Rose Yndigoyen
Managing the Records of New York City
Nicole Rivas
The “49 Little Ladies” of the French Gratitude ...
Andy Lanset
Poetry On the Air: WNYC and the Sound of Verse ...
Andy Lanset
Poetry On the Air: WNYC and the Sound of Verse ...

During the seven decades of municipal ownership, both celebrated and obscure poets found their way to WNYC’s microphone. Some programs introduced listeners to canonical voices such as Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, and W.H. Auden. Others opened the airwaves to aspiring writers who might otherwise never have been heard beyond their own neighborhoods. Still others explored the relationship between poetry and radio itself, asking whether the medium might reshape how verse was written, performed, and experienced.

The result was an extraordinary range of programming: educational broadcasts from the station’s early Air College lectures; dedicated poetry series and readings; experimental verse drama; tributes to major poets; and discussions linking poetry to theater, politics, therapy, and everyday life. Together these broadcasts reveal how a municipal station—often overlooked in the larger history of American radio—played a meaningful role in sustaining the oral tradition of poetry.

Katie Ehrlich
Dr. Leona Baumgartner’s Health Commissioner ...

Dr. Leona Baumgartner was the first woman to serve as Commissioner of the Department of Health for New York City. She held that office from 1954 to 1962 under Mayor Robert F. Wagner, who was the first mayor to appoint women agency heads in nearly 40 years. Baumgartner worked her way up at the Department of Health, starting as a child hygiene instructor in 1937. By 1949 she was assistant commissioner, the position she served in, until being elevated to commissioner.

The War Memorial of the City of New York

As Memorial Day approaches, we are looking back at a 1923 plan for a never-built war memorial in Central Park. In November 1918, at the close of the First World War, Mayor John H. Hylan created the Committee on Permanent War Memorial, which was tasked with producing a plan for an appropriate monument. In 1923, a design from landscape architect Thomas Hastings of the firm Carrère and Hastings was accepted by the Committee and presented in a report to the Mayor and the Board of Estimate. A copy of this publication (see below) is housed in the Municipal Library. 

The Report of the Mayor’s Committee on Permanent War Memorial, 1923. NYC Municipal Library.

The plan, which was approved by the Department of Plants and Structures, the Art Commission, and the Department of Parks, called for a permanent memorial in Central Park between 79th and 86th Streets on the 37-acre site of the lower reservoir of the Old Croton system, which had been superseded by the Catskill Water System (see map below). 

The Report of the Mayor’s Committee on Permanent War Memorial, Plate I: General Map of the Central Park, New York City. NYC Municipal Library.

Along with removing the reservoir walls, the plan called for a long lagoon bordered by trees on either side, “similar to the one in the Mall in Washington, which leads to the new Lincoln Memorial.” The monument itself would be reflected in the water approach and feature statues representing allegorical or historical features of the “Great War,” along with war relics and inscriptions (see below). 

The Report of the Mayor’s Committee on Permanent War Memorial, Plate VI: Perspective of Lagoon and Memorial. NYC Municipal Library.

Though $300,000 was initially allocated by the Board of Estimate under Mayor Hylan, the project met with a storm of protest from civic groups opposed to any encroachment of public park space. By 1927, the new Mayor, Jimmy Walker, rescinded the former allotment in a cost-cutting measure, and the plan stalled completely. The space that had been designated for the war memorial is now occupied by the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond.

Lauren Gilbert is Director of the Municipal Library.

Delicious Apples: Department of Public Markets Photographs

The initial inquiry arrived via email in July 2024. The correspondent, a representative from the O’Malley family in Los Angeles, California, asked if the Municipal Archives would be interested in a collection of photographs that depicted public markets in New York City during the 1920s. The photographs had been in the personal files of Edwin J. O’Malley, Commissioner of the Department of Public Markets from 1919 through 1926. The representative said the photographs had been passed on to Edwin O’Malley’s son, Walter O’Malley, former owner of the Dodgers baseball team.

Edwin J. O’Malley, Commissioner, Department of Public Markets with fruit vendor, 1922. Photographer: Jack Sussman. Department of Public Markets Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

City archivists replied in the affirmative, and the collection arrived at the Municipal Archives shortly thereafter. There are approximately 200 prints in the group, ranging in size from small snapshots to large-format 8x10 prints. Most are in good condition. The pictures document public markets throughout New York City during the 1920s; the bulk are dated July 1922.

