history

Our visual world is made up of many bits and pieces. It is the fragments merging together to make up a whole that really make a difference in what we see. Taken alone, these individual parts tend to go unnoticed by most people. For example in architecture, it is the color of the stone, the decoration, the lettering on the sign above the door or the carved letters on a gravestone that help define the structure and create a feeling.

Lettering is a small part of the ornamentation of an architectural structure. It is generally the colossus of the structure itself that grabs the eye first, but if you look carefully and take in the entirety of a structure, a visual reward is there waiting and it is often in the letters of the words that adorn it.

Words are as much a part of our visual landscape as the buildings, streets and trees or the people we see every day. A vibrant visual world indeed. Many of us are inured to the most vulgar visual sights, as well as the sublime. Some of us don’t even notice the first spring flowers or the glowering flashing lights of a neon sign, advertising a dingy car service business. We may take a second glance but we easily move on, letting our eyes wonder aimlessly, registering nothing. But really there is much to admire in the letters of the words that plaster our visual landscape. It is the design of the letters that make words noticeable. Most us recognize what we like in structures all over the city without really even knowing why. Buildings are adorned with incised or raised letters above entryways, signs are brightly lit and splashes of paint in cryptic words jump off building walls on dimly lit streets. These visual displays are designed as a feast for our eyes and it is impressive and purposeful.

On Sept 2. at 6:30 PM, on the 6th floor, Mid-Manhattan will host a FREE slide lecture program “<em>From Gravestones to Graffiti 250 Years of Lettering in New York,” with guest speaker Paul Shaw. Paul Shaw is a designer and design historian. His specialty is lettering, whether written, drawn, carved or typographic. He teaches at Parsons School of Design and at the School of Visual Arts. He is also the author of Looking for Letters in New York: A Tale of Surprise and Dismay. Paul Shaw is the recipient of many prestigious grants and lectures widely. Mr. Shaw is an expert on the subject of letters and can speak eloquently on the design, complexity and craftsmanship of letters that are everywhere from subway signs, to grave markers, to graffiti. Please join us for a wonderful evening.

Books on letter design and graffiti can be found at the library in both the circulating and non-circulating catalogs. Also at the Picture Collection at the Mid-Manhattan Library, there are an abundance of images on letters/alphabets/graffiti that can be viewed.

Upcoming programs at Mid-Manhattan can be found at this link by using the pull-down menus and choosing "Mid-Manhattan" and "programs."

An article on Paul Shaw by New York Times' Streetscapes columnist Christopher Gray.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the protest in Tompkins Square Park that devolved into a 5-hour long clash between police, East Village residents and other park habitués. The day following the riots the New York Post dubbed the incident "Night of Rage" while the Daily News ran with "Tompkins Park Fury." However, there wasn’t just one violent confrontation to be remembered. Rather there were a series of demonstrations and pitched protests during the eighties and early nineties between older residents, newcomers to the neighborhood, the police, neighborhood squatters, and the younger crowd that frequented the park and surrounding streets.

The protests and clashes of late July and early August 1988 were alternatively described in the newspapers as being a result of a newly instated 1 A.M. park curfew, the influx of homeless camped out there, the noise of the crowds that gathered in the park to play music and hang out, and the overarching dispute over housing and perceived gentrification of the neighborhood. These were the years when “Die Yuppie Scum” seemed a valid and meaningful protest chant and graffiti often expressed other anarchist desires and pipe dreams. What drove the August 6th anti-curfew protest over the edge was not only the rowdy and violent behavior of some of the protesters that night, but the extreme reaction of the police force to the protest.

Wishing they knew how to keep their tea warmer, no doubt. (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery)

After reading a recent article in Australia's Age about the demand for unique handcrafted tea cosies made by volunteers in Pascoe Vale, Australia, I became curious about the past and present status of the cosy.

According to Richard Rutt in A History of Hand Knitting, the first documented use of a tea cosy was in 1867. Tea cosies flourished during the Victorian era, a period in which homemakers were obsessed with the decoration or covering of any and all available objects.

