The Library and Archives of Canada has just announced a new online resource, Immigrants to Canada (1803-1865). According to the site:In 1803, the British Parliament enacted legislation to regulate vessels carrying emigrants to North America. The master of the vessel was required to prepare a list of passengers. Unfortunately, few such lists have survived and therefore, there are no comprehensive nominal lists of immigrants arriving in Canada before 1865.
Here is the link.
Some lists have been identified and indexed by name in this database. It also includes other types of records such as declarations of aliens and names of some Irish orphans.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Online Resource: Immigrants to Canada (1803-1865)
Monday, November 17, 2008
Beacons To Commemorate British Departure
The Hudson Valley Press Online is reporting on plans to mark the 225th anniversary of the evacuation of British troops on November 25, 2008 by lighting a series of five local beacons that "replicate the original signal locations used by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War." The plan is a project of the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, Scenic Hudson, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, the Palisades Parks Conservancy, and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission:These vital systems summoned the militia in both New York and in neighboring New Jersey and warned residents of the approaching British Redcoats. The types of beacons varied from tar barrels on top of poles, to pyramids, to wooden towers filled with dried grass or hay that could be ignited. The beacons enabled quick and effective communication with troops throughout the lower Hudson River Valley.
The five locations will include:
Instead of lighting fires, Palisades, the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, and Scenic Hudson will create a symbolic Xenon light display that will light up Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area from Bear Mountain State Park to Beacon. This project is also part of the larger interstate effort with national heritage area partners in New Jersey, the Crossroads of the American Revolution National Heritage Area. Six additional Beacons will be lit in New Jersey. The total project area will stretch from Princeton, NJ to Beacon, NY.
Bear Mountain State Park, Bear Mountain, NY
Storm King Mountain State Park, Cornwall, NY
Washington's Headquarters State Historic Site, Newburgh, NY
Scenic Hudson's Mount Beacon, Beacon, NY
Scenic Hudson's Spy Rock (Snake Hill), New Windsor, NY
While we're at it, here is a story about Saturday's relighting of the lamp on top of the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn. It has been for 87 years and commemorates those who died in the British Prison ships in New York Harbor during the American Revolution.
Friday, November 14, 2008
This Week's Top New York History News
- » SUNY Tuition Could Jump
- » Blog: NY Library Association Conference Notes
- » AHA 2009 Meeting Program Online
- » Dutch Art & Culture Take Over NYC
- » Intrepid to Wave Bush Aboard
- » Remembering That 1945 Kiss
- » York Avenue and Sgt. Alvin York
- » Underground Railroad Lot Approved
- » Push to Reopen Old Fire Tower
- » Barack Obama's New York City
Thursday, November 13, 2008
NY State Library Research Grants Announced
The New York State Library has announced the availability of grants for research in New York State history. The Cunningham Research Residency Program was established to benefit scholars using the unique collections of the New York State Library to study the history and culture of New York. The New Netherland Institute and the Library will also make a Quinn-Library grant for specialized research in Dutch-related documents and printed materials at the New York State Library. Four Cunningham residencies ($1,000) and at least one Quinn fellowship ($2,500) will be awarded in 2009.
The Anna K. and Mary E. Cunningham Trust Fund
Funds for the research residencies are provided by a trust fund endowment created by a bequest from the estate of Anna K. Cunningham on behalf of her sister, Mary, and herself. It is a fitting celebration of the sisters’ lifelong interest in the study of New York State history. Anna Cunningham (1906-1996) was Supervisor of Historic Sites of New York State, as well as serving on the boards and councils of many state and national historic preservation organizations. Mary Cunningham (1917-1986), whose personal papers are among the collections of the State Library, held various executive positions in the New York State Historical Association, was a founder and the first editor of American Heritage magazine, and was a founder of the Yorkers program for teaching and involving young New Yorkers in the State’s history.
Quinn-Library Research Residency For 2009
Through generous support from the Doris Quinn Foundation, the New Netherland Institute (www.nnp.org) and the New York State Library will make a special Cunningham grant of $2500 in 2009 for specialized research in Dutch-related documents and printed materials at the New York State Library. Researchers interested in the history of New Netherland and the Dutch Colonial Atlantic world are encouraged to apply for these funds.
Eligibility requirements and application information are available online here.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
New Online Teaching With Media Resource
On October 1, 2008, the American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning (CUNY Graduate Center) launched their latest website, Picturing United States History: An Online Resource for Teaching with Visual Evidence.