Farm to City

Getting food from farmers to New York City residents has been a concern of the municipal government from the earliest days of colonial settlement. Two For the Record articles, From Marketfield to the Greenmarket, Part I, and From Marketfield to the Greenmarket, Part II: The Market Man, explored the history of this essential service from the Dutch and English colonial periods through the 19th century. In 1918, the “Bureau of Markets,” first established in 1850 as part of the Department of Streets and Lamps, and later under the Finance Department, became a separate agency, Department of Public Markets.

Thompson Street Market, at Spring Street, Manhattan, July 1922. Department of Public Markets Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Mayor John F. Hylan appointed Edwin J. O’Malley as Commissioner of the Department of Public Markets on December 3, 1919. Mayor Hylan’s papers in the Municipal Archives provide good documentation of how Commissioner O’Malley helped set in motion Hylan’s plans to modernize the City’s food distribution system.

Annual Report of the Commissioner of Public Markets, Edwin J. O’Malley, 1923. Mayor John Hylan Records Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The Hylan correspondence files include a copy of Commissioner O’Malley’s 1923 Report to the Mayor. O’Malley referenced Hylan’s “early farm life” and acknowledged how the Mayor had “set about cleaning the Augean stables of waste and corruption which had for years cluttered the path to a successful handling of the food problem.”

O’Malley’s report went on to detail the “food problem” and the strides toward its solution made under his leadership. Some of the photographs in the donated collection appeared in the 1923 report. It seems likely that Commissioner O’Malley commissioned the pictures to depict conditions “before” his planned improvements to the market system.

O’Malley’s 1923 Report supplies ample statistical data to illustrate “...the immensity of the City’s food problem.” For example, “About 40,000,000 chickens, turkeys, geese and ducks come into the city markets in a year.” Average daily consumption of other foods included 664,000 pounds of butter, 2,093,425 pounds of white potatoes, 209,562 pounds of sweet potatoes, and 1,302,986 pounds of apples, etc. Additionally, “New York City consumes more than 3,000,000 quarts of milk every day, drawn from over 40,000 farms... located in seven neighboring states... some even from over the Canadian border.” Plus, “New York City eats more than 1,250,000 loaves of bread daily and about 9,000,000 eggs.”

The Hot Loaf Baking Company market, ca. 1922. Photographer: Byron Studio. Department of Public Markets Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Although these are certainly big numbers, they are reasonable given the City’s population of six million in the 1920s. What is more remarkable, perhaps, is the way in which the food made its way from farms to City tables at that time—via railroad. “The fact is that 1,300 or more carloads of eatables enter the City every day,” according to the Report.

Revenue Chart, Department of Public Markets, 1923. Mayor John Hylan Records Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Commissioner O’Malley went on to write that “the terminal markets will be an added incentive to the development of motor trucking from farms and producers within a radius of 80 to 100 miles of the City.” His prediction that this would result in “...a tremendous increase... in the number of motor trucks which will bring the products of the farms into the City of New York,” proved true over the ensuing decades.

Plan for Bronx Terminal Market, Department of Public Markets, ca. 1923. Municipal Library.

Edwin J. O’Malley’s term as Commissioner of the Department of Public Markets ended with the election of Mayor James J. Walker in November 1925. On December 23, 1925, one week before his departure from civil service, O’Malley wrote a detailed four-page letter to Mayor Hylan describing the many accomplishments of his five years as Commissioner. “In conclusion,” he wrote, “the success of this department is now an assured fact; and not only is this true of it as a revenue producer, but also in the advancement made toward solving the problem of food supply and its distribution.” Edwin O’Malley died on April 10, 1953, at age 69.

Commissioner O’Malley’s Public Market photographs are a valuable addition to the Municipal Archives collection. They are slated for processing and digitization in the near future. In the meantime, researchers are invited to examine Municipal Library and Archives collections to explore the long and fascinating history of New Yorkers and their food markets.

Food vendors with police officer, location unknown, ca. 1922. Department of Public Markets Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Washington Market, Manhattan, ca. 1910. Department of Public Markets Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Callan’s Baby Carriage Entrance, 121st Street, ca. 1922. Department of Public Markets Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

East Houston Street Market, at Orchard Street, July 1922. Department of Public Markets Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Orchard Street Market, between East Houston and Stanton Streets, Manhattan, July 1922. Department of Public Markets Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Eighth Avenue Market, at 143rd Street, Manhattan, July 1922. Department of Public Markets Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Fifth Avenue Market, at 134th Street, July 1922. Department of Public Markets Photograph Collection.

