The Art & Architecture Collection has a large collection of women’s (and some men’s) 19th century fashion-plate periodicals. While French fashion dominated the 19th century this post features a selection of magazines from England, America and Sweden. French periodicals in the collection will be featured in a separate post. Many non-French publications sometimes featured bound-in French plates and full dress patterns on tissue from French pattern publishers. Because of rapid advances in printing technology, periodical publishing, along with book publishing, took off in the 19th century from a few dozen magazines in the early 1800s to a few thousand by the turn of the 20th century. The following magazines are a small sampling of what the Art & Architecture Collection has to offer from its large and diverse collection of original 19th century periodicals in both plate-only bound collections and full text/plate versions. They present not only a fascinating view of the development of fashion but of illustration as well.

Two of the earliest 19th century English fashion plate periodicals in the collection are a turn of the century publication called Gallery of Fashion (1794-1803. London: N. Heideloff) and a publication that followed a few years later called Records of Fashion and Court Elegance (1807-1809. London: Published under the direction of Mrs. Fiske by J. Shaw, Printers). Subscribers to the first volume of the Gallery of Fashion included Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal, their Royal Highnesses Princesses Augusta and Elizabeth, and the Duchess of York. Included on the list of foreign subscribers was "Her Majesty the Empress of Germany." High quality hand colored engravings of morning and mourning dress, riding dress, afternoon dress, and court dress each with text were featured in each issue.

The Art & Architecture Collection’s bound collection of issues of Records of Fashion is one of only three copies listed in WorldCat in the United States and the only copy listed in New York City. It features lovely hand colored engravings of young women wearing the latest fashions with extensive descriptive text accompanying each plate. The illustrations are simple but charming and more stylized than in some of the periodicals that came later. These are sketches of women with personality that made eye contact and engaged the viewer – which many fashion illustrations of the 19th century did not.  The publication also offered some songs and poetry, music and theater news, and the “Journal of Polite Intelligence”, “Courtly Events”, and “Private Assemblages” (in other words: gossip columns). The “Private Assemblages” column reported on “a grand assembly of the Marchioness of Stafford” held in dangerously inclement weather noting that “the noble Lady…did not forget the exposed domestics and they were regaled with not less than eight hogsheads of porter.” [A wine hogshead contains approximately 79 US gallons]. Records of Fashion is from an era when most women’s dresses were long, loose, high-waisted garments inspired by Greek classicism often described as “Regency” or “Empire.” They appear to be reasonably comfortable garments requiring only soft stays if anything. The garments did not impede a woman’s movement or compromise her health like those that would come to dominate fashion during the 1830s with corsets and crinolines, and later with bustles and straight silhouettes that encumbered movement. (As early as 1827 corsets were described as “slow and fashionable poison”).

La Belle Assemblée or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine addressed particularly to Ladies. (1806-1847. London). It is difficult to discuss La Belle Assemblée and the World of Fashion without mentioning the role of Mrs. Mary Ann Bell. Although she is generally acknowledged to be the wife of John Bell, the publisher who at times owned both magazines, she is not mentioned in his biography in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Whatever the relationship, up to 1821 while Bell owned the magazine, Mrs. Bell was not only its fashion editor but the owner of a Bloomsbury shop called “Magazin de Modes” that supplied the fashions, fabric, and accessories presented in La Belle Assemblée. The magazine was sold in 1821 but Mrs. Bell resurfaced about three years later as the fashion editor of The World of Fashion and Continental Feuilletons (1824-1851), which at that time was also owned and published by John Bell. At this point her shop had moved to St. James and still offered the French fashions that were featured in The World of Fashion and Continental Feuilletons. While it is unfortunate that these publications were also used as vehicles to promote a dress shop, they are no less an important record of the fashions of the era. After Mrs. Bell’s departure from La Belle Assemblée, the magazine devoted more coverage to the wardrobes of various members of the aristocracy as well as current Paris fashion with no recorded commercial tie-in.

The World of Fashion and Continental Feuilletons (London: Mr. Bell) was a monthly magazine that was published from 1824-1851. It was principally a fashion magazine with an abundance of hand-colored steel engravings of ladies’ fashions though it also featured articles on literature, music, fine arts and “gossip and the gaieties of High Life”.  In 1852 it merged with The Ladies’ Monthly Magazine and from 1852-1879 it was known as Ladies’ Monthly Magazine, the World of Fashion, Journal of Fashion, Literature, Music, the Opera, and the Theatres.  This configuration was heavily illustrated with elaborate high quality colored plates in rich, jewel-like colors with multiple figures wearing the latest fashion. It also occasionally featured full-size dress patterns. As in The World of Fashion, this publication offered fine arts, opera, and theater reviews, serialized romantic fiction (i.e. “The Master of Hearts”, “The Emperor and the Dancing Master”), and a regular column on the doings of the aristocracy and the Royal Family. “The Court and High Life” and “History of the Peerage” (profiling a different peer each month!) were regular features. Both incarnations of the publications are known for the quality of their plates which set a high standard in fashion periodicals of the time.

The Ladies Pocket Magazine. Jan. 1824-1840 monthly (London: J. Robins & Co.). Obviously a smaller format compared to other ladies magazines, the early issues featured engravings of prominent men of the day facing the title page not unlike pinups. Volume one had an engraving of Lord Byron; another issue had Le Vicomte D’Arlincourt, and another Sir Walter Scott. Besides fashions of the day and gossip, there was an assortment of fiction, poetry and articles such as “Paoli, the Corsican Patriot”, “The Science of Gloveology” and “The Duties of Married Females” which offered this advice:  “The greatest felicity we can desire in this life is contentment. If we aim at anything higher we shall be greatly disappointed. A wife must endeavor to attain this essential virtue.” The fashion plates are hand colored and sometimes busy pieces with multiple dresses, hairstyles and hats on the same plate. At other times a full plate was devoted to hats or hairstyles with elaborate, often bizarre, ornamentation. The literary content of this magazine has been described as better than its fashion content by some though that was not my experience.