Representing a unique collaboration between historians and art historians, Picturing U.S. History is based on the belief that visual materials are vital to understanding the American past. Visitors to the new website will find Web-based guides, essays, case studies, classroom activities, and online forums to assist high school teachers and college instructors to incorporate visual evidence into their classroom practice. The website supplements other U.S. history resources with visual materials, analysis, and activities that allow students to engage with the process of interpretation in a more robust fashion than through text alone.
The website will host a series of public online forums guest moderated by noted scholars of American history and culture. In November a discussion on Colonial America will be led by Professor Peter Mancall of the University of Southern California.
To sign-up for the Picturing U.S. History forum on Colonial America, go to:
http://www.picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/viewforums.php.
Picturing U.S. History is supported by a grant from the National Endowment
for the Humanities as part of its We, The People initiative.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
The New Jersey Forum: New Research in NJ Studies
Although this is a blog of New York History, occasionally we'll make announcements about regional events that New York historians might have interest in.
The New Jersey Forum: New Research in New Jersey Studies will be held Saturday, November 22, 2008 at the Trenton Marriott Hotel. The event is sponsored by the New Jersey Historical Commission, the NJ State Archives, and the New Jersey State Museum
Registration information and a preliminary program of events is available via word document here.
Expected sessions include:
Hope, Fear and Pestilence: Public Health in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century New Jersey
Newsprint, Fear, and the Cholera: A History of the 1832 Cholera Outbreaks in New Jersey (Margaret Charleroy, University of Minnesota )
The 1918 Influenza Outbreak in New Jersey (Jennifer Harmsen, Hillsborough Middle School + Rutgers-NJIT History Department)
Pestilence Across the Delaware: New Jersey and the Yellow Fever Epidemics of the 1790s (Sandra Moss, New Jersey Medical History Society)
Interpreting a Preserved Landscape: New Jersey Museums and Architecture
New Solutions for House Museums (Donna Ann Harris, Heritage Consulting, Inc.)
Take Any Exit: The Colonial Revival in New Jersey (Harriette Hawkins, independent scholar)
Telling the Straight Story: Truth & Fiction in Building Interpretation (Margaret Westfield, Westfield Architects)
Suburban Stories: Place and Race in Twentieth-Century New Jersey
Extremely Suburban: Narratives from 20th-Century Princeton (Michael H. Ebner, James D. Vail III Professor of History, Emeritus, Lake Forest College)
African American Suburbanization and Racial Politics in Pre-World War II Montclair
(Patricia Hampson, Rutgers University)
A National “Black Brain Center” in Post-WWII Fort Monmouth, NJ (Melissa Ziobro, staff historian, U.S. Army CECOM Life Cycle Management Command, Fort Monmouth, NJ)
Parks and Bonapartes: Landscapes of 19th and 20th century New Jersey
"He Will be a Bourgeois American and Spend his Fortune in Making Gardens”: A Preliminary Examination of Joseph Bonaparte’s Point Breeze Estate, Bordentown, New Jersey (Richard Veit, Department of History and Anthropology, Monmouth University)
The Development of Branch Brook Park – America’s First County Park (Kathleen Galop, Preservation Possibilities)
Morristown: A Cultural Landscape Study (Gillian Acheson, Department of Geography, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville)
Revolutionary Women: Female Education and Political Activism in Early New Jersey
“A More Accurate and Extensive Education than is Customary”: Educational Opportunities for Women in Early Nineteenth-Century New Jersey (Lucia McMahon, William Paterson University)
The Ladies of Trenton: Women’s Political and Public Activism in Revolutionary New Jersey (Catherine Hudak, Morris Hills High School, Rockaway, NJ)
“Working for the Slave as a Mother would Work for her Children”: Abigail Goodwin and the Anti-slavery Movement in New Jersey (Bruce Scherer, Project Archivist/Librarian, Salem County Historical Society, Salem, NJ)
Eighteenth-Century New Jersey Families
From London Publisher to American Farmer: Benjamin Clarke and his Diary of East New Jersey (Robert Craig, Historic Preservation Office, NJ Department of Environmental Protection)
Black and White Together? Slavery and Freedom in Upper Freehold Township from the Colonial Period to the Early Republic (Sue Kozel, Independent scholar)
Vital History: What Two Generations of a Loyalist Family Reveals About the American Revolution (Donald Sherblom, President, 1759 Vought House, Inc.)
