subway cars and 85% of buses were equipped with air conditioning; moreover, having air conditioning did not ensure that it was functional or used. That same year, the MTA president proposed only using bus air conditioning when temperatures exceeded ninety degrees. Meanwhile, subway and bus fares had climbed from fifty to ninety cents between 1980 and 1985. New Yorkers were paying more and more for deteriorating service.

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Button associated with 1981 "State of the Subways" report. NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign records. Manuscripts and Archives Division.

The newly-formed Straphangers Campaign used a variety of methods to take on these shortcomings, which ranged from simply irritating to dangerous. They put pressure on local and MTA officials through newspaper editorials, radio spots, direct letters, press releases, and testimony at transit and local government meetings. They informed their fellow riders by surveying passengers, issuing regular newsletters and reports, and passing out buttons and flyers. Their annual “State of the Subways” report, published to this day, provides a line-by-line analysis of subway performance and outs the worst offenders.

Communication was an early target of the organization. Frequent commuters have doubtless seen “Train Approaching” signs — ceiling-mounted displays near attendant booths meant to light up when a subway arrives in a station. These “annunciators” were one of the Campaign’s first pushes. Since subway platforms were hotspots for crime — platform lights were frequently vandalized, and night-time riders had a one in forty chance of being the victim of a felony in 1981 — annunciators allowed riders to spend as little time at the platform as necessary. Rather, they could congregate together by the well-lit, staffed token booth and venture to the platform only when the annunciator indicated a nearby train.

To increase the number of annunciators throughout the subway system, the Campaign employed a strategy of attempting to work through “official” channels, then generating public pressure when such methods stalled. Campaign records include correspondence between staff attorney Gene Russianoff and New York City Transit Authority (variously called the NYCTA, TA, or the downright Orwellian “Authority”) officials on the extent and proposed expansion of annunciators throughout the system. After several months of inaction, Campaign Director Michael Pratt brought their message directly to the public via a WRFM radio broadcast.

Conductor announcements were another communications goal. We may vent our frustrations about hopelessly garbled announcements on older trains or inscrutably vague updates on newer ones, but we owe thanks partially to the Straphangers Campaign that we hear any announcements at all. After the MTA and City Mayor’s office jointly promised to improve subway announcements in 1982, the Campaign gauged the results of their pledge with a two-month survey by 41 Campaign volunteers. The resulting 1983 report “What Did They Say?” indicated that no announcements were made for 46% of subway delays and 83% of train reroutes. Conductors regularly announced the names of stations and available transfers in fewer than 13% of surveyed trips. “Our study shows that subway riders should have as much faith in the TA’s new announcement program as they do in announcements that ‘there is a train right behind this one,’” jeered Russianoff, a dig that still resonates today.

Excerpt from "Tokens and Slugs" portion of Straphangers Campaign newsletter. 1985. NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign records. Manuscripts and Archives Division.

The Campaign publicized their report with a news release, WINS radio editorial broadcast, and an op/ed in the New York Daily News. This last seems to have been particularly effective, as a February 1983 newsletter of the Transport Workers Union of America noted that it “has, as usual, the Authority panic stricken and has put the heat on.”

Poster. 1986. NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign records. Manuscripts and Archives Division.

One of the criticisms levied by the Campaign was the fact that the TA had not distributed its new communications training manual to employees in the wake of its promise to improve subway announcements. Included within the records is a copy of this manual, which details scripts for routine announcements such as transfers, delays, and “points of interest” (including The New York Public Library), as well as advice on modulating volume and tone of voice. The manual requires that delays be announced within two minutes of the train stopping, with updates every three minutes thereafter. It notes, “Announcements should give a reason for delay: ‘Due to brake problems on the train ahead of us,’ ‘Due to an electrical problem in Queens,’ etc. However, care must be taken not to alarm the passengers or give any cause for panic, so do not give specific details of causes for delays [if] they are due to calamities such as derailments, collisions, or fires.” As reported in the New York Times, the MTA has recently changed this policy, promising more honest and transparent announcements from conductors to riders.