Manhattan Avenue Market, Manhattan Avenue and Siegel Street, Brooklyn, July 1922. Department of Public Markets Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Jane’s Walk 2025: Walking the Streets of New Amsterdam

For Jane’s Walk (named after urban historian Jane Jacobs), the New York City Municipal Archives participated in two events, a tour of the Archival storage facility in Brooklyn, and a walking tour of lower Manhattan tracing the path of New Amsterdam. The tour will live on in an app, but you too can follow it virtually. The following is a transcript of the author’s tour.

On the Waterfront: A Dip Into New York City’s Most Valued but Least Understood Real Estate

New York City is a seaport. Always has been. Even before Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed into the harbor in 1524 and declared it “a very agreeable place [where] a very wide river, deep at its mouth, flowed out into the sea,”(1) the Lenape had established trading centers along the shore. The City’s shoreline has played a vital role in the regional, national, and global economy. With more miles of shoreline (520!) than the harbors of Boston, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco combined,(2) New York’s waterfront has been the site where goods got loaded and unloaded, where a slave market existed, where immigrants arrived by the millions, and where ships got built, fish were landed, people swam, and water to make beer was piped in while sewage was piped out—sometimes in appalling proximity. Our shoreline has been used for many things over the centuries and has expanded significantly through the use of fill.

Good Letters

The New York City Charter explicitly directs that mayoral records must be transferred to the Municipal Archives. Thanks to dedicated librarians and archivists over the past century, the Municipal Archives has become the repository of a significant quantity of records documenting the executive office of City government. The mayoral “collections” in the Archives have served as an essential resource for generations of researchers.  

Letter to Mayor Ed Koch from Jackie Kennedy Onassis, 1983. Mayor Koch Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

The Mayoral collections date to the mid-nineteenth century. They consist of correspondence between the mayor’s office and municipal agencies and departments as well as state and federal government entities. Beginning in the 1920s and 30s, Rebecca Rankin, Chief Librarian of the Municipal Reference Library, began acquiring and cataloging extant mayoral records she found in City offices. As a member of the Common Council prior to 1834, early mayoral records can found in the papers of the legislative body, also acquired by the Municipal Reference Library. Since establishment of the Municipal Archives in 1952, mayoral records have been transferred directly to the Archives.  

There are a few instances, however, when mayoral correspondence took a more circuitous route to the Municipal Archives. Mayor Edward I. Koch provides an example. Koch served the city as Mayor for three terms, from January 1, 1978, through December 31, 1989. One unusual aspect of the Koch administration is that his clerks and/or assistants transferred records to the Municipal Archives on a rolling basis throughout his term in office. For most other administrations, the mayoral records have been transferred upon conclusion of the term in office.  

The Mayor Koch records date from the pre-digital age. He, and his many deputies and assistants created a lot of paper documents. In terms of quantity, it far surpasses any other mayoral administration, totaling hundreds of cubic feet. 

Mayor Koch returned to private life after his third term ended on December 31, 1989. He became a partner in a law firm, an adjunct professor at New York University, a visiting professor at Brandeis University, and served as a commentator and movie critic on multiple radio and television programs. He died on February 1, 2013, at age 88.  

Letter to Mayor Ed Koch from Norman Mailer, 1986. Mayor Koch Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Several months later, the administrators of his estate discovered a trove of correspondence at his residence. The original signed items had been placed in folders labeled “good letters.” They dated from the 1970s through the early 2000s. The administrators intended to sell the collection at auction. The auctioneer selected for the sale divided the correspondence into nine “lots” labeled Political Figures, Entertainment and Literary Figures, Bill Clinton, Vice Presidents, Cardinal Joseph O’Connor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Jimmy Carter.   

When City archivists learned of the upcoming auction, they contacted the auction house and arranged to examine the items. They discovered that many of the letters were addressed to Koch as Mayor of the City of New York and dated from his term in office.   

Letter to Mayor Ed Koch from Jeane Kirkpatrick, US Ambassador to the United Nations, 1982. Mayor Koch Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Which seemed odd. Mayor Koch had been a strong supporter of the Municipal Archives and certainly knew of his obligation to place his records at the institution. He took office shortly after establishment of the Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) in 1977, and his administration helped build the Archives and the agency. His good friend and political supporter, Eugene Bockman was the first DORIS Commissioner. The conversion of space in the Surrogate’s Court at 31 Chambers Street to accommodate the Municipal Library and the Municipal Archives with climate-controlled storage, conservation, processing and microfilm laboratories all took place during his administration. Staffing in the Archives increased from three people during the fiscal crisis of the mid-seventies, to about two dozen during the Koch years. Mayor Koch also faithfully attended all the exhibits and special events staged by the Department during his tenure.   

