This week’s blog will show a few sample images from a recently acquired series of Department of Sanitation (DOS) photographs. The collection of approximately 32 cubic feet spanning 1900-2007, is comprised of glass plate and acetate negatives as well as prints. This series will is a great addition to the Municipal Archives’ comprehensive photographic documentation of New York City.
Find of the Week
An unsuccessful search in former Mayor John Pulroy Mitchel’s papers for documentation of World Pineapple Day (August 15, 1914) yielded an interesting folder titled the “Mayor’s Bill Board Advertising Commission.” And that folder of departmental correspondence provided a glimpse into City government circa 1914.
Find of the Week
Called the “Pallet Project,” it was one of the most satisfying experiences of my career at the Municipal Archives. The project originated about 30 years when the Archives was asked to take “old” records—mostly in the form of ledger books—that had been stored by City agencies in the basement of the Municipal Building. At the time, the Archives did not have the resources to go through all of the material to select which ledgers had historical value—they just piled everything on pallets and moved them into storage.
Summer in the City
Building Escapes
This is the image that we all conjure when thinking of New York City’s fire escapes. The omnipresent metal staircases hanging on buildings throughout the Boroughs. In 1860, after a terrible fire killed ten women and children, New York State authorized New York City (Manhattan only since this was pre-consolidation) to create laws that safeguarded residents of tenements housing more than eight families. Early fire escapes included tubes, something akin to those emergency devices on airplanes, for people to jump through. Some buildings had scuttles that allowed residents to scurry to the roof in case of a fire but getting from the roof proved challenging. In short order the basic metal stairway design still adorning many buildings emerged.
Mystery Ledgers
The New York City Municipal Archives is charged with preserving records deemed to have, “continuing and significant historical, research, cultural or other important value.” Sometimes it’s easy to see this value in our collections; in a mayor’s correspondence, an original drawing of Central Park or the Brooklyn Bridge, NYPD crime scene photographs or a great-grandmother’s birth certificate. There are other cases where this value is not so plainly evident, where it must be determined in more exacting fashion and weighed against the various costs associated with maintaining the records in question. And invariably archivists must draw the line somewhere. Not every record gets kept. Doing so would quickly become absurd.