There were also publications devoted to men’s dress. Gentlemen’s general interest magazines had been around since 1731 when The Gentleman’s Magazine was first published in London. However it was during the 19th century that men’s magazines with fashion plates were introduced.

Gentleman’s Magazine of Fashions, Fancy Costumes, and the Regimentals of the Army, Splendidly Embellished 1828-1894. (London: Mr. Bell) This gentlemen’s magazine was also the product of Mr. Bell and listed the same address across from St. James Palace as the World of Fashion. The title page informs the reader that “The Fashions are by English, German, and French tailors of the first eminence”.  There were also articles on theater and actors, poetry, gentlemen’s fashion observations, deportment, uniforms, and sport.  “As a passport to good society, dress is equally necessary with address.” Other advice for a gentleman included “…his tailor is quite as necessary an ally as even his schoolmaster.” “Pupil of Fashion stand up!”  Indeed. It featured not only designs for all sorts of day and night wear (including fancy-dress costumes) but designs for “Regimentals” – uniforms for Army officers. Also covered were “Sports and Sportsmen” a regular column which noted that “Those Sports – which whilst they contribute to the health, activity, good humor and manliness of Englishmen…are…ardently followed by gentlemen.”

Also of interest:  The Gentleman’s Pocket Magazine and Album of literature and fine arts. (1827-1832. London)

Across the pond there were a number of important women’s fashion plate magazines as well. The most successful and probably best remembered today, was Godey’s Lady’s Book published in Philadelphia from 1830-1898 by Louis A. Godey (there is no record of a wife owning a dress shop). Besides fashion it published a significant number of important American writers such as Nathanial Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe and also many women such as Harriet Beecher Stowe. Its fashion pages usually included a pattern each month along with sheet music, short stories, history, poetry, recipes and remedies.  It is more text focused than many fashion magazines of the time. There are a number of online resources available for this publication which are accessible through its NYPL Catalog entries.

The Monitor of Fashion (1853-1854) was the New York based version of Moniteur de la Mode, an important French fashion periodical. It was published by Genio C. Scott at 130 Broadway and featured “Numerous Engravings in the First Style of the Art”. An annual subscription cost three dollars. The text was in English though the plates were created in Paris as were the full size dress patterns on tissue that were bound into each issue. Gossip from Paris (“Lent has been very dull this year…”) appeared along with the fashion reporting, as did a regular column called “Gems of Thought” which offered items like “Graves are the footprints of the angel of eternal life” to ponder. Perhaps it sounds better in French.

Other American fashion plate periodicals include:

Mme Demorest’s Mirror of Fashions. (1860-1863. New York). This publication was the creation of milliner, abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Ellen Louise Demorest and her husband William Jennings Demorest, a well-to-do merchant. They ran a successful business in New York City publishing patterns and used the Mirror of Fashions as a catalog of their patterns for women and children. The black and white magazine also featured songs and music, poetry, short stories, non-fiction, and advertising for everything from French corsets and hoop skirts to pianos, organs and clothes wringers.

Also worth a look: Ladies Literary Magazine or Weekly Repository. Philadelphia: HC Lewis 1817-1818. Available online and in the Art & Architecture Collection.

Although for most people Sweden isn’t the first place that comes to mind when thinking of 19th century fashion publications, the Art & Architecture Collection’s copies of the Swedish Magasin för Konst, Nyheter och Moder [Magazine for Art, News and Fashion]. (Monthly 1823-1844. Stockholm: Tryckt hos Carl Deleen) are an illuminating experience. The 21volumes in the Art & Architecture Collection are one of only five complete sets in the United States and the only complete set in New York. The Magasin is considered a Swedish cultural icon and an important forerunner to later periodicals. It is probably most analogous to the English publication The Repository as regards the calibre of writing and art, and the diversity of subject matter. It featured not only high quality hand-colored fashion plates but designs for playing cards (usually bawdy), rebuses, politically focused satirical pieces, music and lyrics, short stories, humor pieces, travel and history pieces (which often focused on graves), music and theater reviews, cultural items, biographies, Paris fashion news, embroidery patterns - some with hand colored swatches, and furniture and décor all accompanied by hand-colored plates, black and white engravings, and aquatints, often presented as fold out illustrations. The art work is of uniformly high quality. An interesting feature of the fashion illustrations is that they regularly featured men and women together at a time when most magazines featured men and women separately.  

[Thank you Kathie Coblentz for all of your help with translations!]

Those are just a few of the many fashion-plate periodicals from the 19th century available in the Art and Architecture Reading Room of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. There are also plate-only volumes available in addition to the bound copies of complete issues. For any questions or queries please email us at artref@nypl.org. Many of these periodicals are available in digital format online. Please refer to the NYPL Catalog entries for links to web sites such as the Hathi Trust and others.

Adburgham, A. (1972) Women in print: writing women and women's magazines from the Restoration to the accession of Victoria. London: Allen and Unwin, 1972.  JFE 03-354

Adburgham, A. (1983). Silver fork society: Fashionable life and literature from 1814 to 1840. London: Constable.  JFD 84-1442

Chondra, J.,ed. (2008). The Greenwood encyclopedia of clothing through world history. (Volume 3: 1801 to the present). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. *R-ART GT507 .G74 2008

“History of publishing”. (2014) Encyclopaedia Britannica online.