Monday, November 10, 2008
New Rockwell Kent Exhibition at NYS Museum
The next exhibition in the Great Art Series -- Rockwell Kent: This is My Own – opens at the New York State Museum on November 22. On view through May 17, 2009 in the Museum’s West Gallery, the exhibition is the 20th installment of the Great Art Exhibition and Education Program, which brings works from New York State’s leading art museums and collections to the State Museum. This exhibition will feature works from the collection of the Plattsburgh State Art Museum, State University of New York at Plattsburgh, the most complete and balanced collection of Kent’s work in the United States. The collection was established by a gift and bequest from Kent’s wife, Sally Kent Gorton. This exhibition is curated by Cecilia M. Esposito, director of the Plattsburgh State Art Museum.
"We at Plattsburgh, and I as a Regent, are delighted to share the life work of Rockwell Kent with visitors to the New York State Museum from across the state and the nation,” said James Dawson, member of the State Board of Regents. “This powerful and unique exhibition will give visitors an opportunity to engage with, and understand, the life and artistic contributions of Rockwell Kent to American art. As a faculty member at the State University of Plattsburgh, I have been familiar with the Kent Collection for decades. So, I am delighted to see that others in the state and nation will have this same profound opportunity to share in Kent's incredible artistic talent.”
A critically acclaimed artist who provided the illustrations for such classics as “Moby Dick” and the “Canterbury Tales,” Kent succeeded in multiple endeavors during his lifetime. He was a painter, muralist, illustrator, printmaker, book designer, graphic artist, architect, builder, writer and editor, lecturer, navigator, world traveler and political and social activist.
Kent once said that “art is no more than the shadow cast by a man’s own stature.” This exhibition is unique in the breadth of materials on display, including hundreds of items that chronicle Kent’s life and work, reflecting remarkable personal experiences and a deep sense of moral and political principle. On display are paintings, drawings, prints, books, bookplates, photographs, dinnerware, advertising art and more. “Rockwell Kent,” a documentary produced by Frederick Lewis, and the book, “Rockwell Kent: The Art of the Bookplate” will be for sale in the Museum Shop.
Born in Tarrytown in 1882, Kent experienced a comfortable, upper middle-class lifestyle until the sudden death of his father in 1887. As a young boy he developed a resilience and remarkable work ethic that was evident in all of his future endeavors.
From 1900 through 1902, while studying architecture at Columbia University in New York City, Kent attended painter William Merritt Chase’s summer school for art at Shinnecock Hills, Long Island. He changed his studies to painting and continued classes with Chase in New York. He spent the summer of 1903 with artist Abbott H. Thayer in New Hampshire. Bolstered by the sale of two paintings he quit Columbia and enrolled in the New York School of Art, where he was instructed by Robert Henri, the leader of what is now known as the “Ashcan School.”
Kent achieved both critical and financial success as an artist during the 1920s and 1930s. He became well-known for his book illustrations, bookplates and commercial work. Private collectors and major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, acquired his paintings and prints.
Between 1918 and 1935, Kent traveled to remote parts of the world, often staying for long periods of time to learn about the people who lived there and to express and record his experiences through his paintings and books.
In 1915, during World War I, he was ordered to leave Newfoundland over fears that he was a German spy. While in Newfoundland he painted one of his major works, “House of Dread.” In Alaska, as in other countries he visited, Kent demonstrated his building skills, renovating an abandoned goat shed and turning it into a comfortable home. “Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska” chronicled his adventures there. He also traveled to Tierra del Fuego, where he wrote “Voyaging” about his dangerous travels through the most exposed islands of the archipelago. “N by E” was about another hair-raising adventure -- an ill-fated cruise he took to Greenland in 1929. He returned to Greenland in 1931 where he wrote “Salamina,” named in honor of his housekeeper and mistress. Kent also designed dinnerware by the same name.
Kent purchased a dairy farm in the Adirondacks, outside of the village of Au Sable Forks, in 1927 and named it Asgaard, meaning “home of the gods.” It served as his retreat for the rest of his life. From 1912 to 1968, Kent practiced the time-honored art of the bookplate, creating more than 185 custom-designed bookplates in response to mail orders that came his way, including one for Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.. He also pursued wood engraving, a passion that rivaled his great love for painting.
Kent painted several major murals during the 1930s and 40s. His designs for the 1939 Christmas Seals campaign were used on billboards, stamps and posters. During this time, Kent also produced political art, becoming very active in social and political issues as a member of the Socialist Party he had joined in 1908. In 1953, he was summoned to appear before a subcommittee, chaired by U.S. Senator
Joseph McCarthy, to answer questions about his membership in the Communist Party. From 1957 to 1960, three major exhibitions of Kent’s work were held in the Soviet Union, and in 1960 he gave the country 80 canvases and 800 drawings and prints. He traveled to Moscow in 1967 to accept the International Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples.
