Augustus Hepp’s Central Park in Blue
In 1853 the New York State Legislature set aside an expanse of land on the island of Manhattan that would eventually become Central Park. Five years later a design competition … Continue reading
How a Colonial Relic Became a Civil War Memento: Tracing Object History in the Silver Collection
Over the course of digitizing the Museum’s silver collection, we’ve come across many objects with storied histories, but not many can weave a historical path through our collection with the … Continue reading
An American Pioneer in Photojournalism: Jessie Tarbox Beals
March is Women’s History Month, a time when we celebrate women’s contributions to our history, culture, and society. This month provides the perfect opportunity to highlight some of these female … Continue reading
State Dinners at the Lotos Club
New Yorkers, as we know, love to document their peer group—even colonial New Yorkers did it, as Curator Bruce Weber recently described in a post on the City Musuem’s exhibition … Continue reading
Jumpsuits to Bullseye Bras: A Midcentury Fashion Trip
In the Dressing Room, on view at the City Museum through March 25, thanks to funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), a mannequin cloaked in a … Continue reading
Can’t make it to the runway? Check out Dressing Room: Archiving Fashion
Do you have your tickets to New York City Fashion Week, yet? If not (or even if you do) we invite you to step up to the velvet rope here … Continue reading
Folded and Feathered: bringing hand fans to the Collections Portal
Long before air conditioning was a common amenity in most residences and buildings, high society New York women established their “cool” with an opulent, yet useful accessory: the hand fan. … Continue reading
Ice Skating
Nobody is certain when humans first began ice skating, but it is believed that they did so at least a few thousand years ago. The first skates were sharp pieces … Continue reading
The New York Women Who Dismantled Prohibition
Women have been considered some of the most visible advocates of the temperance movement—the movement beginning in the nineteenth century to voluntarily abstain from drinking alcohol. Less known is … Continue reading
Conserving and Photographing the Silver Collection
The digitization of the Museum of the City of New York’s silver collection has progressed steadily since our last blog post highlighting presentation pieces in the collection. There are now … Continue reading
Affordable New York: Phipps Houses
The names of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick are well known in New York City and beyond for Carnegie Hall and for the Frick Collection. Though the institutions built … Continue reading
Affordable New York: Queensbridge Houses
At the beginning of 1934, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia founded the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). It was a moment of great need in the city, as its poorer residents … Continue reading
R.D Smith, the Bowery, 1970
The Bowery, like Broadway to its west, follows an original Lenape footpath spanning the island of Manhattan from south to north. In the Colonial era the area was filled with … Continue reading
MCNY Blog: New York Stories 