In other words, he should have known better. One likely scenario is that he wanted to refer to the letters for his autobiographies. Or, perhaps he thought that copies had been made for the Archives. We’ll never know. When representatives from DORIS contacted the auction house and informed them of the Archives’ charter-mandated responsibility, they agreed to pull the Mayoral-era items from the sale and relinquish them to the Archives.     

Here are several examples of Mayor Koch’s “Good letters.”

Letter to Mayor Ed Koch from John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of New York, 1985. Mayor Koch Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Letter to Mayor Ed Koch from Mother Teresa, 1989. Mayor Koch Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Letter to Mayor Ed Koch from former President Jimmy Carter, 1984. Mayor Koch Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Letter to Mayor Ed Koch from Menachem Begin, Former Prime Minister of Israel, 1985. Mayor Koch Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Letter to Mayor Ed Koch from Katherine Hepburn, 1988. Mayor Koch Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Landmarks at Sixty

“Try to imagine New York City without Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Jefferson Market Courthouse, the Flatiron Building, or the brownstones in Stuyvesant Heights, Greenwich Village, Brooklyn Heights and the St. Nicholas Historic Districts.”

Bowne House, Main Street S. and Franklin Place, Queens, 1929. Landmarked 2/15/1966. Borough President Queens collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

These words are printed on a brochure distributed by New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1975, ten years after Mayor Robert F. Wagner signed the bill that established the agency on April 19, 1965. 

The story of landmark preservation in New York City neither begins nor ends in 1965, and the collections of the Municipal Library provide the documentation.

The Flatiron Building, ca. 1936. WPA Federal Writers’ Project collection, NYC Municipal Archives. Landmarked 9/20/1966.

Mayor Wagner’s subject files and the records of City Planning Commissioner William F. R. Ballard (1961-1969) in the Municipal Archives are good resources to explore the topic beginning in the early 1960s and leading up to establishment of the Commission in 1965.

One of the earliest documents in Wagner's subject file folder is a copy of his press release dated June 19, 1961, announcing the appointment of a “committee of prominent citizens ...for the purpose of developing a program for the preservation of structures of historic and esthetic importance in the City.”

Six months later, Wagner issued another press release stating that his new Committee had recommended the establishment of a Landmarks Preservation Commission to begin the work of identifying historic structures. Soon after, in February 1962, Wagner requested $50,000 in the budget to fund the new Commission. Receiving approval in early April, he appointed twelve members to the Commission under the leadership of architect Geoffrey Platt.

Mayor Wagner’s Commission could act in only an advisory capacity. It quickly became evident that it would need significantly greater power to protect historic buildings and districts. Using documents in Wagner’s files and the records of City Planning Commissioner Ballard, researchers can explore the ensuing back-and-forth with councilmembers that took place over the next few years as they crafted what would become Local Law 46 of 1965. In essence, the new Law provided that the “Temporary” Landmarks Preservation Commission become a permanent Commission with control over the building exteriors in historic districts.

New York County “Tweed” Courthouse, ca. 1955. NYC Municipal Archives Collection. Landmarked 10/10/1984.

Ballard’s files are notable for the comments solicited and received from interested parties regarding the proposed legislation. His files contain a transcript of City Planning Commission member Harmon Goldstone’s testimony before the Council on December 3, 1964. Goldstone spoke eloquently about the benefits and necessity of the Landmarks law. In his statement, he cited “a quotation attributed to a former Republican President: ‘I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lies. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.’ —Abraham Lincoln.”  Addressing concerns regarding limitations on private property proposed by the legislation, Goldstone noted: “Just as the zoning power, the police power, the power of eminent domain must take precedence over the interests of the individual, so it is proposed to protect the public interest in our common past.”

Taking up the question of what motived Mayor Wagner to create the Landmark Preservation Committee (and later Commission) in the early 1960s, Ballard’s files provide some clues. Again, Goldstone’s testimony is pertinent: “It was, in fact, at the suggestion of James Felt, then Chairman of the Planning Commission, and with the advice of Maxwell Lehman, Deputy City Administrator, that Mayor Wagner appointed in May 1961, a committee of interested citizens to explore the problem.” The Municipal Archives’ holdings include records created by James Felt during his term as City Planning Commissioner (1956-1963). The inventory does not list an obvious subject in his records, e.g. “Landmarks,” but a closer examination of his correspondence might reveal additional intelligence about what motivated Felt to make the suggestion to Wagner.

