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New Project: Processing and Digitizing Records of the New York City Commission on Human Rights

Project Overview

An Equal Chance booklet, published by New York State Commission Against Discrimination, 1951. NYC Commission on Human Rights Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The NYC Municipal Archives has launched a new processing and digitization project, Processing and Digitizing Records of the New York City Commission on Human Rights. It is supported by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives as part of their Documenting Democracy initiative. The project will enhance public access to a significant series of records created by the New York City Commission on Human Rights. Key activities of the project include rehousing and processing 268 cubic feet of records, digitizing the earliest 53 cubic feet, publishing digitized materials, an online finding aid, social media content and blog posts, and curating a digital exhibit that showcases both the collection and the project’s progress. Project activities commenced in March 2025 and will be completed in March 2026.

About the Collection

The collection spans 268 cubic feet and covers the years 1944 to 1976, bringing together the records of the New York City Human Rights Commission (1962–1976) and its predecessor organizations—the Mayor’s Committee on Unity (1944–1954) and the Committee on Intergroup Relations (1955–1961). It provides a comprehensive record of the research, policymaking, investigations, legal actions and studies that shaped New York City’s efforts to address discrimination over three decades.

The Mayor’s Committee on Unity (1944-1954)

In 1944, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia created the Mayor’s Committee on Unity by Executive Order in response to citywide concerns about race relations following riots in Harlem during the 1930s and early 1940s. The Committee focused on:

Mayor’s Committee on Unity Program and Purpose Document, October 18, 1946. NYC Commission on Human Rights Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

  • Recommending and endorsing legislation beneficial to the causes of race relations.

  • Investigating and recommending action in New York City neighborhoods where tensions were acute.

  • Advising groups and agencies on how to adapt their programs to meet demands created by racial and religious conflict.

  • Exerting the pressure at their disposal to bring about desired changes in agency programs.

  • Extinguishing the little fires of conflict before they reach conflagration proportions.

  • Conducting research and investigations to determine the causes of intergroup differences.

These early materials consist of The Mayor’s Committee on Unity’s meeting minutes, topical reports, original research, surveys, correspondence, speeches, programmatic planning, interviews, press coverage, financial reports, conference proceedings, and legal documents. 

The Commission on Intergroup Relations (1955-1961)

Does the Light Reach Harlem? pamphlet, published by City-Wide Citizens’ Committee on Harlem, 1950. NYC Commission on Human Rights Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

In the mid 1950s, the Mayor’s Committee on Unity evolved into the Commission on Intergroup Relations. The Committee had been privately funded and relied on donations. It lacked permanent city agency status. As its mission became more essential and long-term sustainability grew uncertain, the city formalized its work by establishing the Commission on Intergroup Relations as a permanent, city-funded agency.

The Commission on Human Rights (1962-Current)

In 1962, the Commission on Intergroup Relations was renamed the Commission on Human Rights. With the passage of the New York City Human Rights Law in 1965, the Commission gained the authority to prosecute discrimination in private housing, employment, public accommodations, and equal pay. This is the largest series in the collection, comprising 215 cubic feet of case files used in legal proceedings. Due to concerns about protecting personal privacy, this series will not be digitized.

Step 1. Surveying

Before the collection can be processed it will be surveyed. Surveying involves looking through a sampling of the boxes to determine a general timeline and content themes. The archivists aim to create a potential organization scheme for the collection during the survey. In the initial survey of the NYC Commission on Human Rights Collection, the archivists determined that the collection would be broken down into three main series that represented the three different entities and eras highlighted above.

The Puerto Rican Migration... a Report, published by The Committee of Puerto Ricans in New York City, 1955. NYC Commission on Human Rights Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Step 2. Processing and Re-Housing

Descriptive Information

Archivists identify and record key details about each folder’s contents, including topics and date ranges. This information is written on the physical folders and entered into a spreadsheet that  forms the basis of the online finding aid’s inventory.