One of Kent’s last lucrative commercial contracts was with General Electric (GE). His painting of a solitary farmhouse on a winter’s night was reproduced in GE’s 1946 calendar and proved so popular that he was asked to provide another for the following year. In January 1946, Kent walked a picket line at GE in Schenectady at the request of the striking workers there. GE officials were not pleased and tried to cancel Kent’s contract but reneged after he threatened a lawsuit.
Kent died at the age of 88 and is buried at Asgaard. His gravestone bears the title of his first autobiography “This is My Own,” a line taken from “Native Land,” a poem by Walter Scott.
On February 14, from 1 to 3 p.m., the Museum will sponsor “ARTventures,” a program planned to complement the Kent exhibition. During a hands-on, art-making experience with instructor Peggy Steinbach, participants will visit the exhibition and then create their own interpretations in paint. Pre-registration is suggested. Call 518-473-7154 or e-mail psteinba@mail.nysed.gov. The program is limited to 15 participants. It is free for Museum members and $5 for non-members.
The New York State Museum expresses its gratitude to Bank of America, the New York State Senate and New York State Assembly for making the Kent exhibition possible. Additional support is provided by The Times Union, WRGB (CBS 6) and Potratz Partners Advertising.
The New York State Museum is a cultural program of the New York State Education Department. Started in 1836, the Museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the United States. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Further information can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the Museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.
Friday, November 7, 2008
This Week's Top New York History News
- » Blog: Stop Lying About Roosevelt's Record
- » Fort Stanwix to Host Re-enactments
- » An Erie Canal Revival?
- » Local Tagging Projects That Make Sense
- » Submarine Returns to NYC
- » Studs Terkel's Bronx Legacy
- » America Gets Professor in Chief
- » The Smithsonian Cuts Salaries
- » NY Library Assoc Conference Thur
- » An Erie Canal Energy Project
2009 THATCamp Announced
An announcement yesterday from Dan Cohen, posted on his digital humanities blog:
THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp), which brings together scholars, librarians, curators, technologists, and developers for a two-day “unconference” that interactively explores the cutting edge of the digital humanities, was such a success this year that we’re bringing it back in 2009. Better yet, we are pairing it with the Digital Humanities 2009 conference being run by our friends on the other side of the Washington beltway, the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. THATCamp 2009 will immediately follow DH2009 on June 27-28, 2008. Stay tuned to the THATCamp site for a more formal announcement and application guidelines.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Three Outstanding History Blog Series
Here at the New York History blog, I follow hundreds of history oriented blogs, good and bad, from around New York and around the nation. Some of the best have focused their work through regular posts on unique topics - call it "serial blogging." Here are three of the more outstanding examples:
The Bowery Boys: Know Your Mayors
According to the Bowery Boys, their regular series "Know Your Mayors" is a "modest little series about some of the greatest, notorious, most important, even most useless, mayors of New York City." Recent posts have covered "Philip Hone, the party mayor," and "Hugh Grant, our youngest mayor" - he was just 31. Check out the entire series here.
Bad Girl Blog: Why I Started Chasing Bad Girls
Brooklynite Joyce Hanson describes her Bad Girl Blog as "a chronicle of my research, experiments and studies about wild women in both history and the present--and my struggle to be more like them." Hanson's series "Why I Started Chasing Bad Girls" offers a little insight into the author herself and women she's hoping to emulate (at least a little more). Posts have included Isabelle Eberhardt who Hanson describes as "A Russian Jew who converted to Islam, Isabelle Eberhardt ran off to the Sahara Desert in 1899 when she was 22, served as a war correspondent for an Algerian newspaper, dressed as a man and called herself Si Mahmoud, slept with Arab boys, routinely smoked kif, and drank absinthe and chartreuse until she fell asleep on the dirt floor of whatever random café she happened to be passing through." Hanson has also written about Bessie Smith, Empress Theodora of Constantinople, and Victoria Woodhull. You can read all the posts in the series here.
Early American Crime: Convict Transportation
Independent scholar Anthony Vaver's blog Early American Crime only began in September, but he has already staked some substantial bloggy ground with what he calls "an exploration of the social and cultural history of crime and punishment in colonial America and the early United States." Vaver's short series on convict transportation to the American colonies has covered "Early uses of Convict Transportation," "The Transportation Act of 1718," and "The Business of Convict Transportation." You can read the entire series here.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Bernard Margolis Appointed NY State Librarian
The Board of Regents has announced the appointment of Bernard A. Margolis as the New York State Librarian. He will assume his new responsibilities in January 2009.
