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.

NYC Commission on Human Rights, project update

In March, 2025, For the Record introduced a new project “Processing and Digitizing Records of the New York City Commission on Human Rights (CCHR).” Supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) of the National Archives as part of their Documenting Democracy initiative, the project will enhance public access to records from the CCHR that have been transferred to the Municipal Archives. Key project activities include rehousing and processing 268 cubic feet of records and digitizing the earliest 53 cubic feet. Project archivists will publish an online finding aid, social media content and blog posts. They will also curate a digital exhibit that showcases both the collection and the project’s progress.

Pamphlet from conference on racial bigotry and the Press, 1953. REC0103, Box 27, Folder 6] CCHR Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

This post discusses how the Department of Records & Information Services (DORIS) developed a reparative description guide and how it was applied to the CCHR project. The post also describes an interesting parallel within the CCHR records. 

Alice Austen House, Staten Island Landmark

Alice Austen House, Staten Island Landmark

This week, For the Record takes a journey through records in the Municipal Library and Archives that document Alice Austen (1866-1952), and her homestead in Staten Island. Located on bluffs overlooking New York Bay, the Gothic Revival cottage known as Clear Comfort is now in the portfolio of the New York City Historic House Trust. It has been fully restored and includes a museum dedicated to Austen’s work.

Revisit the 1964-1965 World’s Fair at DORIS

The 1964-1965 World’s Fair began as an idea floated by lawyer Robert Kopple in 1958. In August, 1959 Mayor Robert F. Wagner declared that 1964 would mark the 300th Anniversary of the establishment of New York City to be commemorated by holding a World’s Fair. (This was before City government determined that the City’s actual origin date could be traced to the Dutch colonists who occupied the region and established government operations in 1624.)  

An exhibit in the lobby at 31 Chambers Street, showcases highlights of the 1964-65 World’s Fair. The display draws heavily on brochures, reports and maps from the Municipal Library’s vertical file collection.

Socialists on the City Airwaves

The recent election and swearing-in of Zohran Mamdani a member of the Democratic Socialist Party was not the first socialist or progressive—of one persuasion or another—to run for elected office in the city. Mayor David Dinkins, for example, was also a member of the Democratic Socialist Party. Mayor Mamdani’s victory, however, offers an opportunity to look back at some of the socialist voices New Yorkers have heard over WNYC, the City’s municipal radio station, across the decades.

Before 1938, many candidates, would have found it difficult to gain access to the City’s airwaves at all. WNYC’s director at the time, Christie Bohnsack, largely followed the lead of the Tammany Hall political machine, which tended to lump progressive movements together under a broad—and pejorative—“red” label.

Welcoming Home the Troops, 1945

Recently, Municipal Archives conservators began treating an oversize scrapbook of photographs taken in 1945. Located in the Grover Whalen papers, the evocative pictures capture the spontaneous joy expressed by New Yorkers as they welcomed home their sons and daughters and victorious war-time leaders.  

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Thousands of spectators lined the streets as General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his motorcade traveled through the City, June 19, 1945.  Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Known as the City’s “Official Greeter,” Whelan led the Mayor’s Office for Receptions to Distinguished Guests, a.k.a. the Mayor’s Reception Committee, from 1918 to 1953.  

On June 19, 1945, just six weeks after hostilities in Europe ceased, Whalen and Reception Committee staff organized a reception for General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

New Visions of Old New York

At the end of December, the agency will close an exhibit that has been on display for the past year, New Visions of Old New York. The collaboration between the New Amsterdam History Center and the New York City Department of Records & Information Services has been the most well-attended exhibit that the agency has hosted. Those who missed the in-person display can view it at our online exhibit on archives.nyc.