Tea cosies had their heyday on this side of the Atlantic as well, as the newspapers of the late nineteenth century reveal. An Oct. 20, 1892 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that "cosies are enjoying a sudden and unexpected rise in public favor" among women who hosted afternoon teas in their reception rooms. In Boston, a town with quite a reputation when it comes to tea parties, an issue of the Boston Journal (Nov. 25, 1879) included in its women's advice column an explanation of just what a tea cosy is--"simply a wadded covering for your teapot"-- and hints on making one: "Some very handsome ones are made of remnants of heavy brocade, but linen is generally used, embroidered or not, according to taste, as these covers are washable. Make the covering large enough for your teapot and provide a ring at the top to lift it off with." I read these articles in America's Historical Newspapers, an excellent database which enables you to find what you want fast in old American newspapers--it's available at all Library locations.

What is happening in the world of contemporary tea cosies? Teapotmania: The Story of the British Craft Teapot and Teacosy provides some answers. This exhibition catalog for a 1995 show at the Norfolk Museums and Archeology Service on contemporary British artists' and artisans' embrace of the teapot and teacosy as artistic forms provides both historical context as well as plenty of illustrations of the objects included in this exhibition. Artists of both pottery and needlework will find inspiration in the work of the artists represented here. Additionally, this museum's teapot collection now numbers almost three thousand teapots that can be browsed at their website. And if etsy is any guide, then there is both an interest and a market for handmade cosies today--search tea cozy AND tea cosy to be sure that you don't miss out.

It turns out that you need not drink tea in a cold drafty home to appreciate a fine cosy, after all.

Exciting news: The New York Public Library has received a very important gift from the Genealogical and Biographical Society. To read more about it, see the press release found on our website and the New York Times article from Saturday's paper.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Did anyone happen to catch this article in the New York Times on Monday on the Seal of New York City? It reminded me of a post that I put up about the city flag which, as I was corrected by Michael Miscione, displays the city seal not the state seal. The article provides a background to the debate and politics surrounding the date on the New York City seal, presently listed as 1625.

The article also mentions helpful resources that we have here in the Milstein Division such as Seal and flag of the city of New York, The encyclopedia of New York City, The island at the center of the world, and Gotham: a History of New York City to 1898. Care to join the debate?
 
 

Nineteenth Century French Bottlemakers (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery)

Bastille Day is just around the corner, and its arrival has led me to think more about the Paris depicted in a book that I recently read. Nancy Mitford's Don't Tell Alfred is set in mid-20th century Paris. This tale follows the misadventures of an unseasoned English ambassadress and her awful and entertaining relatives--from her Teddy Boy sons to her swooning niece/secretary, and from her mother (known as The Bolter) to her uncle Davey (a voracious consumer of medical treatments).

Now, there's a craft angle coming, I promise. Chapter 14 opens with Davey's arrival in Paris. He invites his niece (our intrepid ambassadress) to join him on an errand that will introduce her to a corner of Paris she'd not been before.

"I want to see if the man in the rue de Saintonge who used to blow glass is still there. I last saw him forty years ago -- Paris being what it is I'm quite sure we shall find him.
'Where is the rue de Saintonge?'
'I'll take you. It's a beautiful walk from here.'
It was indeed a beautiful walk. . . .

Everyday here in the Milstein Division, we get questions from all over the city and around the country about the history of New York City. Questions range from the very specific, “What was the weather in Manhattan on May 7th 1864?” to the dauntingly vague, “My great-grandfather lived in New York, his name was Patrick Murphy. Could you send me information on him?” Fortunately, the library’s collection of reference material on New York City history is astounding and rare is the question that goes unanswered. But for those who don’t have direct access to our print collection and are interested in researching the history of our great metropolis, I invite you to a free research class at the library this week.

Residents of New York City, members of a metropolis that somehow simultaneously operates as a small village, are all familiar with certain “characters” who frequent public spaces. Today it is the “Naked Cowboy” one can find entertaining the tourists in Times Square, the affable gentleman selling vegetable peelers in Union Square, or even the kids who perform gravity-defying acrobatics on the A train. A similar character who was surely familiar to many in the streets of NYC during the nineteen-teens through the nineteen-thirties was Kitty Marion, hawker of the Birth Control Review.

