New York Historical Society Museum & Library

New York Historical Society Museum & Library
Name	New York Historical Society Museum & Library
Established	1804
Location	Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York City
Type	History museum and research library
Collection	Art, artifacts, manuscripts, prints, maps, photographs
Director	(varies)

New York Historical Society Museum & Library is a private museum and research library located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan that focuses on the history of New York City, New York State, and the United States. Founded in the early nineteenth century, it has developed into a major cultural institution with extensive holdings in art, material culture, manuscripts, prints, maps, and photographs that support scholarship and public exhibitions. The institution intersects with civic life, academic research, and cultural outreach across New York, engaging with museums, universities, archives, and historical societies.

History

The organization was founded in 1804 amid the antebellum era alongside contemporaries like the American Antiquarian Society, Massachusetts Historical Society, Library Company of Philadelphia, Society of the Cincinnati, and New-York Historical Society-era associations. In the nineteenth century it expanded during the administrations of figures such as Rufus King, DeWitt Clinton, John Adams Dix, and Hamilton Fish. Its nineteenth-century growth paralleled institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Union, Columbia University, New York Public Library, and Brooklyn Historical Society. During the Gilded Age the institution acquired collections associated with collectors like Henry Huntington, Isabella Stewart Gardner, J. P. Morgan, and Cornelius Vanderbilt family members. In the twentieth century the organization navigated changes tied to events including the Civil War, Reconstruction, Great Depression, World War I, and World War II, engaging scholars affiliated with Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, Yale University, and Harvard University. Recent decades have involved collaborations with the Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, National Archives, American Museum of Natural History, and Metropolitan Transportation Authority for exhibitions and loans.

Collections and Exhibitions

Collections span paintings by artists such as John Singleton Copley, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Asher Brown Durand, Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Norman Rockwell alongside material culture linked to figures like Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Aaron Burr, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Holdings include prints and photographs by Mathew Brady, Gordon Parks, Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Lewis Hine, and Jacob Riis and maps by John Rocque, Aaron Arrowsmith, William Faden, and Samuel de Champlain. Exhibitions have explored subjects from the American Revolution and War of 1812 to the Harlem Renaissance, Abolitionism, Women’s suffrage, Civil Rights Movement, and LGBT rights movement, often juxtaposing objects related to Alexander Hamilton and artifacts tied to Slavery in the United States or items associated with Immigration to the United States. The institution has staged themed shows in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and National Gallery of Art featuring loans from private collections of families like the Astor family, Rockefeller family, Morgan family, Rothschild family, and collectors such as Henry Clay Frick.

Library and Archives

The library and archives hold manuscript collections, rare books, broadsides, sheet music, periodicals, organizational records, and personal papers connected to people and entities including Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Hamilton Fish, William Cullen Bryant, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Langston Hughes. Cartographic holdings include atlases and maps used by Lewis and Clark Expedition researchers and materials related to urban planners such as Robert Moses and Frederick Law Olmsted. Photographic collections document events like the Draft Riots, the Great Migration, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, World's Columbian Exposition, and 1918 influenza pandemic. The archives serve scholars from institutions such as Barnard College, Fordham University, CUNY Graduate Center, Cooper Union, and international researchers referencing items in databases maintained with partners like the Digital Public Library of America and WorldCat.

Education and Public Programs

Educational programs target school groups, teachers, lifelong learners, and specialists, offering curricula aligned with state standards used by New York State Board of Regents, outreach with Department of Education (City of New York), and professional development alongside scholars from Columbia Teachers College, Bank Street College of Education, Teachers College, and Pace University. Public programming includes lectures featuring historians such as Gordon S. Wood, Eric Foner, Doris Kearns Goodwin, David McCullough, and Jill Lepore, family-oriented workshops, gallery talks with curators associated with the American Alliance of Museums, and conferences tied to organizations like the American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, and Society of American Archivists.

Building and Facilities

Housed in a building on Central Park West near American Museum of Natural History and Lincoln Center, the facility includes exhibition galleries, climate-controlled stacks, conservation labs, reading rooms, classrooms, and event spaces employed for symposia and fundraisers. Renovations over time have reflected trends in museum architecture influenced by firms that have worked on projects like the Frick Collection and Carnegie Hall, and construction phases responded to municipal planning overseen by New York City Department of Buildings and cultural policy from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Governance and Funding

Governance consists of a board of trustees drawn from finance, law, philanthropy, academia, and civic life, including professionals from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, KPMG, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and foundations such as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, and Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund. Funding derives from endowment income, membership, ticketed exhibitions, private philanthropy from donors like members of the Astor family and Rockefeller family, grants from agencies including the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts, and partnerships with corporations including Bloomberg L.P., American Express, and Bank of America. The institution participates in cultural networks such as the Council of American Museums and tax-exempt oversight under federal guidelines administered by the Internal Revenue Service.

Category:Museums in Manhattan Category:Libraries in New York City