The frogs pictured  above are reproduced from original hand colored etchings in the Rare Book Division's 1754 edition of Catesby's book. His book contains lots more than frogs, though, and you can browse more flora and fauna (including some Big Birds!) here. And if you'd like to read his monumental work in its entirety, you can do so here (Volume 1) and here (Volume 2).

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When and where do you like to read?

I read when I am waiting in airports or doctors' offices, sometimes on the plane or on the train, but most often when I am seated in a comfortable chair late in the afternoon or early in the evening.

What were your favorite books as a child?

I didn't read as a child, my mother read poems to me.  When I began reading I was a teenager and I read Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos, and others.  I also read poetry.

What books had the greatest impact on you?

The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens.  Moby Dick.  Great Expectations.

Would you like to name a few writers out there you think deserve greater readership?

Edwin Muir.  Javier Marias.  James Merrill.  Tommaso Landolfi. Jonathan Coe. Deborah Eisenberg.

What was the last book you recommended?

Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marias.

What do you plan to read next?

Hester Among the Ruins by Binnie Kirshenbaum and Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Gluck.

Image Credits: Rare Book Division.  New York Public Library.  Astor, Lenox, Tilden Foundations.   Map created with Scribble Maps.

To read further on the arc of LGBT civil rights struggles in the U.S. check out:

Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney. Out for Good: the Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America.

David Eisenbach. Gay Power: an American Revolution.

John D'Emilio. Sexual politics, Sexual Communities: the Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States, 1940-1970.

Linda Hirshman. Victory: the Triumphant Gay Revolution.

Eric Marcus. Making Gay History: the Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights.

Or the Library’s 1969: The Year of Gay Liberation exhibition online.

In the wake of the United States’ war declaration against Germany on April 6, 1917, dozens of extralegal vigilance organizations such as the Knights of Liberty, American Rights League, Boy Spies of America, American Defense Society, Sedition Slammers, National Security League, and the Terrible Threateners sought to ensure Americans’ full participation in the war effort, often through measures of intimidation, harassment, surveillance, and outright violence. 

By far the largest of these hyper-patriotic organizations was the American Protective League, or A.P.L., which maintained a network of branches in more than 600 cities.  Like the aforementioned groups, the A.P.L. worked to enforce patriotism and stifle dissent.  Unlike these other bodies, however, the A.P.L.’s actions were carried out with the approval of the U.S. government. 

Indeed, with the quiet consent of the Department of Justice, the American Protective League’s 250,000 civilian members—many of whom wore official-looking badges reading “Secret Service”—undertook vigilante actions against supposedly disloyal socialists, pacifists, and immigrants; engaged in domestic surveillance operations; raided businesses, meeting halls, and private homes in an effort to uncover pro-German sympathizers; and bullied citizens who, it was believed, were less than fully committed to the country’s war endeavors.  The organization’s most notable action occurred in September 1918 when, along with local police and federal agents, thousands of A.P.L. operatives conducted a three-day “slacker raid” in New York City, resulting in the arrest and questioning of more than 75,000 suspected draft dodgers. 

The most thorough contemporary account of the A.P.L.’s wartime activities is Emerson Hough’s The Web: A Revelation of Patriotism, which was published in 1919.  Said The New York Times in its review of the book, “There are many reasons why every man and woman in the whole country ought to know the full story of the A.P.L.’s work.  For if they are good Americans already it will make them still better ones, will stimulate their pride and loyalty.  If they are not good Americans it will put the fear of God in their hearts.”

For a more recent history of the American Protective League, Joan Jensen's The Price of Vigilance (1968) is worth investigating, as is Bill Mills’s 2013 work, The League: The True Story of Average Americans on the Hunt for WWI Spies.

Moby-Dick was published in England on October 18, 1851 (its United States publication fell almost one month later, on November 14). And in the one and a half centuries since, it has inspired countless new creations by painters, playwrights, musicians, writers, and even tattoo artists. In honor of the White Whale’s birthday, I have decided—like Herman Melville’s own sub-sub-librarian—to share “a glancing bird’s-eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan” since Moby-Dick’s first appearance in 1851.

Address of the Roman Catholics to their fellow citizens of the city and state of New York. New-York, 1840.

Andrews, Charles C. The history of the New-York African free-schools, from their establishment in 1787, to the present time : embracing a period of more than forty ... New York, 1830. 145pp.

Boese, Thomas, Clerk of the Board. Public education in the city of New York: its history, condition and statistics. New York, 1869.

Bourne, William Oland. History of the Public School Society of the City of New York: with portraits of the presidents of the Society. NY: Wm. Wood & Co., 1870 . Arno Press, reprint 1970.

Cannato, Vincent. The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York. NY: Basic Books, 2001.

Clinton, Dewitt / Campbell, W.W. (ed.) The life and writings of De Witt Clinton. NY: Baker and Scribner, 1849.

A compilation of the laws relating to common schools, applicable to the city and county of New-York, New-York: Press of M. Day & Co., 1842.

Dolan, Jay P. The Immigrant Church: New York's Irish and German Catholics, 1815-1865. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.

Dodd, Bella V. School of Darkness. NY: P.J. Kennedy & Sons, 1954.

Dunshee, Henry Webb. History of the school of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church in the city of New York: from 1633 to 1883. NY: Print of the Aldine Press, 1883.

Edgell, Derek. The Movement for Community Control of New York City’s Schools, 1966-1970. Lewiston, NY; Ontario; Wales: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998.

Education of Negroes in New York: research studies / compiled by workers of the Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration in New York City, for "Negroes of New York" (1937-1940).

Eltonhead, Marion. “Early Days of Schools and Schoolmasters in Old New York.” Valentine’s Manual of Old New York. 1924.