State Education Commissioner Richard Mills said, “We live in an age of information, and libraries play a critical role in providing us with access to that information. They are vital to our economy and our communities. They promote literacy and lifelong learning. And in these trying economic times, they are vital to people seeking information about jobs. I am thrilled that the Regents have appointed a dynamic and innovative person like Mr. Margolis to serve in the critically important position of State Librarian.”
The New York State Library provides information and library services through its Research Library and the Division of Library Development. Mr. Margolis will have oversight responsibility for a $13.4 million operating budget, 180 employees, over 20 million collection items and nearly $100 million in State and federal aid to libraries.
One of the largest research libraries in North America, the New York State Research Library is the only state library which is a member of the Association of Research Libraries. The Library’s holdings include a significant manuscript and rare book collection, as well as holdings in a wide variety of formats, including paper, microform, digital and electronic records. It is also a Federal Depository and Patent Library; has the responsibility for the acquisition, distribution and maintenance of New York State documents; and is a regional library for the blind and visually impaired in New York’s 55 upstate counties.
The Division of Library Development provides leadership and technical assistance to New York’s 73 library systems through a comprehensive program of State aid for public, school, academic and special library services. Staff experts work with librarians, trustees, school administrators, public officials and local leaders to solve problems and find new ways of making library services and resources available to their community. Library Development administers more than $100 million in State and federal aid to New York’s libraries and helps them to take full advantage of federal and private funding programs like E-rate telecommunications discounts and Gates Library Foundation grants.
Mr. Margolis served as the President of Boston Public Library (BPL), Boston, Massachusetts, from 1997 to 2008. BPL is the oldest municipal public library in the country, with 27 neighborhood branches. The Library’s collections of over 34 million items include the library of President John Adams, Shakespeare’s first folio, Gutenberg’s Catholicon, and many other unique and rare materials. BPL is a member of the Association of Research Libraries.
Mr. Margolis’s achievements as BPL president include expansion of branch library hours; appointment of a children’s librarian in every branch; creation of a nationally recognized Homework Assistance Program and online tutoring program; implementation of Reading Readiness to prepare preschoolers for school success; creation of local history centers in eight branch libraries; creation of the award-winning Norman B. Leventhal Map Center; development of a collection conservation program; and growth of the BPL’s trust funds from $37 million to $55 million. Under Mr. Margolis’s leadership, BPL secured $7 million of direct grants and $18 million in federal funds for technology improvements and many foundation grants, designated gift funds, and major bequests.
Mr. Margolis led the effort to restore and renovate the historic central library building, securing funding from a number of sources. He worked with the City of Boston to establish a critical repair fund, allowing BPL to address building and equipment repairs in a timely manner. BPL collaborated with other cultural institutions and more than 4,500 different community groups and organizations.
Mr. Margolis holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in Librarianship, both from the University of Denver. His library experience includes management and executive positions in libraries and library systems in Colorado and Michigan. Prior to moving to Boston, he served as Director/CEO of the Pikes Peak Library District in Colorado Springs (from 1988 to 1997).
Mr. Margolis’s service includes a number of elected positions within the American Library Association, leadership in the Association of Research Libraries, service as a professional delegate to the White House Conference on Libraries, and service on the boards of library organizations in Massachusetts, Colorado, and Michigan. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Library Administration and Bottom Line: The Magazine of Library Financial Management. He has contributed to several books and has published articles in American Libraries, Public Libraries, and Library Journal.
Monday, November 3, 2008
5 New York Spots Become National Landmarks
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne has designated 16 sites in 11 states as new National Historic Landmarks, including five sites in New York. The designation recognizes the sites as nationally significant historic places because they possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States.
National Historic Landmarks are buildings, sites, districts, structures, and objects that have been determined by the Secretary of the Interior to be nationally significant in American history and culture. Many of the most renowned historic properties in the Nation are landmarks. Mount Vernon, Pearl Harbor, the Apollo Mission Control Center, Alcatraz, and the Martin Luther King Birthplace in Atlanta, Ga. are landmarks that illustrate important contributions to the Nation's historical development.
The newly designated sites range from the Aaron Copland House in Cortlandt Manor, NY where the musician worked and lived from 1960 until his death in 1990; to The Forty Acres in Delano, Calif., which served as the headquarters for the first permanent agricultural labor union in the United States, the United Farmworkers of America; to Lyceum in the Circle Historic District of Oxford, Miss. where riots and unrest accompanied the ultimately successful efforts of James Meredith to transfer from a historically black college to the previously all-white University of Mississippi.