 
 
 
 
A popular collection in the NYPL's Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, and one of my personal favorites, is the county atlas series, most of which was published following the passage of a federal law commemorating the centennial of the United States. We have recently digitized 43 atlases covering New York and New Jersey from our collection of more than 420 titles printed before 1900. See this page for a list of digital holdings from this series.

Their pages are filled not only with wonderfully detailed maps on the national, state, county, township and city level, but also with interesting, flat perspective engravings depicting local business districts, prominent estates and farms. Business directories sometimes accompany the map pages that, along with the drawings, provide a glimpse into local social and economic geography of the 19th century. They also give us an idea of who provided funding for the production of these subscription based publications.

I've always been fascinated with landscapes changing through time as seen though the lens of the map. Shorelines, especially where there are lots of waves and tides, are particularly interesting things in that they are so clearly dynamic. These fire insurance maps of Coney Island, created between 1880 and 1907 document those changes beautifully. In addition to those covering Coney Island, the NYPL has digitized close to 2000 maps at this level of detail for all five boroughs of New York City.

G.W. Bromley, Atlas of the entire City of Brooklyn, 1880, Plate 35

E. Robinson, Robinson's atlas of Kings County, New York, 1890, Plate 20

G.W. Bromley, Atlas of the Borough of Brooklyn, 1907, Plate 28

“Is there a Jew in the House?”

Thus began a meeting of the “Great Pro-American Mass Meeting in Behalf of Free Speech and Americanism,” a gathering of several anti-immigrant, anti-Communist, reactionary organizations, on May 24, 1939. The crowd, turned away from their first meeting location at Carnegie Hall, had re-congregated at the Great Northern Hotel a few doors down 57th street. Police swarmed the lobby, shouts went around to “keep the newspapers out,” and journalists were violently jostled aside. The individual who delivered the threatening question above soon turned on a young man, menacing towards him until the man protested that he was Italian, not Jewish. Among those present at this nationalistic rally were speakers for the American Patriots, Inc; the Christian Front; the American Nationalist Party…and a diminutive, pacifist Hungarian Jew, Edith Wynner.

Staten Island's Halloran General Hospital, home of crafty recovering soldiers during World War II. (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery).

A few weeks ago at a Handmade Then and Now class (I'll teach this class next on July 16th at 2:15pm), I met a number of creative people, including a knitter named Maxine Levinson. Maxine works at the Child Life and Creative Arts Therapy Department of the Kravis Children's Hospital at Mount Sinai, where she teaches young patients and their families how to knit. I learned from Maxine how knitting, like other creative arts therapies, can reduce anxieties and provide a sense of security during sometimes long and stressful hospital stays. Maxine told me, "I am very fortunate to be able to share my love of crafts in such a unique way."

Before Colgate and other companies like it set up industrial shop, soapmaking was a home industry--and for some DIY entrepreneurs today, it still is. (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery)

Soap making is a thriving indie business. A recent quick search on Etsy led me to over 13,000 handmade soaps from which to choose, and the creative varieties are outstanding--from bars with city maps to bone-shaped soaps for dogs, you are bound to find the perfect concoction for you. Clearly you won't have to get your own hands dirty making soap unless that's what you're into (and if it IS, take a look at the latest issue of Bust--it offers a soap-making tutorial.)

For many centuries, however, soap making was a routine household chore, done in small batches using materials collected around the house. In Susan Strasser's eye-opening social history of trash, Waste and Want, she discusses how "spare fat" and drippings, as well as ashes (used in making the lye needed to create soap) could be collected and used to make soap at home. But even as commercial soap makers appeared on the American scene, the industry remained a "small, local enterprise before the Civil War." Strasser's study of the economics of American trash is well worth reading for much more than just the soapy bits, however. It provides a startling reminder of how radically our ideas of value and re-use have changed, and how old habits of recycling lost their place in industrial America.

To learn more about soap, and about the Western world's long-held suspicion of hot sudsy baths, I recommend Katherine Ashenburg's The Dirt on Clean. This memorable book considers the rise of soap (made at home using animal fats, but also later produced as a luxury item using gentle and attractive plant oils) and how its role shifted from that of a perfumed cosmetic to become the cleansing necessity it is for us today.