Prejudice pamphlet, by Willard Johnson, National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1952. NYC Commission on Human Rights Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

As noted above, only the first series of the collection—totaling 53 cubic feet—will be digitized during this project. The digitization specialist will scan, review, and edit the digital files for quality, then name and upload them to the online repository. The materials will be accessible to the public, after the full collection has been processed and open for research.

Step 4. Writing the Finding Aid

The finding aid brings together all the information gathered during   collection processing and transforms it into a structured, accessible guide for researchers. The finding aid provides essential context, including a historical overview of the collection’s development, a narrative of the Commission’s evolution, profiles of key individuals, and documentation of the Commission’s major contributions. The finding aid also situates the collection within broader historical movements, highlights themes relevant to current research trends, and includes comprehensive subject terms to support discovery.

Step 5. Publishing the Finding Aid and Uploading the Inventory Online

The final step is to publish the finding aid and folder-level inventory in the Municipal Archives’ online repository for public access. The online finding aid includes introductory material such as historical and biographical notes, a description of how the collection is organized, and a detailed inventory of folder titles and dates. This final product will help researchers understand the collection’s historical context and include a folder inventory.

Conclusion

Keep Your School All-American poster, published by the Institute for American Democracy, 1950. NYC Commission on Human Rights Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The New York City Commission on Human Rights collection holds immense value for understanding how one of the nation’s most dynamic cities confronted systemic injustice across multiple decades. Comprised of meeting minutes, topical reports, original research, surveys, correspondence, speeches, programmatic planning, interviews, press coverage, financial reports, conference proceedings, and legal documents, the records document New York City’s governmental response to racial unrest, religious intolerance, and discrimination from the World War II era through the height of the civil rights movement. As a city at the forefront of social change, New York City’s Commission on Human Rights played a significant role in shaping national conversations around equity and democratic values. The Municipal Archives expects the collection to attract a wide range of users—from students and scholars to advocacy groups and public agencies—who are invested in exploring the roots and ongoing impact of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Its interdisciplinary relevance spans history, sociology, public policy, law, urban planning, critical race theory, gender studies, and beyond, offering deep insights into both historical and contemporary struggles for justice.

Look for future articles that will update project progress.

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.

Castello Plan, New Amsterdam in 1660, redrawn by John Wolcott Adams for Stokes Iconography of New York, 1916. NYC Municipal Library.

We are going to be visiting some of the most important sites of New Amsterdam, and we can do this because the street grid of lower Manhattan is largely unchanged from the mid-1600s. And we know this because of a survey and map of the city made in 1660. There were about 1,500 residents in 300 houses in 1660, and we know the names of most of them. The original map was lost to time, but a redraft of it was part of an atlas sold to Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany around 1667, and it was rediscovered in 1900 in villa di Castello, hence its name, the Castello Plan. A bronze relief of this map is embedded in a rock located at State Street & South Ferry, not far from where General Stuyvesant’s house, Whitehall, stood. The New Amsterdam History Center has recently brought the map to life with an interactive 3-D model.

1) Start at Bowling Green between the Customs’ House and Bowling Green Park. 

Prior to the Dutch, the tip of lower Manhattan was known to the Lenape as Kapsee “the sharp rock place.” It had been used probably for hundreds of years as a meeting place and trade location for the various tribes of the region. Tribes from Long Island, New Jersey and Upstate New York all came here to trade. And so, it is appropriate that the Museum of the American Indian is housed in the Customs House. Incidentally, the name Manhattan comes from Manna-hata, a Munsee word for “the place where we get bows.”

Tour route of the walking tour, start in front of the Custom’s House and Bowling Green Park.