Landmarks Preservation Committee brochure, 1988. NYC Municipal Library.

The Municipal Library collection also serves as a resource to answer what prompted Mayor Wagner to create the Commission. Among the Library holdings are several published sources that discuss the historical antecedents of the preservation movement. For example, a report published in 1989 by the Historic City Committee of the Municipal Art Society of New York, entitled “New York, the Historic City,” included a section on the “Background and Development of the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission.” According to the report, “The real flowering of historic preservation in America... came in the decades after World War II as a building boom began to actively threaten historic buildings across the nation.” Not surprisingly, according to the report, growing opposition to Robert Moses played a role: “In Manhattan the modernist glass and steel skyscrapers which had begun to fill midtown, and the white brick apartment buildings interrupting residential rowhouse blocks, coupled with the cumulative effect of thirty years of Robert Moses’ urban renewal work in all boroughs, began to generate citizen interest in the cityscape as it stood.”

Another important impetus, according to the report, came from the Brooklyn Heights Association. In the late 1950s, the Association drafted legislation proposing landmark protection for its historic neighborhood. According to the report, this action made it clear to the city’s political powers that “...historic preservation would be supported by the grass-roots citizenry.”

Alice Austen House, Staten Island, ca. 1940. Landmarked 5/13/69. 1940s Tax Department photographs, NYC Municipal Archives.

Returning to Wagner’s file, two carefully clipped and mounted newspaper articles may also point to a motivation for the legislative action to preserve landmarks. From the New York Times on April 2, 1962, an article announced establishment of the Commission. Tellingly, the story quickly dispensed with the facts of the new Commission in two sentences. It then continued for several paragraphs describing the then-impending demolition of Pennsylvania Station: “Mr. Platt, asked about the architects’ protest over the planned demolition of Penn Station, said he personally regretted that his commission had come into being too late to try to save the terminal.” 

Pennsylvania Station, 1961. Demolished 1964. Mayor Robert F. Wagner papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

The second clipping is an editorial that ran on March 3, 1962, in which the author, Elias S. Wilentz, decried the imminent destruction of the “historic Walt Whitman building as part of its [Housing and Redevelopment Board] plan for Cadman Plaza urban renewal.” The writer noted that the building, “where the great poet helped set the type and print the first edition of “Leaves of Grass” in 1855, marks the central event in Whitman’s life and one of the most historic occasions in our nation’s cultural history.” Like Penn Station, the protests came to naught and the Whitman building vanished.

Further research in Municipal Archives and Library collections will undoubtedly shed light on the origins of the preservation movement and New York City's pioneering agency.

High Bridge, Aqueduct and Pedestrian Walk, Harlem River at West 170th Street, Borough of The Bronx, to High Bridge Park, Borough of Manhattan, ca. 1926. Landmarked 11/10/1970. Municipal Archives Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The Municipal Library collection is also a rich resource for information about the Commission after its establishment in 1965. All landmark designation reports are easily accessible online via the Library’s Government Publications Portal.  Searching the Library catalog pulls up dozens of entries for reports, audits, guides and publications about the Commission and its work. The Library’s vertical files are stuffed with clippings and ephemera charting the trajectory of the often-controversial City agency and its subsequent history – fights over designations, court challenges, etc.

Soon after Mayor Wagner signed the bill in 1965, the Landmarks Preservation Commission got to work. Six months later, the Commission notified the Mayor that a public hearing would be held on October 19, 1965, to consider designation of City Hall, the Municipal Building, New York County [Tweed] Courthouse, Surrogate’s Court (Hall of Records), the Brooklyn Bridge and Fire House, Engine Company 31, at 87 Lafayette Street.

The Surrogates’ Courthouse and the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, ca. 1939. Landmarked 2/15/1966. 1940s Tax Department photographs, NYC Municipal Archives.

Jack Lutsky, Wagner’s “Legal Aide” dutifully forwarded the notice to several relevant City offices requesting comments. One response is worth noting. “Dear Mr. Lutsky,” Bradford N. Clark, the Commissioner of the Department of Public Works wrote, “The designation of the Surrogates Court (Hall of Records) is considered appropriate. However, it should be pointed out that the long-range plans for the Manhattan Civic Center contemplate the demolition of this building...”.

Oh. For the Record readers interested in how that played out are welcome to re-read Manhattan’s Civic Center Plan 1964.