Today, fewer than 2,500 historic places bear this national distinction. Working with citizens throughout the nation, the National Historic Landmarks Program draws upon the expertise of National Park Service staff, who work to nominate new landmarks and provide assistance to existing landmarks. Completed nominations are reviewed by the National Park System Advisory Board, which makes recommendations for designation to the Secretary of the Interior. Designation as a National Historic Landmark automatically places a property in the National Register of Historic Places, if it is not already so listed.
The new sites were formally designated on October 7, 2008. The designations also included the acceptance of additional documentation for three existing sites, a boundary change for two existing sites and a name change for one existing site.
For more information on the National Historic Landmark Program, please visit www.nps.gov/history/nhl/.
New National Historic Landmarks in New York
Aaron Copland House, Cortlandt Manor, NY
* Aaron Copland purchased this house, known as “Rock Hill” in 1960 when he was 60 years old; it was his home, studio, and base of operations for the next 30 years, until his death in 1990.
* Copland was one of the most important and profoundly influential figures in the history of American music. Copland’s compositions brought a distinctly American sound, character, and zest to the European-bred classical music tradition.
* Copland’s reputation rests on works such as Billy the Kid, Rodeo, Fanfare for the Common Man, and Appalachian Spring—a series of compositions on American subjects and lore that has few equals. By age 50, Copland had become one of the pivotal figures in American musical history. While at this property, Copland composed symphonic works, as well as ballet, chamber, orchestral, and piano works.
* This house reflects Copland’s lifestyle, values, and personal modesty.
Camp Uncas, Mohegan Lake, NY
* Camp Uncas was developed 1893 to 1895 on Mohegan Lake in what is now the Adirondack Forest Preserve.
* Camp Uncas is one of the best examples of Adirondack camp architecture, which was designed for leisure. It is of exceptional historical and architectural significance as the first Adirondack camp to be planned as a single unit by William West Durant, widely recognized as one of the most important innovators of the property type.
* At Camp Uncas, Durant developed the camp as a single cohesive unit: a “compound plan” for camps that provided for an array of separate buildings, all subordinate to the natural setting. Camp Uncas was built as an ensemble from start to finish.
* The Adirondack camp had a strong and lasting influence on the design of rustic buildings developed for national and state park systems in the 20th century.
First Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, Kingston, NY
* The Renaissance Revival First Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of Kingston, New York was designed by Minard Lafever, who is considered one of the most important architects practicing in antebellum America.
* The First Reformed Protestant Dutch Church is deserving of recognition within the larger body of Lafever’s work as a mature handling of Renaissance Revival forms and details, an eclectic mode that he helped to pioneer in America. He used a number of classical sources and precedents, including those of English architects Sir Christopher Wren and James Gibbs.
* The church is one of the most intact and most fully-developed examples of Lafevers Renaissance Revival work, a style that he was heavily involved in developing and promoting.
Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library Building, New York, NY
* Completed in 1912 and 1935 respectively, the Frick Collection and Arts Reference Library in New York City comprise an institution that is considered one of the great legacies of the first period of major art collecting in the United States, one of the defining activities of the Gilded Age elite.
* Among his contemporaries, Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) stood out as both a collector and, with his superb Carrère & Hasting edifice sensitively designed for a high-profile Fifth Avenue site, architectural patron.
* Frick’s daughter’s establishment of the library was meant to encourage and develop the study of the fine arts and enhance her father’s legacy through education and scholarship.
* Frick’s vast fortune, knowledge of the arts and architecture, and desire to create a monument of the most personal sort resulted in a museum and institution with few rivals. It is one of the best examples of the arts house museum subset of the museum building type in the nation.
* The collection and arts library maintain an uncommon degree of physical integrity that conveys the exceptional importance of the Frick as a cultural institution and as an outstanding work of architecture.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
* The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is nationally significant as one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most important commissions during his long, productive, and influential career.
* Built between 1956 and 1959, the museum is recognized as an icon of mid-20th century modern architecture. One of his last works, the Guggenheim represents the culmination of a lifetime of evolution of Wright’s ideas about an “organic architecture.”
* At this point in his career in the late 1940s and 1950s, Wright was experimenting with combinations of hexagons, spirals, and circles and produced designs with spiraling and circular forms. No matter what the museum and art professionals thought of the building as an art museum, they could not question the building’s power and genius as a design.