NYCTA Communications Training Manual cover and interior page. NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign records. Manuscripts and Archives Division.

As a result of their efforts, the Straphangers Campaign has had a hand in multiple transit success stories: monthly passes and automatic fares (the MetroCard), continuation of the Franklin Avenue shuttle, the long-awaited Second Avenue subway, decreases in crime and graffiti, removal of PVC pipe from the subway network, establishment of the watchdog State Public Transportation Safety Board, the end of two-fare zones, and increases in funding to the transit system, among others. Those interested in exploring its past can consult its records, while those interested in contributing to its future can visit its website.

Letter with updates on the Second Avenue Subway. 1963. NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign records. Manuscripts and Archives Division.

About the Informed Archives Series

Archival collections and rare printed works at The New York Public Library preserve unique evidence of human activity and achievement that form a basis for the study of political, social, economic, and cultural history. These materials have special importance not only to scholars, but also to citizens interested in historic parallels with current events. The Informed Archives blog series aims to inspire community engagement by highlighting particular collections, contextualizing their creation, and promoting their contents. Through illustrating the vitality of our shared documentary record, we hope to encourage conversation and new readership.

Turn Around, Bright Eyes: Henry Draper and the 1878 Eclipse

Tal Nadan, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 15:06:31 -0400

The total solar eclipse which crossed from Alaska to Texas spurred many to make the trip West in 1878. As thoroughly documented in David Baron’s recent book, American Eclipse, the U.S. scientific community was eager to demonstrate capability to the scholarly world. Dr. Henry Draper, a medical doctor and former chair of physiology at New York University, assembled a group who watched the eclipse from the railroad outpost of Rawlins, Wyoming Territory. Although professionally known for medicine, Draper was an enthusiastic amateur astronomer who built an observatory in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Henry Morton of the Stevens Institute of Technology, James Barker of the University of Pennsylvania, Draper’s wife and research assistant Anna, and Thomas Edison comprised the eclipse-viewing party who departed New York on Saturday, June 13.

Letter from Alvan Clark & Sons, the lens manufacturer for Draper's telescope

The foremost observation goal for the eclipse was study of the sun’s corona during the few minutes of totality. Henry Draper’s particular contributions to astronomy included documentation of solar spectra and well as celestial photography. Only a few years earlier, he earned renown for supervising photography of the transit of Venus. His half-ton photo-tele-spectroscope accompanied the group to their rudimentary observatory in Wyoming. Aside from the corona, there were secondary objectives for the scientific community. Edison himself had recently invented the tasimeter to measure heat from the solar rays, which he experimented with in a makeshift lab during the eclipse. Astronomers also used the darkness to search for Vulcan, a planetary body thought to be orbiting between the Sun and Mercury.

Unsigned sketch of the corona

The eclipse occurred on July 29, 1878. To hedge against the misfortune of unclear skies, scientific groups scattered their camps across the path of totality, including on Pike’s Peak. A mere thirty miles from the Draper party was another group led by William Harkness of the U.S. Naval Observatory, a colleague from the transit of Venus project. Accompanying this group was Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, who captured the event in chromolithographs.

The Henry and Mary Anna Palmer Draper papers held at The New York Public Library consist primarily of correspondence with academics, artists, and scientists. After Henry Draper’s untimely death in 1882 (the result of weather exposure observing the stars of Orion), Anna Draper continued his work in the sciences as well as built a collection of ancient objects. She would become a benefactor of The New York Public Library, donating not only these papers but also establishing funds for acquiring further resources.