We are starting at this point because where the Customs’ House now stands was Fort Amsterdam, constructed 400 years ago in 1625. This was the first settlement the Dutch made on the island of Manhattan, although the colonists had first settled in 1624 on Nutten Island, which we know as Governor’s Island. Prior to that, in 1609, Henry Hudson claimed the area for the Dutch in his ship the Halve Maen (Half Moon). In 1614 the Dutch built their first settlement upstate in Albany, which they called Beverwijck. And that name gives a clue as to why the Dutch were here. Beaver pelts, which were made into water-proof felted-fur hats for Europeans. Albany was the center of the beaver trade, but the Dutch needed a protected deep-water port such as this to ship the goods to Amsterdam. In return the Dutch sent back goods and supplies for the colonists and to trade with the native population.

Fort Amsterdam, looking north up Broadway. Courtesy New Amsterdam History Center, Mapping Early New York.

At first, Fort Amsterdam was crude, with earthen walls, but eventually it contained a church, a garrison, a house for the director, a prison, and a warehouse. It was used to house the entire population during Kieft’s War in 1643, when the Lenape counter-attacked the Dutch after a massacre by colonists. 

In 1626, the so called “purchase” of Manhattan occurred. No such deed exists, but Peter Schagen wrote a letter to the States General saying it was purchased by Peter Minuit on November 5, 1626 for goods and sewant (wampum) worth 60 guilders. Converted in the 19th century to dollars, a historian arrived at the figure of $24. However, the Lenape did not have the same ideas of property ownership as Europeans and most likely saw the agreement as a treaty for mutual use of the area, setting up decades of conflict. By 1655 smallpox and other diseases, along with war, had decimated the native populations.

In 1628, the Dutch started construction on the first windmill on the island near State Street and Battery Place. This was for grinding grain, and a second mill nearby was a sawmill.

Broadway from the fort. Courtesy New Amsterdam History Center, Mapping Early New York.

Broadway itself predates the Dutch by perhaps thousands of years. It was an Indian trail that ran the length of the island and led upstate, called the Wickquasgeck Trail. The Dutch called it de Heere Straat or Gentleman’s Street.

To the east, behind 2 Broadway, is a small alley named Marketfield Street. It used to extend all the way to Broadway, and as the name suggests it was here in this common area where the Dutch established a public market by 1658. Further down on Whitehall Street was a cattle market and open-air slaughterhouse.

Stuyvesant’s house, Whitehall, gave its name to Whitehall Street. Courtesy New Amsterdam History Center, Mapping Early New York.

Before we leave, you might want to take note of the fence around Bowling Green Park. This area was common ground in New Amsterdam. In 1773 it was officially made a park, and in 1771 the English common council erected this cast iron fence. If you run your hands across the top of the posts, you will see that they are roughly chopped off. These posts were capped with crowns and in the park was a statue of King George III on horseback. In 1776, patriots hacked off the crowns and destroyed the statue, melting it down for bullets. 

2) Walk south on Broadway and Whitehall Streets to Bridge Street and turn left. Stop at Bridge and Broad Street. 

Why is this Street named Bridge Street? And why is Broad Street so broad? In the 1640s the Dutch expanded an existing stream and created the first canal in Manhattan. It went from the river to Beaver Street where it branched out to the west. The canal was built to drain a swampy area north of Beaver Street, but also because the Dutch wanted to remake their colony in the New World in the image of their home capital of Amsterdam. First called the Common Ditch, the canal was later named the Heere Graft, or Gentleman’s Canal. It had two wooden bridges crossing it, one here and one at Stone Street. At Marketfield Street there was a dock for unloading goods bound for the market. The canal eventually became an open-air sewer and the English filled it in in 1676.

The Canal. Courtesy New Amsterdam History Center, Mapping Early New York.

View of the canal at the corner of today’s Beaver and Broad Streets. Courtesy New Amsterdam History Center, Mapping Early New York.

3) Cross Broad Street on Pearl St, stop in front of 63 Pearl Street, remains of Governor Lovelace’s Tavern.

