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Written by Claire L. Lanier During the heated 2016 election, New York artist Matthew “Levee” Chavez famously started the “sticky note project” in the Union Square subway station in Manhattan. Armed with nothing more than some pens and sticky notes, Levee encouraged passersby to write down their emotions surrounding the election and post them on the...

The post Preserving History, One Sticky Note at a Time appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

Written by Debra Schmidt Bach, Curator of Decorative Arts The New-York Historical Society recently acquired a pair of custom-made boots created for actor Kevin Smith Kirkwood for his role in the hit Broadway musical Kinky Boots, which tells the story of Charlie Price, a young Englishman who inherits his family’s failing shoe factory. While trying...

The post Heels and History: What sparkly, red platform boots tell us about American culture appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

Written by Louise Mirrer, President and CEO, New-York Historical Society I was born in 1953, three months before the signing of the armistice that ended the Korean War. My uncle, a U.S. soldier stationed in the Philippines, came home to New York that summer, bearing souvenirs. Among them was an exquisite embroidered silk kimono. A...

The post Bringing It All Back Home: The Vietnam War in Public History and Personal Memory appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

On Tuesday, November 14, the New-York Historical Society hosted a discussion, “A Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition.” This Frederick Douglass Council event featured Manisha Sinha as the guest speaker and Eric Foner as the moderator. Manisha Sinha, a James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut, is...

The post Program Recap: The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

This year we opened the Center for Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society, the first institution of its kind within the walls of a major U.S. museum. Since then, we’ve been sharing the stories of formidable women whose courage, activism, and determination in the face of resistance inspire us all. It’s been a busy year! A...

The post Women at the Center: Celebrating Our First Year at the Center for Women’s History appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

Currently, only 13 percent of the historical figures in history textbooks are women. Why does this matter? As one teacher put it, in his response to our national survey: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” Girls and young women make up more than half of K-12 students and college undergraduates. If women are considered...

The post “You Can’t Be What You Can’t See”: Teaching Women’s History appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

One of the highlights of our North Gallery in our 4th-floor Luce Center, which reopened last April, is the magnificent painting Return of the 69th (Irish) Regiment, N.Y.S.M. from the Seat of War, painted by Louis Lang (1812-1893) in 1862. The painting depicts the regiment marching off the ship and into the Battery in Lower Manhattan,...

The post Putting the “Fight” in the “Fighting 69th”: Louis Lang and the Historic Return of the 69th (Irish) Regiment appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

This spring, the Tech Commons @ N-YHS welcomed our second cohort of Tech Scholars. Young women grades 9-12 from four of the five boroughs came every day for a week to the Tech Commons to explore the intersections of women’s history and web development. The group was tasked with building websites to share not only...

The post Spring Tech Scholars Explore Women’s History appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

As October 31 draws near, ghosts appear in New York windows, and cobwebs creep over city bushes. Crisp leaves heap in piles along sidewalks where wrinkled gourds line up to watch crunchy commutes. All across the state New Yorkers still “inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams,...

The post History and Halloween: John Rogers’ “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

This week, the New-York Historical Society turned 214! To celebrate our birthday we’re taking a look back on the construction of the New-York Historical Society’s permanent home at 170 Central Park West. Before settling along the park, New-York Historical lived at seven other locations around the city between 1804 and 1908. Here’s a retro map...

The post Happy Birthday, New-York Historical Society! appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

Most Christian and Jewish Americans, reading about Christ’s resurrection or the Jewish exodus from Egypt during the upcoming Easter and Passover holidays, will not consider the Bible to be an American book. And yet, the Bible was our first American book; its earliest printings, translations, and interpretations reflected the experiences of the first Europeans to...

The post The Bible, America’s First Book: ‘In God We Trust’ at New-York Historical appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

The first Bible to be printed in America was special for many reasons, but perhaps the most remarkable is this: It was translated into a language that most English colonists couldn’t read. A Geneva Bible, it was printed in Natick, an Algonquin language spoken by the Massachusett people who lived on the land surrounding the...

The post The Fascinating Story of the First American Bible, a Native American Language Translation from 1663 appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

An estimated 44 million people attended the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, and witnessed its vision for a shimmering, Art Deco “World of Tomorrow.” Some five million of those visitors got a chance to behold Lift Every Voice and Sing. A sculpture by artist Augusta Savage, it stood at a...