Total Eclipse of the Art: Trouvelot and the 1878 Eclipse

Kyle Triplett, Rare Book Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — Thu, 17 Aug 2017 11:49:12 -0400

Are you traveling to see the eclipse? The eclipse has always drawn many to travel to get the most complete view of totality. Pictures of celestial phenomena like the eclipse can electrify the imagination, generate wonder, and spark that most human desire: to go out and see for yourself. For our era, the spectacular images from the Hubble Space Telescope, the wondrous details of Saturn from Cassini, or the realistic images from the Mars rover make us want to go further into the cosmos. For Americans in the post-Civil War years, the most iconic images of the cosmos were largely the work of one man: Étienne Leopold Trouvelot (1827-1895), an artist and amateur astronomer who produced incredible images of the heavens.

Trouvelot had a particular interest in the sun and observed it often through his 6.5-inch Merz refractor telescope. His aim was to view and draw what he saw, including sun spots and phenomena like the eclipse. Trouvelot traveled with a party from the United States Naval Observatory to 'separation’, a desolate outpost in Wyoming Territory near modern-day Creston, to observe the Eclipse of July 29, 1878. The 2017 totality path will pass just north of Creston, Wyoming, but will be a near full eclipse 139 years later in the same spot. Trouvelot's visual account gives us a spectacular view of the event.

Close up, the finger-like protuberance gives particular notice to the flaming sun beneath.

We are fortunate to have a complete set of his astronomical plates as part of the Rare Book Collection at NYPL, including the wonderful Eclipse of 1878. The images were made through the process of chromolithography. Trouvelot used this planographic printing process, which involves applying a water-resistant medium to lithography stones, to stunning effect. Each color or tint necessitated a separate stone to be printed, with the complexity of the method adding richness and texture to the finished product. The stones were durable and allowed for the printing of hundreds of images. His velvety blacks and radial lines offer a highly stylized nod to romanticism and the sublime, but he captures the wonder of the full eclipse, even if it is not a technically correct rendering. The finger-like protuberance against the odd greenish hue at the middle gives particular notice to the flaming sun beneath, Trouvelot’s observational record transforms the eclipse of 1878 into a time bound artwork depicting the eclipse as eerie, wondrous, and amazing. Think of this imagery as you try to capture the nuance and uncanny nature of the blocked sun with your iPhone next week. Happy hunting, astronomers.

Velvety blacks and radial lines of the chromolithograph.

Sources and more information:

Bendheim, Fred. “The Art and Science of Etienne Trouvelot.” The Lancet, June 16, 2001, Volume 357, Issue 9272, Pages 1897-1988.

New York Public Library. Point: An NYPL Digital Publication, "E.L. Trouvelot’s Astronomical Drawings". Volume 1, Ed. 2.

Rosenfeld, Randall and William Sheehan. “How an Artist Brought the Heavens to Earth.” Astronomy. Vol. 39, No. 1 (January issue), pp. 52-57.

Trouvelot, E. L., The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings. New York, C. Scribner's Sons, 1881-1882.

Trouvelot, E. L. The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings Manual. New York, C. Scribner's Sons, 1881-1882.

Voices Buried in the Ash Heap: Private Waste Disposers, Scavengers, and the 1939 World’s Fair

Tina Peabody, Short-Term Research Fellow — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 12:17:41 -0400

Tina Peabody is a 2017 Short-Term Research Fellow at NYPL and Ph.D candidate in United States history at the University at Albany, SUNY. She is currently completing her dissertation entitled, Wretched Refuse: Garbage and the Making of New York City, a social and economic history of garbage collection and disposal in New York City between the 1870s and 1990s.

Studying the history of garbage teaches you that treasures can often be found in unexpected places, and this was certainly true of my research at The New York Public Library. This summer, I spent three weeks at the Manuscripts and Archives Division hoping to learn more about the role of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City’s solid waste management decisions in the mid-twentieth century. My hope was that I would uncover voices less often represented in histories of waste management, especially private waste disposers and scavengers. This research is part of a larger dissertation project in progress entitled, Wretched Refuse: Garbage and the Making of New York City, which examines the history of garbage collection and disposal in New York City and its effect on the social and economic fabric of the City between the 1870 and 1890s.