Fernow, Berthold (ed.) The Records of New Amsterdam from 1653 to 1674 Anno Domini. Baltimore : Genealogical Pub. Co. 1976.

Free School Society of New York. Manual of the Lancasterian system, of teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and needle-work, as practised in the schools of the Free-School Society of New-York. NY, 1820.

Free School Society of New York. On the establishment of public schools in the city of New-York. New York, 1825.

Kahlenberg, Richard D. Tough Liberal. NY: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Kilpatrick, William Heard (1912) The Dutch schools of New Netherland and colonial New York.

Memorials presented to the Legislature in the session of 1823 praying the repeal of the section of a law granting peculiar privileges to the ... New York, 1823.

Mohl, Raymond A. “Education as Social Control in New York City, 1784-1825.” New York History, Vol. 51, No. 3 (April 1970), pp. 219-237.

New York Panorama. Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration in New York City. NY: Random House, 1938.

The New York State Association of Independent Schools.

Pantoja, Segundo. Religion and Education among Latinos in New York City. Boston: Brill, 2005.

Podair, Jerald E. The Strike That Changed New York. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

Pratt, John W. “Religious Conflict in the Development of the New York City Public School System.” History of Education Quarterly. Vol. 5, No. 2, Jun, 1965.

Public School Society of New-York. An address of the trustees of the Public School Society in the city of New-York to their fellow citizens, respecting the extension of their ... New-York, 1828.

Public School Society of New-York. Dissolution of the Public School Society of New-York: being the report of the committee appointed to make the necessary arrangements et. al. NY: Commercial Advertiser, 1853.

Ravitch, Diane. The great school wars, New York City, 1805-1973; a history of the public schools as battlefield of social change. NY: Basic Books, 1974.

Stokes, I.N. Phelps. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. NY: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-1928.

Sutton. R. Debate before the Common Council on the Catholic petition respecting the common school fund and the public school system of education in New York City. NY Freeman’s Journal, 1840.

Sutton, R. The important and interesting debate on the claim of the Catholics to a portion of the common school fund: with the arguments of counsel before the Board of Aldermen of the city of New-York. NY Freeman’s Journal, 1840.

Teachers' manual to be used in the Catholic schools of the New York diocese

The Tribune Monthly. “The public schools of New York; a complete description and history of each public school in the city, with the names of the commissioners of education, school inspectors and trustees, principals and teachers and of many present pupils, forming the only accurate and complete account in existence of the New York public schools ...” 1896.

Van Vechten, Emma. “Early Schools & Schoolmasters.” Knickerbocker Press. Half Moon Series, 1898.

United Federation of Teachers 1960-2010.

Many other genealogy handbooks found through the library’s catalog include information on historical newspaper research.

The New York Public Library Podcast brings you the best of the Library's author talks, live events, and other bookish curiosities. In our most recent episode, author Jane Smiley visited NYPL for Books at Noon, where she discussed the origins of her trilogy The Last Hundred Years, the hard part about living with characters for one hundred years of their lives, and her middle school reading tastes. 

Jane Smiley has suggested there are Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, but she's written fourteen of her own. The Pulitzer Prize winner has also written two short story collections, five works of nonfiction, and five YA books. Even for so prolific a writer, anovel is a huge undertaking. So how did Smiley find inspiration to write a trilogy? According to the author, it began with a title:

"I was with a friend of mine named David Francis who's a writer from Australia and LA, and I said, 'So David I want to write a trilogy called The Last Hundred Years.' And he turned and looked at me and he said, 'Don't tell anyone that title because they'll steal it.' And I said, 'Oh, that's a good review!' And so that's how I got started."

The trilogy, as the name suggests, follows several characters through one hundred years of American history. According to Smiley, the characters became almost like family members:

"The first hard part was to get 'em born and the last hard part was to kill 'em off, and you know, I should've known that was coming. But, I enjoyed living with them. It was sort of like living with your own family. You have beefs with various things that they do. And you want them to do other things. But they're often their own and you really have to follow them and record them, but in some ways, they're making up their own minds about things."

One of Smiley's many other books is a tome on Charles Dickens. Her love affair with the author wasn't instantaneous, however:

"In seventh grade we were assigned Oliver Twist. I thought it was awful and I didn't understand why they wouldn't give him a second serving of porridge. In eighth grade, we read Great Expectations. I thought that was awful, awful too. In ninth grade, they assigned this even longer book called David Copperfield, and I put it off for two weeks, and finally, because I always did my homework on Saturday morning, I started reading it, and I read it in two days, and I thought it was wonderful. And so, I felt a lot of fondness for Dickens when I was young. The other book that I really loved when I was young was Giants in the Earth which you wouldn't have read unless you're from Minnesota."

The Photography Collection has recently acquired a rare brass locket containing twelve miniature albumen prints of the famous couple made shortly after their wedding. The locket includes portraits by Mathew Brady and a popular image of Mrs. Thumb with a baby, one that was borrowed for the photo shoot to convey domestic success (she was in fact childless). The albumen prints are miniature, folding into the locket that measures only one inch on each side. Since jewelry bearing photographic portraits of loved ones was popular at the time, we can assume that this locket might actually have been worn. The locket itself is shaped like a suitcase and inscribed with “Somebody’s Luggage” on its front—likely a reference to the Charles Dickens story of that title about a waiter who publishes the stories he finds inside lost luggage, without knowing who wrote them. The extremely lightweight and portable format maximized the sharing potential of these celebrity images as it moved them into a physical proximity usually reserved for relatives, not strangers. The locket is one example of how photographs blurred the lines between familiar and unfamiliar, private and public as they gave innumerable afterlives to one-time events.