Have you lived in New York City long enough to remember when it used to be dangerous? Even the Worst Case Scenario Handbook:Travel has a section on how to handle riding the subway here! While this city is now arguably a safe place to live it certainly has a history marked with violence.

Take riots for example. New York City has had many of them; in fact the anniversary of a bloody and misguided riot is upon us. On May 10, 1849 violence erupted, due not to a draft, or a food shortage, or low wages. The Astor Place Riot ensued over a petty dispute between two actors, Edwin Forest, an American and William Macready, an Englishman. The deeper issue, however, was one of nationalism and classism as expressed in this surviving broadside. You can read a very dramatic account of the riot and the events leading to it in The Great Riots of New York City, by J.T. Headley. The event was so dramatic that it actually inspired Richard Nelson's play Two Shakespearean Actors.

Can you think of a present day equivalent to the Astor Place Riot? The closest I came was a fight between the Blue Man Group of Berlin and the one working at Astor Theater over which city has the hippest art scene. But that wouldn't be dangerous, that would just be bizarre.

Get the boys “out of the trenches by Christmas!

Thus began the Ford Peace Expedition of 1915, an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to convince warring European parties to make peace. The brains behind the project, short, stocky, bespeckled pacifist Rosika Schwimmer convinced automaker Henry Ford to finance the venture. Together, they chartered a ship—the Oscar II—and enticed a number of intellectuals, social and political luminaries, students, journalists, three small children, and one stowaway to join them on their voyage across the Atlantic.

The inspiration for the journey did not appear entirely out of the blue: Madame Schwimmer had met with diplomats from several of the warring countries earlier in the year, securing signed documents agreeing to consider a neutrally-brokered peace. She kept these letters safely tucked into her small leather purse, producing them when she met with President Woodrow Wilson and argued for an American role in peaceful intervention. His lingering isolationist tendencies forced her to search elsewhere.

And search she did, eventually landing upon Henry Ford, who agreed to lend his considerable wealth towards her goal. Once committed to the endeavor, Ford called a press conference at which he declaimed the famous phrase above, setting in motion the exciting preparations about a month before the actual launch date of December 4. On the 4th, the ship was seen off from the Hoboken port by a cheering crowd, including William Jennings Bryan and Thomas Edison.

About six years ago when I started working at the Mid-Manhattan Library in the General Reference Collection, a man came to the desk, wanting a book on New York Public Library history. He said the book was written by a woman. The first book that came to my mind was Phyllis Dain’s New York Public Library: A History of its Founding and Early Years. At that moment I did not know the call number but I knew its location on the shelf. I pulled the book from the shelf and gave it to him. I gestured for him to take a seat and with a smile he walked over to a table. I went back to my seat.

A half hour later, he came to the desk to return the book and thanked me. I asked if he found what he was looking and with that he told me he was giving a lecture at the National Arts Club that evening. He had come to Mid-Manhattan to do a last bit of fact- checking. The topic of his lecture, New York Public Library history in relation to Andrew Haswell Green. Our conversation was not long, but at the end of it I decided to ask him for his business card. “Gladly!” he replied and then pulled the card out of his wallet and handed it to me. We shook hands and said goodbye. I looked at his card carefully, looked at the name. Up to that point though we had engaged in a lively conversation, however we had not exchanged names. The card said in bold lettering “Rediscovering Andrew Haswell Green NYC’s Forgotten Visionary” and under this in small letters was the name Michael Miscione. Almost half the card was taken up with a photo of a man from the neck up, his bearded visage serene, confident. The man, no doubt, Andrew Haswell Green. Once off the desk, I put the card away in my desk and thought about what an interesting hour it had been.

Later I looked up Andrew Haswell Green. He was a very prominent figure among the movers and shakers in New York City in the late 19th century and he was integral to the establishment of Central Park and New York City as we know it today, by combining the boroughs in 1898. Green was instrumental in creating the famous grid of streets and avenues that help to define Manhattan. He also was a major participant in the establishment of The New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum. You name it--Haswell was involved in every iconic facet of what we know to be New York City for the latter part of the 19th century. Unfortunately, he was murdered by a crazed individual who mistook him for someone else and his name sank into obscurity. That is until Michael Miscione came along. Michael Miscione has been a one-man force in trying to revive the name Andrew Haswell Green and his importance in New York City History.