* The Guggenheim launched the great and continuing age of museum architecture, where the building is a central part of the museum experience, on par with its contents.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Teaching The Truth About New York Slavery
Professor Alan Singer of Hofstra University has a new book New York and Slavery: Time to Teach the Truth
Slavery began in the city soon after the Dutch landing in 1609, and enslaved Africans became vital to the colony's economy. Africans built the first homes, brought in the first crops, turned an Indian path into Broadway, and built the wall at Wall Street. When it became the British colony of New York its bankers and merchants so successfully invested in the international African trade they made it the slave-traders' leading port. After the Revolution, with the city leading the way, slavery and its profits grew in the land of the free. A greater percentage of white households in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island owned slaves than in South Carolina. The world's first stock exchange opened in New York in 1792 and half of its 177 stockholders owned slaves. Africans were auctioned to bidders at Wall Street and other city markets. Forced labor made the Empire State...
New York and Slavery indicts a host of prominent New York mercantile and banking families and corporations such as Citicorp which first made its name in the slave trade. Slaveholder names currently grace our buildings, bridges, parks, streets, and schools. This, Singer shows, teaches our children to celebrate men who benefited from the African trade, southern slavery and bondage in New York.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
New Portal to NYS Digital Collections Announced
The New York 3Rs Association has launched a new digital heritage web site, www.newyorkheritage.org.
NewYorkHeritage.org is a research portal for students, educators, historians, genealogists, and others who are interested in learning more about the people, places and institutions of historical New York State. The site provides immediate free access to more than 160 distinct digital collections that reflect New York State's long history. These collections represent a broad range of historical, scholarly, and cultural materials held in libraries, museums, and archives throughout the state. Collection items include photographs, letters, diaries, directories, maps, newspapers, books, and more.
The site collections come from around the state, contributed by libraries, archives, museums and other cultural institutions, and builds on existing digital repository services administered by each of the nine reference and research library resources councils.
NewYorkHeritage.org uses OCLC's CONTENTdm Multisite Server to bring these collections together, allowing the public to search across all items simultaneously. This project provides free, online access to images of cultural and historical significance in New York State.
A variety of materials can be found among the New York Heritage Digital Collections, including photographs, postcards, correspondence, manuscripts, oral histories, yearbooks and newspapers. Many kinds of institutions from New York State have partnered to make this project possible, including public, academic and school libraries, museums, archives and historical societies. The power of collaboration is what makes this new service possible.
Participants to New York Heritage Digital Collections are committed to enhancing the site by adding both content and contributing institutions on a regular basis. The goal of the project is to eventually connect one thousand collections and one million items from throughout New York State. All institutions interested in participating in the project are encouraged to contact the 3Rs organization that serves their region.
The New York 3Rs Association is a partnership among New York's nine reference and research resource systems. The New York 3Rs was incorporated in 2003 to further the ability of those systems to provide statewide services. The members of the New York 3Rs Association are: the Capital District Library Council, Central New York Library Resources Council, Long Island Library Resources Council, Metropolitan New York Library Council, Northern New York Library Network, Rochester Regional Library Council, Southeastern New York Library Resources Council, South Central Regional Library Council, and Western New York Library Resources Council.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
NYPL Offers Program on Tobacco Advertising
A new exhibition hosted by The New York Public Library examines the historic advertisements in which tobacco companies claimed that smoking provided a range of health benefits, including the ability to calm nerves, boost energy and aid in weight loss. That's one from my personal collection at left.
Not a Cough in a Car Load: Images Used by Tobacco Companies to Hide the Hazards of Smoking, an historical, multi-faceted and thought-provoking exhibition examining the methods tobacco companies took to promote their products, will be on display at The New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library's Healy Hall at 188 Madison Avenue, from October 7 to December 26, 2008. Admission is free. A related event featuring a lecture by the exhibition's curator, Dr. Robert Jackler, including the presentation of vintage video advertisements for tobacco products, will be held on Tuesday, December 9, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Dr. Jackler, an associate dean of Continuing Medical Education at Stanford University, created the revealing look at the tobacco industry after his mother, a longtime smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Aiming to raise awareness of advertising practices at the time, the exhibit contains boldly designed eye-catching images collected from such publications as Life and the Saturday Evening Post and ranging in date from 1927 to 1954. All images have been returned to their original, vibrant form through digital enhancement.
"Due to our current knowledge of the dangers involved with cigarettes, some of the images are actually humorous in nature and while we are having some fun with the exhibition, this is also a compelling story about the way the tobacco industry kept people smoking for generations," said Dr. Jackler."We are talking about an industry that put profits above all consideration for its customers' well-being.It is still relevant today, because while the ads are much more subtle and constrained, the message and goals are still the same."
The exhibit debuted at Stanford University in January 2007 and has been shown at the University of California and Harvard Medical prior to its run at the library.