The post Artist Augusta Savage and the Tragic Story of Her Lost Masterwork appeared first on Behind The Scenes.

Online Resource

Hayden Library - QB758.5.C46 C456 2018

Online Resource

Hayden Library - QB17.C853 2017

Barker Library - TA350.V34 2016

Barker Library - TA351.S68 2017

Barker Library - TA357.5.C45 S58 2018

Hayden Library - PN6737.S837 P36 2017

Hayden Library - PN6790.J34 P87313 2015

Hayden Library - PN6790.J34.K5413 2016

Hayden Library - PN6790.J33 T769313 2016

Hayden Library - PN6790.J33 C6613 2016

Hayden Library - PN6790.J33 N3213 2017

Hayden Library - PN6790.J33 N243713 2017

Hayden Library - PN6707.H69 2017

Hayden Library - PN6710.A43 2016

Hayden Library - PN6790.J34 G67613 2017

Hayden Library - PN6710.P65 2017

Hayden Library - PN6728.B36 M544 2017

Hayden Library - PN6747.C53 A2 2017

Hayden Library - PN6728.A496 R53 2017

Hayden Library - PN6790.J34 S532513 2017

Hayden Library - PN6728.B5175 L37 2017

Hayden Library - PN6727.P66 C87 2017

Hayden Library - PN6728.S737 H68 2017

London : Charles H. Kelly, 1893

New York : Harcourt, Brace & World, c1967

New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, [1972]

Toronto : Mclelland and Stewart Limited, 1979

Winnipeg : Dawson Richardson Publishing, 1927

Abingdon, Oxon. : Routledge, 2008

Dordrecht ; Norwell, MA : Springer, [2005]

London ; New York : Routledge, 2008

Earlier this month, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced an additional $4.5 million in funding to institutions in 18 states to expand selection and digitization of U.S. historic newspapers for the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), including first-time awardee University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.  Seventeen other participating institutions - Alaska Division of Libraries, Archives, and Museums; University of California, Riverside; Colorado Historical Society; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; State Historical Society of Iowa; Maine State Library; University of Maryland, College Park; Central Michigan University; Montana Historical Society; University of Nebraska-Lincoln; University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Rutgers University, New Brunswick (New Jersey); University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Ohio History Connection; South Dakota Department of Education; University of North Texas; and Washington State Library - received additional awards, each charged with selecting and digitizing approx. 100,000 newspaper pages from their state for contribution to the online newspaper collection "Chronicling America," hosted by the Library of Congress. Since 2005, cultural institutions in 46 states and Puerto Rico have contributed more than 13 million digitized American historical newspaper pages, published between 1789 and 1963 and in 14 different languages, to the collection. 

Jointly sponsored by the NEH and LC, NDNP is a long-term effort to provide access to an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. This rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. The NEH grant program funds the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories.... Read more about it & follow us on Twitter @librarycongress #ChronAm!!

On October 30, 1938, the radio-listening public was brought to near-hysteria by the evening broadcast narrated by 23-year old Orson Welles of an adaption of the H.G. Wells classic ‘War of the Worlds.” According to newspapers around the country the next day, the dramatization “threw the public into an uproar when listeners believed flocks of nasty little men from Mars had smashed down into the State of New Jersey and were wiping out civilization…” Police stations and newspaper offices were inundated with calls from the public and telephone switchboards overloaded, while others evacuated their homes and apartment buildings, fearing the worst. Read more about it and the aftermath and follow us on Twitter @librarycongress #ChronAm!

Just a few weeks after the the signing of the armistice with Germany on November 11, 1918, ending military action in World War One, Americans prepared to celebrate their traditional Thanksgiving with new appreciation for a "day of thankful prayer... and joyous feasting." Although still restricted by wartime rationing, the Evening World (New York, NY) asked chefs of major New York City hotels to contribute their best recipes to honor the Allied leaders responsible for victory and the war's end....Read more about it and try some Roast Turkey a la Pershing! For more Thanksgiving recipes see our recent Headlines and Heroes blog for "10 Thanksgiving Recipes You May Not Have Tried" and follow us on Twitter @librarycongress #ChronAm!