This area was excavated in 1979 and the remains of the walls of the Lovelace Tavern were discovered. Lovelace was the second English Governor of New York. So, this is not quite a Dutch house although some Dutch bricks were found by archeologists. Where the yellow stones are set in the pavement are the rough outlines of the Stadt Huys, the Dutch City Hall. It too had been a tavern, built in 1641, and in 1653, when the Dutch were given permission to form a municipal government, General Stuyvesant and the Dutch Council of Burgomasters and Schepens, declared that the City Tavern would henceforth be the City Hall. 

The Studt Huys, or City Hall. Courtesy New Amsterdam History Center, Mapping Early New York.

After the English takeover in 1664 it remained as the City Hall until in 1697, when the Stadt Huys was declared unsafe and so they moved next door to the Lovelace Tavern while a new City Hall was constructed on Wall Street. So, the Lovelace Tavern was for a short time the second City Hall of New York.

The Dutch called this street the Strand, or the wael (riverbank). The river would have been just on the other side of the road, and eventually the Dutch built up a bulkhead from the canal to Hanover Square, and called this de Waal Straat, which does not mean Wall Street. It means Dock Street, which is what the English later called it. This has caused no end of confusion over the years, but the Dutch never called Wall Street by that name. Pearl Street originally referred to just the portion from State Street to Whitehall Street, named for the crushed oyster shells that covered it.

4) Walk up Coenties Slip to South William Street.

Where the school now stands was the House of the Enslaved Workers, built before 1643.  Slavery was introduced into the colony of New Amsterdam in 1627 with the arrival of 22 Africans captured from a Portuguese ship. While most enslaved people were held by private citizens on farms, we know that the Dutch West India Company held 25 (probably only listing adult males) in 1653. Many were initially kept further north around Kips Bay where they did the heavy work of logging and clearing land for farms, but those engaged in work in town lived here in a small house with a garden to grow their own food. In 1664, the arrival of the Gideon with 290 Angolan Slaves greatly expanded the enslaved population of the city. 

House of Enslaved Workers. New Amsterdam History Center, Mapping Early New York.

The Mill Street Synagogue, as it appeared in 1730 on Mill Street (now S. William Street). Source unknown.

To the right, where Luke’s Lobster is, was the first purpose-built synagogue in North America. It was built after the Dutch period in 1730, but by the first Jewish congregation in New Amsterdam, Shearith Israel. They formed in 1654 with the arrival of Asser Levy and 23 Jewish refugees from Brazil. General Stuyvesant at first did not welcome the Jewish emigrants, which led to them petitioning the States General in 1655 for permission to remain and become citizens. The Dutch government agreed, which was an important milestone in establishing the idea of freedom of religion in the New World. Continuing northeast on South William Street you will see some Dutch revival houses built in the early 1900s, but the houses in New Amsterdam would not have been nearly so grand. 

5) Turn right on Mill Lane to Stone Street, stop by Hanover Square and Stone Street.  

Stone Street was originally called Brewers Street (Breuers Straet) further west, and High Street (Hoogh Straet) in this portion. Brewers held a lot of wealth and power in New Amsterdam, as Stuyvesant once complained “one full fourth of the City of New Amsterdam has been turned into taverns.” The brewers petitioned to pave the street and funded it with their own money. In 1658 it became the first paved street in New Amsterdam.

6)  Walk up Pearl Street to the corner of Wall Street. 

We are now on Het Cingel, “the belt.” The Dutch named it after the original outer wall and canal of Amsterdam. Starting at Hanover Square and crossing the city at Wall Street was yes, the defensive wall of the city. In 1653, the Dutch and English were in the midst of the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-1654). In New England, English troops were amassing and rumors of this reached the small colony of New Amsterdam. Against this backdrop, New Amsterdam formed its first city government. Soon after, on March 13, 1653, an emergency meeting brought together the Director General (Petrus Stuyvesant), his Council, and the Court of Burgomasters and Schepens. The following point was discussed: 

“Upon reading the letters from the Lords Directors [of the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam] and the last received current news from New England concerning the preparations there for either defense or attack, which is unknown to us, it is generally resolved: 

First. The burghers [a type of citizen] of this City shall stand guard in full squads overnight… 

Second. It is considered highly necessary, that Fort Amsterdam be repaired and strengthened. 