The Tom Thumb locket and other examples of memorabilia will be on view in Public Eye: 175 Years of Sharing Photography (December 12, 2014-September 5, 2015), in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building’s Gottesman Exhibition Hall.

Bluford Adams, E Pluribus Barnum: The Great Showman and the Making of U.S. Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Phineas T. Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs, Or, Forty Years’ Recollection. Hartford: J.B. Burr, 1869.

Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004.

James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Elizabeth Siegel, Galleries of Friendship and Fame: A History of Nineteenth-Century American Photograph Albums. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.

On Halloween, we pull back the curtain between real and unreal, reveling in the spooky, mysterious, and inexplicable. What better way to celebrate the holiday than communing with the spirits and ghosts who reach out to us from the pages of the Rare Book Division?

The Victorian spiritualists were fascinated by communicating with the Great Beyond, searching for unquiet spirits through writing, art, and photography. One such spiritualist, Miss Georgiana Houghton, claimed to channel ghostly artists for her drawings, which we have reproduced on lithographed cards. Her fellow medium Isaac Post communicated with famous deceased Americans, passing along timely abolitionist messages from founding fathers George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in his Voices from the Spirit World, published in 1852. These claims of otherworldly abilities did not go unchallenged: we also have an 1888 broadside poster advertising Kate Fox and Charles Starr, who promised to expose the tricks of "spirit rapping mediums" at New York's Lyceum Theatre.

Whether you're in the mood for something seriously scary or fiendishly funny, we have you covered. Just open a book to channel a spirit of your own!

Halloween approaches here in the Rare Book Division, and in addition to planning my costume (I'll be dressing as a librarian, naturally), I've also been exploring Washington Irving's classic and frightful Legend of Sleepy Hollow. This tale first appeared in part six of Irving's Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (the George Arents Collection holds a copy of the first edition, dated 1819-1820, in its original parts). While the initial printing contained no illustrations, the tale has since inspired many artists to create works evoking the  strangely funny but frightful events in the story. From images of courtship and fireside taletelling to headless horsemen and eerie graveyard walks, here's a sampling of illustrations from the following editions: the American Art-Union's 1848 edition, with art by F. O. C. Darley; an 1897 edition designed and illustrated by Will Bradley;  Powgen Press's 1936 edition with illustrations by Mary Dana; and a 1943 edition from Peter Pauper Press, illustrated by artist Aldren Watson.

Want to learn more about Washington Irving, the man behind the Legend ? I recommend Elizabeth L. Bradley's Knickerbocker of New York, or this  exhibition catalog in the Library's  Digital Collections. Happy Halloween!

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is synonymous with luxurious accommodations. Guests expect excellence in surroundings, room service, food and entertainment. One hundred years ago, white glove service was also expected by guests at the first Waldorf-Astoria's Hotel located on 5th Avenue and 33rd Street.

The Waldorf-Astoria had a tumultuous history. The Waldorf-Astoria hotel was originally built as two separate hotels. After tearing down his father's mansion, William Waldorf Astor built the Waldorf Hotel at the corner of 5th Avenue and 33rd Street. This former mansion stood next to his aunt Caroline Astor's brownstone.

Astor fought with Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor over who would be known as "the Mrs. Astor." William believed that his wife, Mary Dahlgren Paul should enjoy that designation. Caroline Astor, a formidable woman, already had this distinction as the gate-keeper of high society.

To retaliate against his aunt, William Waldorf Astor built the Waldorf Hotel. It opened 1893 towering over his aunt's mansion. Instead of a genteel family, Caroline Astor had to contend with strangers coming and going.

William, for reasons of his own, moved to England. Not to be outdone by his cousin, Caroline's son John Jacob Astor IV persuaded his mother to move out. She relocated to the Upper East Side leaving the brownstone to be demolished. In its place, John Jacob Astor built the Astoria Hotel.

In anticipation of the Astoria Hotel, The New York Times wrote the following:

"The style of the architecture will be that of French Renaissance, and the building itself, Mr. Hardenberg [architect] says, will be something of a copy of the Grand Hotel in Paris on a smaller scale... In this court will be a fountain about which will be placed luxurious resting places on which male guests may lounge and smoke their after dinner cigars. An orchestra, in all probability, will assist in the soothing effects of good digestions... One of the radical innovations in the management of the new hotel will be the establishment at the main entrance of a concierge —a plan usual in France—and this individual will guard the entrance. It will be his duty to prevent the admission of persons who have no right to enter or whose presence would obviously be unpleasant. The concierge will likewise be a convenience to people who come in late at night." The New York Times, May 29, 1890.

The Astoria Hotel hired a woman civil engineer, Marian S. Parker. Parker, at twenty years old, was the only woman engineer in the United States. During her interview with the New York Times, she discussed her family background.

Parker stated that her interest in mathematics led her to become a civil engineer. When the Times questioned her about obtaining an education, Parker remarked that she did not have a problem at all. She went to Ann Arbor the same school as her father. All the classes at the university were co-educational. The New York Times, January 4, 1897

At the same time that the Astoria Hotel was being built another building received notice in the press. This building would eventually reside on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street.

"Plans for the Library: Architects Asked to Submit Drawings for the New Public Building which will cost $1,700,000. Will be Two Competitions. Details of the Number of Rooms and Arrangement Required by the Committee-Care for the Convenience of the Public". The New York Times, May 24, 1897

A truce was brokered between the Astors by George C. Boldt. As the proprietor and lessee, Boldt connected the Waldorf and the Astoria hotels through a colonnade know as "Peacock Alley." Peacock Alley would become the place to be seen and to watch the well-heeled dressed in their finery.