I kept Michael Miscione’s card in my desk along with other cards that I felt may somehow be important to me one day. That day came last year, many years after we had first met. When I was asked by my supervisor to begin doing programs in late 2006, I was at first a reluctant participant. Once I started doing programs, I discovered I really liked it and that is where my programming passion began. As I searched for interesting and dynamic programs, my thoughts went all over the place. Everything I read, saw or heard suddenly had an import beyond its initial interest. A potential program was in everything I experienced.

I decided to contact Michael Miscione to speak at the library. I knew he lectured based on our one encounter many years ago. And more important I knew he would be interesting. New York City- related programs are always a draw. We get hundreds of questions about New York City; patrons can’t get enough of the subject, me included.

After many attempts at contacting Michael Miscione, I finally reached him. I relayed the story of how we met many years ago and why I saved his card and ultimately why I was calling him that day. Initially he hesitated and then like a rubber band being shot, he remembered the encounter almost exactly as I did, except he could go onto to remember a really successful lecture he gave that evening at the National Arts Club. I thought to myself “Bingo! Cyn you just got yourself a really good program.” Michael was more than happy to come and speak at the library. I learned that he was the Borough of Manhattan Historian, that he was a filmmaker, and he was in fact as interesting as I found him to be many years before.

Michael Miscione has come twice to speak at the library. The first program he presented in the spring of 2007 was The Combining of the Boroughs of 1898 and the Establishment of New York City. He presented his second program this past February: The People vs. Wayne Boyd: The Murder Trail That Nearly Redrew The Map of New York City.

Both talks were the best that programming could offer. Slide lectures with wonderful historic photographs were supported by a dynamic speaker whose command of his subject takes the viewer on a most exciting intellectual ride. One hundred people attended each program. Michael Miscione will be speaking again on Monday, November 17, 2008. I encourage New York City history enthusiasts to mark their calendars now. You won’t be disappointed!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery.)

The legacy of handmade crafts--tweed, lace, baskets, woolen knits, and more--has been sustained in Ireland over centuries. These handmade traditions are tied both to individual makers' efforts as well as organizations that worked to revive and sustain interest in cottage crafts and industries in the 1880s. Janice Helland's British and Irish Home Arts and Industries, 1880-1914: Marketing Craft, Making Fashion provides an illuminating overview of the organizations that fostered this revival, and the complex issues of class and politics that shaped the movement.

One cottage crafts revival organization was the Donegal Industrial Fund, founded in 1883 by Alice Rowland Hart, a London merchant's daughter. Hart had become committed to finding urban markets for rural Irish handicrafts after touring destitute Irish communities of Donegal. As Helland explains, Hart held exhibitions, opened shops, and managed sales of handmade Irish goods. Hart's efforts focused upon assisting Irish women in creating livelihoods, but she shared the some of the same romantic notions of pre-industrial craft held by William Morris and John Ruskin.

And what of cottage crafts today? The traditions are alive and well in Ireland today, as Betsy Klein shows in Cottage Industry: Portraits of Irish Artisans. A few of the many devoted artisans celebrated in Klein's book are Kevin Donaghy, who makes woolen tweeds; Rory Conner, who creates knives; Áine & Tarlach de Blácam, who produce woolen knits; and Sadie Chowen, who operates the Burren Perfumery.

To find more Library resources on Irish handicrafts, simply look in catnyp under the subjects Artisans--Ireland and Handicraft--Ireland. And online, the Crafts Council of Ireland is a good place to explore Irish makers active today.

The Girl Scouts have been planting trees for almost 100 years. (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery.)

Yesterday, March 12th, marked the 96th anniversary of the first meeting of the Girl Scouts in the United States. Since Juliette Gordon Low's first gathering of "girls in green" in Savannah, Georgia, in 1912, Girl Scouts have been doing good deeds and learning in both the "outdoor laboratory of the camp" as well as the "indoor laboratory of homemaking" (as these two realms were called in the 1937 publication, Twenty-Five Years of Girl Scouting).