Third. Considering said Fort Amsterdam cannot hold all the inhabitants nor defend all the houses and dwellings in the City, it is deemed necessary to surround the greater part of the City with a high stockade and a small breastwork….” 

The Wall. Courtesy New Amsterdam History Center, Mapping Early New York.

The block house and City Gate [Water Gate], 1674. D.T. Valentine’s Manual of1862, NYC Municipal Library.

Although enslaved workers would most likely have done much of the heavy work, such as cutting and moving the lumber, in April it was ordered that “the citizens without exception, shall work on the constructions… by immediately digging a ditch from the East River to the North River, 4 to 5 feet deep and 11 to 12 feet wide.” This dry ditch would have formed part of the defensive works. The wall was finished by July 28th but not used. The construction of the wall was meant to be a stockade fence, but this proved too expensive and so a sort of plank wall with bulwarks was built instead. At the present intersection of Pearl Street and Wall Street was the Water Gate, allowing passage along the riverbank. Later in the 1600s the English built a market for grains here called the Meal Market. In 1711, the City Council also designated this market as the place for hiring or selling enslaved Africans or Indians. The first slave market in the City.

7) Walk west up Wall Street and think about how short this distance is, less than 2,000 feet river to river. Stop in Front of Federal Hall.

The First Anglo-Dutch war was the reason to build the wall in 1653. But it was also used as a defense against the native population. It was damaged in 1655, during a coordinated attack by several tribes in what was called the Peach War. After this the wall was rebuilt and expanded to include a wing down the Hudson River side.

During the 2nd Anglo-Dutch War, on September 6, 1664, the Dutch colonists surrendered the city to the English, who renamed the city New York. They immediately went about improving the wall, but failed to upkeep it. In 1667, the Treaty of Breda resolved the 2nd Anglo-Dutch War and allowed the English to keep New York, but that was not the end of hostilities. In 1673, during the 3rd Anglo-Dutch War, New York was seized by Dutch privateers. They rebuilt the wall enlarging the bulwarks into two massive stone structures named Hollandia and Zeelandia after their warships. The war ended in 1674, and the Dutch returned the City to the English, but the wall remained.

The Miller Plan of New York, 1695. Reproduced in Stokes Iconography of New York, NYC Municipal Library.

The 1695 Miller Plan shows the layout of the City at that time. Even well into the English era, the Street along it was called “Het Cingel or the City Wall.” The wall was becoming useless though as the City had expanded far beyond it. In 1699, the council passed a resolution to tear down the wall and use the stones to build a new City Hall, here. After the American Revolution this City Hall became the first seat of American government and it is where George Washington was inaugurated. However, that is not this building. That building was demolished in 1812, when the new City Hall was built, and the current Federal Hall was built in 1842 as a custom house and later used as a subtreasury.

Federal Hall, Inauguration of General George Washington, 1789. D.T. Valentine’s Manual of 1849, NYC Municipal Library.

8) Continue along Wall Street to Broadway.

The main gate to the City was on Broadway, with a bulwark and a guardhouse on the east side. Where Trinity Church now stands was the Company Garden. In 1751 church workers digging in the southwest corner of Trinity Churchyard discovered part of the wall, which may have been part of the western bastion known as Oyster Pasty Mount.

Company Garden. Courtesy New Amsterdam History Center, Mapping Early New York.

9) Walk up Broadway to Park Row to Chambers Street. 

Broadway in the Dutch time did not follow its current path, it turned along Park Row to the east. Why? Because a giant swamp from Worth Street to Spring Street blocked the western side of the island. This swamp was later drained by the Canal that gives that Street its name. Park Row was then the lower portion of Bowerie (Bowery), which runs to Astor Place and Stuyvesant Square. Bowerie is Dutch for farm, for along this road were the great Dutch farms that fed the population. After the English takeover Stuyvesant retired to his farm at the end of this road.