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel operated for another twenty-years, finally closing its doors in 1929. This site was designated for the Empire State Building. Several years later, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel would open its doors at its current site at 301 Park Avenue (between 49th and 50th Street).

This blog was inspired by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel records, 1893-1929, located in the Manuscripts and Archives Division.

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A few months ago, the NYPL Milstein Division of United States History, Local History & Genealogy put our collective local history obsessive minds together to bring you a list of our favorite NYC non-fiction books. Now we reveal our favorite New York documentaries. These documentary films best depict New York, either in moments or over lengths of time, providing a capsule of a New York experience.

Battle For Brooklyn The story of a reluctant activist Daniel Goldstein as he struggles to save his home and community from being demolished to make way for a professional basketball arena and densest real estate development in U.S. history.

Milstein says: “Although fairly one-sided, it’s a prime example of big projects versus residents that is so common in NYC.”

Bill Cunningham New York Documentary on New York times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, Cunningham "has been chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soirées for the Times Style section in his columns 'On the Street' and 'Evening Hours."

Milstein says: “Bill succeeds in his classic paradox New York lifestyle only after riding a bike around town for 60 years and spending every Sunday in church. He is paid to follow the nightlife of tastemakers but is mortified by elite treatment and wears a blue janitor’s smock from the hardware store. He lives in a rent control studio in Carnegie Hall two blocks from the highest retail rents in the world. “I don’t touch money,” says Bill. New York has a habit of using small parts of itself as a stunt double for the universe, and the city needs Bill Cunningham to take pictures of it.”

Blank City In the late 1970s to the middle 1980s, Manhattan was in ruins. But true art has never come from comfort, and it was precisely those dire circumstances that inspired artists like Jim Jarmusch, Lizzy Borden, and Amos Poe to produce some of their best works. Taking their cues from punk rock and new wave music, these young maverick filmmakers confronted viewers with a stark reality that stood in powerful contrast to the escapist product being churned out by Hollywood. Documents the history of "No wave cinema" and "cinema of transgression" movements.

Milstein says: “A vivid portrait and love letter to a time when artists could afford to work and play in Manhattan. Makes you nostalgic for a grittier version of the Lower East Side.”

Capturing the Friedmans The Friedman's seem to be a typical family from affluent Great Neck, Long Island. One Thanksgiving, as the family gathers for a quiet holiday dinner, a police battering ram splinters the front door and officers rush inside. The police charge Arnold and his son Jesse with hundreds of shocking crimes. As police investigate, and the community reacts, the fabric of the family begins to disintegrate, revealing questions about justice, family and finally the truth.

Milstein says: “Absolutely disturbing and yet absolutely fascinating. You will really question what is true and what is fabricated.”

Dark Days Documentary about a community of homeless people living in a train tunnel beneath Manhattan. Depicts a way of life that is unimaginable to most of those who walk the streets above: in the pitch black of the tunnel, rats swarm through piles of garbage as high-speed trains leaving Penn station tear through the darkness. For some of those who have gone underground, it has been home for as long as 25 years.

Milstein says: “This is like a peek into a secret and sad world that you would never have permission to enter. It will make you redefine the word ‘community’.”

Grey Gardens Portrait of the relationship between Edith Bouvier Beale and her grown daughter, Little Edie, once an aspiring actress in New York who left her career to care for her aging mother in their East Hampton home, and never left again. The aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis feed their cats and raccoons and rehash their pasts behind the walls of their decaying mansion, Grey Gardens.

Milstein says: “A dark study of an overly codependent relationship in hovel that should be a castle.”

Jamel Shabazz: Street Photographer Photographer Jamel Shabazz has documented urban life for more than 30 years and has covered the growth of hip-hop in New York City since the 1980s. The documentary "Jamel Shabazz Street Photographer," is a portrait of his life, career, and impact as a photographer, educator, and visual artist.

Milstein says: “Just as much as Shabazz’s iconic books of photographs, Back in the Days, A Time Before Crack, and The Last Sunday in June, this film transports you to his NYC, an under-represented beauty of black families, B-Boys, Black Muslims, and street bravado.”

Man on Wire On August 7th, 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between the New York World Trade Center's Twin Towers. After dancing for nearly an hour on the wire, he was arrested, taken for psychological evaluation, and brought to jail, before finally being released.

Milstein says: “This feat and this story portrayed the WTC Twin Towers in a way I had never pictured them before. And a tightrope walker as your storyteller - I would not have envisioned that but I’m glad to see the vision manifested.”

Manhatta Photographer Paul Strand and painter Charles Sheehan filmed Manhatta in 1921. An 11-minute documentary, it explores photography using the medium of cinema, and is also a tribute to Manhattan. The film consists of 65 shots of various views of the city. The camera is static. Movement comes from within the picture frame, from people, cars and trucks, trains, tugboats, passenger liners, and from the steam and smoke they produce, nearly all at a distance, rendered somehow impersonal. Skyscrapers and bridges dominate. The film begins with a shot of the skyline, seen from the East River, then the Brooklyn Bridge, before moving to a shot of commuters streaming out of the Staten Island Ferry. For the most part we cannot see their faces. Next we see a shot of Trinity Church Cemetery, followed by a view of the large blank windows of an office building, dwarfing the people walking by. Next a shot of the Woolworth Building, the Cathedral of Commerce. We see some views at street level, of people on the sidewalk, on their way to work, and so on. But mostly the shots are from above, or at a distance. The camera shows construction workers in silhouette, part of the skyline. We see the rooftops and their chimneys and water towers, the windows of skyscrapers, and further on, the horizon, the sun setting over the Hudson.