Girl Scouting always sought to offer girls more than just lessons in bee keeping and first aid. Low, who based her American Girl Scouts on the British Girl Guides (whose existence grew out of the British Boy Scouts organization), wanted to offer girls the chance to develop their individual "aptitudes through recreation," and the opportunities have grown over the decades. Although homemaking and pioneering were considered to be worthy skills to master, Girl Scouts were soon encouraged to embark on--among dozens of activities--nature study, handicrafts, rifle shooting, birding, dancing, and ambulance driving as well. For instance, the 1923 Scouting for Girls handbook outlined how Girl Scouts could earn proficiency badges in everything from electrician to dressmaker, from dairy maid to handy-woman. And in the realm of handicrafts, Arts & Crafts with Inexpensive Materials opens a particularly wonderful window to Girl Scouts' crafts aesthetic of the 1940s.

And, as revealed in Brave Girls by Harriett Philmus, Girl Scouts and Girl Guides heroically set aside their block printing and pottery (skills once needed to earn a proficiency badge as craftsman) during World War II. These women were saboteurs, secret couriers, nurses, barricade builders, fighters, wire tappers, and supply distributors. And they risked, and sometimes lost, their lives through this work.

Today's Girl Scouts continue to look beyond their own circles of friends. As Trefoil Round the World explains, recent Girl Scout projects have included supporting education and health efforts in foreign countries, embarking on tree planting, and starting recycling programs. To learn more about the Girl Scouts today, a visit their site is a great place to start. And among the many histories of this movement available at the Library, Susan Miller's Growing Girls: The Natural Origins of Girls' Organizations in America provides a satisfying critical look.

(William brought a traveling mint along too, to speed the creation of coins with the new kingly and queenly mugs. Image from the NYPL Digital Gallery.)

I've been making an effort to sort out my English history once and for all, and lately have been reading my way around the seventeenth century. And what have I learned? All about William of Orange's use, in the year 1688, of a traveling hand press to churn out political propaganda.

William of Orange, along with his wife Mary, tidily orchestrated what has come to be known as England's Glorious Revolution of 1688. This transfer of power unfolded through both military and propaganda campaigns. And, as one might imagine, that traveling printing press was part of the latter. As William moved across England on his way to London to claim the English crown for himself and his wife (who was English royalty,incidentally), he arranged for pamphlets, broadsides, and declarations, and even early comics of a sort to be printed and distributed across the countryside. Copies were given to local printers and booksellers to distribute to townspeople, and the texts were read aloud at public venues as well.

Historian Lois Schwoerer has shown in her research that on-the-fly media creation was just one element of a long and savvy print campaign on the part of William of Orange to lay the groundwork for his claim of rightful possession of the crown. In her article "Propaganda in the Revolution of 1688-89," Schwoerer explains the prominence of printing as a campaign element: "William was really prepared to keep the presses rolling for his cause after he landed in England. What better proof is there of this intention and his interest in propaganda than the fact that he brought a printing press with him--along with soldiers and horses--as part of his invasion equipment?" "Propaganda in the Revolution of 1688-89" appeared in American Historical Review's vol. 82, no. 4, p. 843-874, and is available via JSTOR at the Library.

Other sources of information on the history of this period include Britain's Bloodless Revolution, William III and the Godly Revolution, Arts and Society in England Under William and Mary, The Declaration of Rights 1689, and The Age of William and Mary. Additionally, digital editions of documents created during this propaganda campaign are ready to be viewed in Early English Books Online (EEBO), a database available at the Library.

The above photograph is part of the "By Popular Demand: Votes for Women," a digitized collection in the Library of Congress' American Memory Project. I love the details of this one: the ink well in the bottom left hand corner, the wooden ballot box, the look on the face of the voter to the right and how the photograph was taken just as the women in the middle is tearing her ballot.

Details like these are exactly what the Polling Places Photo Project are hoping to archive and share. "Polling Places" is a collaboration between the New York Times and AIGA. It is described as a "nationwide experiment in citizen journalism that encourages voters to capture, post and share photographs of this year’s primaries, caucuses and general election." I really like this one - A campaigner devoted enough to run into moving traffic.

So, don't forget to vote tomorrow and if you think to, bring your camera!