Werpoes, a village of the Manhattan Indians, Map III. Published by the Museum of the American Indian, 1912. Courtesy, New York Public Library.

People often think that Wall Street was the border of New Amsterdam, but that was just where they put the wall. The 1653 records of New Amsterdam show that the court was given legislative authority “between the two rivers to the Fresh Water.” This refers to the Collect and Little Collect Ponds, which were in the valley just north of Chambers Street. The Collect Pond (corrupted from the Dutch word Kolch) was the main source of New Amsterdam’s and early New York’s drinking water. Another windmill built by the Dutch was once where the Municipal Building now stands.

Here at Chambers Street, there was one more wall, a stockade fence that ran across the island. The English built it in 1745 to protect the City from the French and it lasted until 1763. It was built here, not just because this was high ground, but because this was still considered the edge of the city. This is also why the African Burial Ground was in the low area below here, outside the wall. But before the African Burial Ground, and before the Dutch, where Foley Square is now, was Werpoes, a Lenape Village, built next to the Collect and Little Collect Ponds.

10) Come inside the Surrogate’s Courthouse and explore the exhibit. 

The City’s Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) has opened a new exhibit: “New Visions of Old New York.” Created in collaboration with the New Amsterdam History Center, the exhibit features a touchscreen with an interactive 3-D map describing places and people in New Amsterdam. It uses records from the Municipal Archives and Library to illustrate the presence of women, indigenous people and enslaved people.

The exhibit is located in the gallery at 31 Chambers Street and will run throughout 2025. It is open to the public Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. except holidays.

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.

Documentation of the precise shape and myriad uses of New York City’s waterfront is of interest to scholars, to developers, and to engineers and scientists planning for a resilient city facing the challenges of climate change. Given that our land-water interface has been in constant flux, where can accurate data about it be found? One rich repository of shoreline data is a set of more than 2,000 hand-drawn maps of the waterfronts of all five boroughs, many dating back to surveys conducted in the 1890s. The maps bear annotations indicating that they were updated and actively used well into the 1960s. They were prepared by surveyors and cartographers working for the city’s Department of Docks and its successor agencies,(3) and make up collection REC0133, entitled Waterfront Survey Maps.

Figure 1. Top: the corner of a Waterfront Survey Map showing the extent of damage from age and heavy use.  Bottom: close-up of a waterfront map showing the careful reference to surveyor’s books that provided the data for map preparation.

The collection includes a diverse set of drawings and related materials, but the core materials are hand-inked maps measuring approximately 27” x 40”, drawn to a scale of 1”:50’, with annotations linking them to a collection of surveyor’s notebooks. Many of the maps (which have all been physically conserved) show evidence of heavy use. The maps’ margins have in some cases literally crumbled away—alarming to the archivist, but evidence of the heavy use to which they were put.

The collection has not been analyzed to determine exactly how much of New York’s 500 miles of waterfront is represented.  Some of the most heavily industrialized neighborhoods, such as Newtown Creek on the Queens/Brooklyn border, appear in numerous maps.  An interactive map that locates each map in the collection on a contemporary digital map, as has been done(4) for the Municipal Archives’ collection of 1940s tax photos,(5) would be very helpful (interns, take note!)

To illustrate the extraordinary detail in these maps and their potential value, let’s look at a stretch of waterfront that is perhaps not the first that comes to mind as one of the city’s most active or interesting shorelines: the Hudson River shore on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, starting around 59th Street and extending eight miles uptown to the northern tip of the island.