Milstein says: “The film is modern, at times abstract, almost surreal. Interstitial titles quote Walt Whitman, lines which precede and underpin the shots that follow. The film is both modern and sublime, a large scale tribute to Manhattan. It does not concern itself overly with individual people, rather the monuments they build. Manhatta does not seem overtly political. It does not explore the down sides to industrialism, technology, capitalism, and modern living, tropes popular in modernist works. Yet one cannot help but think of the cinematic passages in Manhattan Transfer, a very political, and modern text. I feel sure that the book's author Jon Dos Passos must have seen Strand and Sheehan's film.”

Mulberry Street Born in the Bronx and raised in upstate New York, Abel Ferrara started his professional film career on Mulberry Street in 1975. For the past year he's been living on the block, and the feast of San Gennaro is the subject of his new film. While he has used this location for a few of his features, this time it's the star of the film.

Milstein says: “A week in the life of Little Italy's San Gennaro Festival, directed by the O. Henry of Fear City, Abel Ferrara (King of New York, Driller Killer). A sausage-and-peppers homage to New York street life and ethnic pride which still haven't gone the way of subway tokens, Howard Johnson's, and smoking in bars. Plus the brief appearance by a Frank Vincent bubble-head doll.”

New York: A Documentary Film - Ric Burns An eight-part, 17½ hour, American documentary film on the history of New York City.

Milstein says: “This series was a big deal for me when I immigrated and all I knew was Ramones, Seinfeld, Taxi, Madonna, Hip Hop and bagels. It's a great introduction to New York History.”

On the Bowery 1956 American docufiction film directed by Lionel Rogosin. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film chronicles three desperate days in a then impoverished lower Manhattan neighborhood, New York's skid row: the Bowery. It is the story of Ray (Ray Salyer), a railroad worker, who drifts on to the Bowery to have a drunken spree after a long bout of laying tracks and then falls in with a band of drunks.

Milstein says: “This is not strictly a documentary despite being nominated for ‘Best Documentary feature’. It is however amazing footage of the Bowery in the 1950s. It’s footage New Yorkers should see, especially if they’ve ever walked along today’s more upscale version of the iconic street.”

Page One: Inside the New York Times This documentary chronicles the transformation of The New York Times newsroom and the inner workings of the Media Desk, as the Internet redefines the media industry by surpassing print as the main source of news.

Milstein says: “As New Yorkers, the Grey Lady is ours. There is no better paper to observe in this changing era of news than this one.”

Paris Is Burning Behind-the-scenes story of the fashion-obsessed New Yorkers who created 'voguing' and drag balls, and turned these raucous celebrations into a powerful expression of fierce personal pride.

Milstein says: “An absolutely perfect time capsule of the late 1980s in the NYC drag scene. The director lets the subjects explain themselves instead of trying to superimpose definitions on an underrepresented group of fascinating frolicers.”

Public Speaking Wise, brilliant, and funny, Fran Lebowitz hit the New York literary scene in the early '70s when Andy Warhol hired the unknown scribe to write a column for Interview magazine. Today, she's an acclaimed author with legions of fans who adore her acerbic wit. Public speaking captures the author in conversation at New York's Waverly Inn, in an onstage discussion with longtime friend and celebrated writer Toni Morrison, and on the streets of New York City.

Milstein says: “The director of Goodfellas profiles NYC writer and personality Fran Lebowitz, whose machine-gun wit and opinions, like the wiseguys, blow people's heads off. Fran talks in fast punchlines and her New York story is inter-spliced by an abundance of footage recounting the post-war legacy of New York artists and intellectuals, including James Baldwin debating William F. Buckley and Serge Gainsbourg's 1964 video for "New York USA."

Style Wars Exploration of the subculture of New York's young graffiti writers and break dancers, showing their activities and aspirations and the social and aesthetic controversies surrounding New York graffiti. Dramatizes conflicts between graffiti artists and the city, as well as among the graffiti artists themselves.

Milstein says: “Another perfect time capsule. Mid ‘80s breakdancing and graffiti art all set in their natural backdrop of the NY transit system. Anyone interested in hip hop or street art should see this.”

Do you have a favorite NYC documentary? Let us know in the comments!

The Weimar Republic brought a period of prolific creativity to Germany in the years between World Wars I and II, with art, theater, music, and literature all experiencing a golden age.  Fine press printing—which began during the Arts and Crafts movement of the late nineteenth century—was no exception, and perhaps the pinnacle of Weimar fine press achievement is the Cranach Press.  Headed by Count Harry Graf Kessler, an aristocratic patron of the arts, the Cranach Press enlisted the help of an international stable of artists and scholars to produce hand-made books that doubled as works of art.  My favorite book from the Cranach Press is an edition of Hamlet based on the text of Shakespeare’s Second Quarto.  NYPL’s Rare Book Division holds both the original German edition of 1928 and the English edition of 1930.

Hamlet’s elegance comes from all aspects of its design working together to make something aesthetically beautiful, substantively evocative, and functionally readable.  In order to achieve this, Kessler knew that the play’s illustrations needed to work with the text to both complement and supplement it.  He asked Edward Gordon Craig, an English wood engraver and, importantly, actor and theater set designer, to design and carve the woodblock illustrations.

"Why echo [the author's] words—how can there be anything in that?  But then if you don't do that, how illustrate the book?" —Edward Gordon Craig, Franklin, p. 84.

Craig was no stranger to Hamlet —he had recently worked as the set designer on a production of the play for the Moscow Art Theatre and had considered producing his own edition of the text.  Craig wanted to address the lack of stage directions in Shakespeare’s original text by providing illustrations of scene designs, costumes, lighting, and actor movements.  This mindset shaped his intentions for the Cranach Press’ Hamlet, and the tiny wooden figures he created to model the Moscow Art Theatre’s sets became the basis for the form these intentions would take.