The Robert Moses papers and the records of the New York World’s Fair Corporation from 1939 and 1940 provided me a window into the moment when the City was turning to sanitary landfilling as the dominant method of dealing with waste. Ted Steinberg's Gotham Unbound and Benjamin Miller's Fat of the Land have both shown that Robert Moses, infamous primarily for his role in infrastructure projects like the Triborough Bridge, played a large role in this eventual shift to sanitary landfilling. Though personally in favor of incineration as an ultimate waste disposal strategy, Moses not only cooperated with the Department of Sanitation to turn an old ash dump into Queens into the World’s Fair grounds (later Flushing Meadows Park), but cooperated with the Department of Sanitation to use refuse as fill for creating new park space, including Soundview Park, Orchard Beach, and Pelham Bay Park. This temporarily solved the problem of disposing the City’s waste after ocean dumping was officially outlawed in 1934, while satisfying Moses’ desire to increase recreational facilities on the City’s waterfront.

Fairgrounds - Pre-Construction - Aerial view. New York World's Fair 1939 and 1940 Incorporated records

Though I knew the main features of this story, during my time at the archives I happened upon voices I did not expect to hear, many of which suggested the way that waste disposal decisions in this era marginalized private scavenging. As Carl Zimring has argued in Cash for Your Trash, scavenging and junk dealing had once been the province of immigrant groups and sometimes even provided a rare chance for upward mobility, but after World War I these opportunities waned. Particularly striking in this context was a letter to Grover Whalen, President of the World’s Fair Corporation, from a Long Island resident named Anthony Carrailo. Carrailo was a father of four, who begged permission to salvage scrap iron from the World’s Fair grounds where old sewer systems were being dug up. Carrailo noted that he had once been a WPA worker, but left because he felt there was more opportunity in salvage and emphasized that this was his only means of supporting his family.

Carrailo’s letter was received on August 2, 1937. Four days later, C. T. Ford, Maintenance Engineer in the World’s Fair Operations Department, wrote a memo to the Chief Engineer and Director of Construction to deny Carrailo salvage rights, noting that they had already denied many similar requests. “These junk pickers have proved quite a nuisance at this site and the police are trying to keep them out,” Ford wrote, and added that there were two signs on the grounds announcing that junk picking was prohibited. The Fair Corporation received similar letters from other private contractors trying to capitalize on the waste disposal needs of the concessionaires at the World’s Fair. Some, like Carrailo’s, were denied outright, especially when it would have required concessionaires to separate out particular kinds of waste. By 1938, Ford suggested that the Fair Corporation handle waste collection and disposal with its own forces, disposing of all the waste by incineration. Incineration, like sanitary landfilling, would mean closing the door to wide-scale reuse of waste that private contractors and scavengers were advocating.

Anthony Carrailo letter. New York World's Fair 1939 and 1940 Incorporated records. Photo credit: Tina Peabody.

Carrailo’s letter and Ford’s memo sat in a slim folder simply marked “Carrailo, Anthony” in the midst of the voluminous records of the World’s Fair Corporation. Had it not been for the considerable time I was able to spend sifting through the World’s Fair records because of my New York Public Library Short-Term Research Fellowship, Carrailo’s voice, like so many other private waste contractors and scavengers, might have been lost. I am thankful for the chance decision to open that folder, and hopeful that Carrailo’s story will now become part of the larger history of waste management, where it rightly belongs.

Edith Magonigle and the Art War Relief

Tal Nadan, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 10:58:44 -0400

The U.S. entry into World War I is remembered as a catalyst for domestic activism. American visual artists notably participated, using their talents in a few different ways. Some of their efforts are widely known, such as the iconic poster campaigns featuring Uncle Sam by James Montgomery Flagg; or sculptors with the Army’s 40th Corps of Engineers creating camouflage to hide troops from airplanes and employing baffle painting to obscure boats from submarines. A lesser-known group of artist volunteers found ways to use their creative talents in New York. Called Art War Relief, members from a group of art societies formed a coalition under the auspices of the American Red Cross.