Ever since this stretch was reconfigured by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses in the late 1930s as part of his West Side Improvement Project using 25 million Depression-Era dollars secured from the Roosevelt Administration, as vividly recounted by Robert Caro in The Power Broker, the Upper West Side has worked to regain access to its waterfront.  Moses doesn’t deserve all the blame—the Hudson River Railroad built tracks that hugged the river in 1849,(6) removing access to the water except for a handful of pedestrian bridges and dangerous grade-level crossings. The result was a mashup of industrial and recreational establishments that waxed and waned until Moses imperiously put an end to them all in 1934, reconfiguring Riverside Park, burying the railroad tracks under the park, and constructing the West Side Highway to facilitate access by car and truck to midtown and downtown Manhattan from the outer boroughs and suburbs. The Waterfront Survey Maps collection includes an overlapping series of drawings that span this stretch of Manhattan and reveal a fascinating set of long-forgotten features.

For example, the Hudson River Park and Greenway that now grace the shoreline starting at West 60th Street lie on top of an extraordinary feat of engineering: at least half a dozen piers and dozens of train tracks fanning out from an enormous railroad roundhouse near 72nd Street that distributed train cars arriving from upstate as well as those that were floated across the river from New Jersey and pulled off their barges at the Transfer Bridges whose ruined remains can still be seen in the water off 69th Street. Only vestiges of this industrial complex have been preserved, but the Survey Maps shows it in exquisite detail.

Figure 2. Top left: Waterfront Survey Map wsm_s-255 showing Hudson River from 59th to 74th Streets. Top right: close-up with detail of NY Central Railroad roundhouse. Center: undated photo of 60th Street freight yard showing roundhouse for turning engines, numerous tracks, and the float or transfer bridges bringing freight cars from New Jersey on barges. Lower left: close up of map with transfer bridge detail. Lower right: remnants of transfer bridges in the Hudson today. 

Immediately upriver from the roundhouse was a vast timber basin—a protected stretch of shore with booms that enclosed a kind of harbor where large quantities of wood used in construction were offloaded from ships and kept afloat until needed. Timber basins were familiar sights near shipyards, but Manhattan’s vast consumption of wood for railroad and subway ties as well as in building construction justified a timber basin on the Hudson; the basin at West 75th Street lasted from the mid-1890s until the mid-1920s. The few existing photographs of the timber basin hint at its size and nature; the Waterfront Survey Map for this stretch add details such as the dimensions of its opening to the river, and the advancing shoreline that eventually filled in the basin.

Figure 3. Top: detail from Figure 2 showing timber basin boom and (inset) close-up with dimensions of basin’s opening to the Hudson River. Note penciled annotations for the location of the riverbank at different times. Bottom: rare photo of 75th Street timber basin from Department of Ports and Trade photographs collection, New York City Municipal Archives. 

Starting with the Columbia Yacht Club at 86th Street, the survey map collection documents an astonishing number of boat, canoe, and yacht clubs as well as several swimming clubs—enclosed areas where swimmers could change, lounge, and take dips in the Hudson River while remaining protected from the vagaries of the open river. In the early 20th century, these clubs stretched all the way to Spuyten Duyvil at the northern tip of the island and were particularly dense in Inwood.

Figure 4. Top left: waterfront survey map showing cluster of boat clubs in Fort Washington. Top right: fire insurance map showing much less detail. Lower left: 1924 aerial photo. Lower right: modern satellite photo showing empty shoreline.

At 97th Street, the US Navy maintained a surprisingly robust presence. The survey maps show the outline of the USS Granite State, a remnant of the War of 1812 (!) that served as a training vessel for sailors while docked here from 1910 until she caught fire and burned in 1922. The maps also show onshore Navy facilities that aren’t documented on other contemporary maps.

Figure 5. Top: Waterfront Survey Map showing extensive US Navy structures at West 97th Street with numerous updates in black, red, gold, blue, and green ink. The massive docked ship is the USS Granite State, whose hull outline is marked with a series of red x’s because the ship burned in 1921 (lower photo).