Like many private presses of the time, Kessler sought to honor the early printing era with Hamlet’s gothic font, columned layout, and black-and-white color scheme accompanied by a single accent color—orange in this case, plus one striking use of blue.  The illustrations, however, are distinctly modern, and this disconnect put me off-kilter—giving me the feeling that something was indeed rotten in the state of Denmark.  Of course words, images, and design affect everyone differently, but I found my time with Hamlet to be an immersive experience that transported the atmosphere of Elsinore, full of doubt and foreboding, to my own desk at NYPL.

To learn more about the Cranach Press, Kessler, and Craig, try:

Image credits, unless otherwise noted: Rare Book Division. New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, Tilden Foundations.

All of our print collections can be identified through searching our catalog or through consulting our old-school hard copy catalog that we keep at the reference desk in our reading room. Searching by subject is the best way to find material in our collections. Most subject headings will reflect the geographic area of interest along with a particular topic relating to that place. Below are a few suggested subject headings to use for an initial search of our collections in the NYPL catalog. Keep in mind that there are plenty of permutations of this search, depending on what location or subject you are interested in:

If you’d like to search for all maps of a particular location, you can search for a place name, i.e. a neighborhood, town, city, county or state, along with the word Maps:

Of course, a researcher runs into two problems here: the sheer number of maps of places like New York City, coupled with the fact that the nondescriptive, utilitarian titles of most maps, e.g. “Map of New York,” doesn’t provide many clues as to what’s actually on the map. Whenever the need arises to narrow down a list of resources, a few quick steps can be taken.  One step would be to try a narrower search, such as:

Another recommended step would be to use the advanced search feature in the catalog and select a date range of interest in order to limit the resources to sort through.

Since a sizeable portion of our collection, particularly those items from the mid-twentieth century are not included in our online catalog, we highly advise and greatly encourage researchers to get the most out of our collections by to reaching out to our librarians either by visiting the division or sending us an email: maps@nypl.org.  Tell us about your projects and research and we’ll help you navigate through the collections; it’s what we do best!

Of course, there are other divisions in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building that provide strong documentation of the city’s past, their collections too numerous to mention in any meaningful detail here. The two divisions that should already be familiar to lovers of New York City history are the Manuscripts and Archives Division and, as noted above, The Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History & Genealogy. For example, the Milstein Division has a wonderful collection of uncataloged 20th century real estate brochures (similar to those in the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library), which includes land auction pamphlets from Mr. Whiton’s collection that were not digitized along with those held by the Map Division.

In addition to providing assistance in the use of their historical collections, the Milstein Division staff regularly teach classes on researching aspects of New York City’s history and publish guides on using the library’s collections in your research. Here are a few of their more recent posts on researching real estate and the changing face of the city:

The librarians in the Milstein Division would also like to hear about your research questions. Feel free to drop them a line anytime at history@nypl.org.

The New York Public Library Podcast brings you the best of the Library's author talks, live events, and other bookish curiosities. In our most recent episode, we were lucky to be visited by Richard Ford, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, who is perhaps best known for his Frank Bascombe books.  At Books at Noon, the novelist and short story writer discussed Raymond Carver, voice in fiction, and becoming a reader.

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Although he has written eight novels, Richard Ford told us that he was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to reading. He explained:

"I went to high school in Jackson, Mississippi, where you could graduate in the middle of your class and never have read a book, and so really I didn't read a book until I was about eighteen... Teachers were always saying to me (you know how teachers do things), 'You need to apply yourself. You need to apply yourself.' We've all been told that. So when I got to be about eighteen, I thought, 'If I don't start applying myself, I'm going to be doomed.' And that fear of failure really was what it was that made me read. It wasn't anything high-minded."

Once Ford established himself as a writer, however, he became known for the integrity of his sentences and his voice. Of the latter, which is notoriously difficult to define, Ford said:

"I think voice is the music of the story's intelligence, that the voice of a novel, the voice of a story, is not the speaking voice of Frank Bascombe but it is something a good bit more complex. It is how a novel sounds when it is doing its most important business on you, when it is, as novels do, as poems do,. Novels lean on us. They are artifice. They are rhetorical. They are trying to effect us and change us. And that's what I hear, what I understand, when I use the word 'voice.'"

Shortly after publishing his first novel, A Piece of My Heart, Ford met the legendary minimalist writer Raymond Carver. The two became fast friends:

"I met Carver in 1977 in Dallas. Universities still had money for literary festivals, and they brought me and Ray and Ed Doctorow, who'd been my teacher, and Phil Levine, your old friend, a bunch of us down to do that thing. And Carver was there and he was not long off of the booze, and he was very shaky, and I don't mean literally shaky, but his grip on his life was very uncertain. And when he met me, it was kind of love at first sight between him and me because I wasn't a drunk and I owned a house. I was still married to my original wife, and I was solvent. And I think he looked at me, and he thought, 'These are the kinds of friends I need to have.'"

You can subscribe to the New York Public Library Podcast to hear more conversations with wonderful artists, writers, and intellectuals. Join the conversation today!

Materials on other historic New York City holidays and celebrations can be found through the following subjects:

Historical newspapers with first hand accounts of Evacuation Day celebrations are searchable through the Proquest Historical Newspapers and America’s Historical Newspapers databases.

Search the HarpWeek database for Evacuation Day illustrations and articles featured in the Harper’s Weekly magazine.

The U.S. History in Context database also includes primary sources, reference sources, academic journals, magazines, and newspapers relevant to Evacuation Day.