"Not a Cough in a Carload takes a look at the power of image and serves as a follow-up to other advertising exhibitions we have hosted," said John Ganly, SIBL's assistant director for collections."It is also a perfect complement to the great collections at the library that deal with the issues of smoking."
In addition to images of such luminaries as Rock Hudson, John Wayne, Joe DiMaggio, a pre-presidential Ronald Reagan, and Santa Claus smoking tobacco products, advertisements also depict unidentified doctors with cigarettes in hand accompanied by the claim that "More Doctors Smoke Camels than Any Other Cigarette." Another features a statistic that "38,381 Dentists Say, ‘Smoke Viceroys,'" before the bold statement that the filtered brand "Can never stain your teeth."
"They used images of doctors to reassure the public, but these characters came right out of central casting and only looked like doctors," said Dr. Jackler."The medical profession didn't complain, because the ads made doctors appear noble. And the public were taken in by the ads, because if a doctor smokes, it must be ok."
The popular "Reach for a Lucky, Instead of a Sweet" campaign by Lucky Strike is also featured, as tobacco companies wooed weight-conscious consumers. Lucky Strike, among other cigarette companies, is also featured in ads tackling "smoker's cough," as a brand good for the throat. In addition to the medicinal effects of cigarettes, claims made about tobacco's effects on smokers' moods are also examined in vivid detail, along with images of advertisements Dr. Jackler believes were directed at kids in the Sunday "funnies".
In a separate area leading to the main exhibition, the library will include documents from the George Arents Collection on Tobacco on display along with three-dimensional materials, such as actual magazines featuring cigarette advertisements and boxes of candy cigarettes.In addition, a research guide culled from various documents at The New York Public Library, featuring government papers, Surgeon General reports and hearings dealing with tobacco advertising, will be made available. A guest book will also allow visitors to express their reactions to the exhibition.
Not a Cough in a Car Load: Images Used by Tobacco Companies to Hide the Hazards of Smoking will be on view from October 7 to December 26, 2008 in Healy Hall at the The New York Public Library's Science, Industry and Business Library, located at 188 Madison Avenue. Exhibition hours run Monday, Friday and Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Tuesday through Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.Admission is free. For more information, call (212) 592-7000 or visit www.nypl.org.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
A New Biography of Samuel de Champlain
David Hackett Fischer's new biography of Samuel de Champlain is out. He will be at the New York State Writers Institute on Thursday to discuss the work, and there's a review in the Albany Times Union by Paul Grondahl:Published this month to capitalize on planned 2009 quadricentennial celebrations of Hudson and Champlain, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian has written a comprehensive, magisterial biography, Champlain's Dream
That dream of creating a French colony in North America began circa 1570 on the Atlantic coast of France, where Champlain grew up tolerant of religious differences in an era of brutal sectarian warfare. It is unclear whether Champlain was baptized Catholic or Protestant and much of his lineage remains murky. Fischer does not entirely discount historians who have suggested that he was an illegitimate son of the illustrious French king Henri IV — who gave financial support to Champlain's explorations, granted him special access and provided a pension for him.
"The hard evidence to support such an idea is zero," [Fischer] said.
Regardless of his paternity, Champlain went to sea as a youth and acquired exceptional sailing and navigation skills. In his jam-packed career, he was a soldier, spy, explorer, cartographer, author, artist and, above all, a conciliator among warring Indian tribes in the New World.
Unlike other agents of imperialism, Champlain did not go in search of gold or conquest, but rather to spread the culture of France, to discover new places and to bring together diverse people in a spirit of harmony.
His travels are prodigious. He made at least 27 Atlantic crossings between 1599 and 1635 without losing a ship; traversed six Canadian provinces and five American states by land and water; created maps more detailed and accurate than his contemporaries; wrote in-depth accounts of his trips that fill six large volumes. Oddly, he never learned to swim.
It is as the father of New France that Champlain deserves the most recognition, according to Fischer. As the founder and leader of the first permanent French settlements in North America, he went so far as to subsidize new families with his own money.
Although Champlain had some stains on his character, including shabby treatment of his French servants and an inability to absorb criticism, by the time of his death in 1635 he had succeeded in permanently planting French culture in the New World.
Monday, October 27, 2008
New York History's Blogroll Update
It's been six months, but I've finally had a chance to review the large number of history related blogs in the blogroll at right and organize them into more specific groups.
Aside from New York History, you can also now find separate blogrolls for European History, Public History, Regional American History, World History, Military History, Civil War History, Science History and even Culinary History. I'll add new categories as they are warranted.
As I learn about more history blogs, I'll add them - if your blog has been missed, if you'd like to suggest a history blog, or you feel wrongly categorized, drop me a note.