On the homefront, Red Cross chapters grew from a few hundred in the beginning of 1917 to over 3000 by the end of 1919. Chaired by Mrs. Ripley Hitchcock, Art War Relief was auxiliary 282 of the New York County Chapter. The committee consisted of women representatives from 30 organizations, such as the Art Students League, the National Sculpture Society, the National Academy of Design, and the Decorators Association of New York. The group coordinated book drives, gathered clothing for refugee children in the Allied countries, and ran re-education programs for returning soldiers.

Distribution register for Camp Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts

Active in this group was Edith Marion Day Magonigle. A muralist who often collaborated with her architect husband, Harold Van Buren Magonigle, she served as the chair of Art War Relief’s Painting Committee. At the time of her selection, Magonigle had already communicated with YMCA’s Camp Upton in Long Island, donating stage sets for one-act plays early in 1918. Officially beginning her chairmanship in February, Edith Magonigle guided artist-volunteers in the creation of landscape targets for use in training camps, and coordinated their dispersal across the United States. Edith Magongle’s files on the Art War Relief, included within her husband’s papers, document this critical work.

By the time the U.S. entered World War I, it had been decades since the nation was involved in a large scale conflict. Suddenly, troops needed to be recruited, mobilized, and trained. Landscape (or designation) targets had been used in Europe to educate artillery officers in range-finding. A fairly recent development in military classroom instruction at the time, the demonstrator would use the landscape paintings to teach students how to refer to points in the field. Art War Relief’s canvases depicted typical French countrysides, to best help the cadets visualize what they might encounter abroad. The students were trained how to quickly discern and describe a target, using the clock-face method, mils or finger-widths - different means of using landscape features and measures to describe a target’s location. The purpose of this training was to standardize vocabulary, so that the combat troops could quickly and clearly communicate in the field.

Diagrams from a 1918 instruction manual

Art War Relief’s Painting Committee furnished over 300 targets to 27 cantonments. While the Art War Relief was led by women, the creation and distribution of targets was not a women’s-only activity. The brothers H. Bolton and Francis Coates Jones made landscape targets their sole project, contributing fifty. Members of the Salmagundi Club and Ver Meer Studios, two New York institutions not officially connected to Art War Relief but enthusiastic for the targets project, were responsible for about half of the total. Over 100 artists participated in the nine-month effort. An exhibition of ten of these canvases was held at the Arden Gallery in May of 1918, and two were included in the Allied War Salon in December of that year.

Letter from artist Howard Russell Butler describing a critique from Camp Dix officers

Canvas sizes for targets varied between three by six feet and up to five by twelve feet. In general, they share a bright color palette and most importantly, accurate perspective. As of 1918, landscape sketching was still a skill taught to recruits. Photographs were considered to overemphasize the immediate foreground, whereas sketches could be reduced to their essential elements.

Unsigned sketch in the Harold Van Buren Magonigle papers, bearing many of the elements typical of landscape targets

Edith Magonigle’s files on the Art War Relief comprise just a few folders in the Harold Van Buren Magonigle papers, which she gave to the Library (along with a number of Japanese prints, photographs, scrapbooks, and periodicals) in winter 1938, a few years after her husband’s death. These few folders, however, document her role as a coordinator. Primarily letters between artists and army commanders, these files also contain shipping records and a draft report (later published in the American Magazine of Art, volume 10). These records serve to highlight one of the unusual ways artists gave support from the homefront. After enough landscape targets were distributed for training, Magonigle continued to participate in domestic war work. After armistice, she designed a mural for the Victory Liberty Loan campaign drive demonstration on Park Avenue in Spring of 1919.

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