New York City’s biggest celebration ever may have been the Hudson-Fulton Centennial in 1909. A highlight among the many festivities was a naval parade in the Hudson River. The city built an elaborate “watergate” at 110th Street to welcome global dignitaries from the ships anchored in the Hudson. The survey maps document not only the precise location and dimensions of the water gate but also the date of its removal—information that is difficult to locate elsewhere.

Figure 6. The impressive faux-marble water gate built to welcome dignitaries to the Hudson-Fulton Centennial Celebration in September 1909. Top: waterfront survey map detail showing the floating wooden platforms and the footbridge over the NY Central train tracks, all rich with dimensions. The tiny but careful red x’s indicate that the entire structure was removed, as the annotation indicates, on 7 June 1911. Bottom: Municipal Archives photo of the water gate, with a reproduction of Robert Fulton’s Clermont at dock and the newly completed Hendrik Hudson apartment building at West 110th Street in the background.

The detail recorded in the Archives’ waterfront maps is quite extraordinary, as was the careful noting of changes over time, achieved by drawing updates in different color inks. These maps compare favorably to another important historic resource for Manhattan—fire insurance maps. Prepared by private engineers and cartographers rather than a city agency, fire insurance maps are popular with historians for their frequent updates and their building-by-building detail. However, most either stopped their coverage at the closest marginal road to the waterfront or included far less information than the waterfront survey maps do, where their coverage overlapped. The industrialized waterfront in Manhattanville, where West 125th Street extended all the way to the Hudson, provides a final example. This was the location of the Fort Lee Ferry docks. The extensive system of pilings, piers and a ferry terminal are long gone (the terminal building was removed in 1959, for example. How do we know? —map wsm_s-264 tells us so!), but the maps reconstruct this busy strip of waterfront in exquisite detail. Compare the state-of-the-art Bromley fire insurance map of 1934 to the Municipal Archives’ Waterfront Survey Map of the same area. The Archives’ map is incomparably more detailed, right down to the humble lunch stand that can also be seen in a superb photo taken in 1915 by Eugene de Salignac, legendary photographer of the Department of Plant and Structures. (7) 

Figure 7. Manhattanville ferry docks. Top: head-to-head comparison of Waterfront Survey Map and fire insurance map of the same area. Game over. Middleleft: closeup of waterfront map showing palimpsest of numerous superimposed updates. Middleright: Municipal Archives photograph of the Riverside Drive viaduct. Bottom: closeup from photo confirming “Lunch Stand” notation on Waterfront Survey Map.

Nearly all the materials in the Waterfront Survey Map collection have been digitized, and with the completion of a finding aid it is more accessible than ever, to scholars and to anyone with an interest in a detailed understanding of the evolution of New York City’s shoreline.

[1]https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/contact/text4/verrazzano.pdf

[2]https://www.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans-studies/comprehensive-waterfront-plan/nyc_comprehensive_waterfront_plan_lo-res.pdf

[3] According to notes made by archivists Amy Stecher and Ian Kern in 2018, the agencies that succeeded the Department of Docks as functions and responsibilities evolved were: Department of Docks and Ferries, 1898-1919; Department of Docks, 1919-1942; Department of Marine and Aviation, 1942-1969; Department of Ports and Terminals, 1968-1985; Department of Ports, International Trade and Commerce, 1985-1986; and Department of Ports and Trade, 1986-1991.  Following the revision of New York City’s charter in 1990, the responsibilities of the Department of Ports and Trade were incorporated into those of the Economic Development Corporation (EDC), which exists today.  Collection REC0133 was accessioned by the New York City Municipal Archives in 1992-1993 from the EDC, which had maintained these records in the Battery Maritime Building.

[4] 1940s.nyc

[5] https://a860-collectionguides.nyc.gov/repositories/2/resources/64

[6] Anonymous. 1851. Hudson River and the Hudson River Railroad, 10-12.

[7]https://www.archives.nyc/blog/2025/3/28/on-the-scene-eugene-de-salignacs-photographs-of-traffic-safety

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.