Posts by Sachiko Clayton

Hopefully those of you living in New York City were able to participate in Primary Day; if you haven’t, it’s not too late. Registered voters have until 9:00 this evening. Of course, we all care about our city and want to take part in electing our public officials. Perhaps this morning you were overwhelmed by the number of candidates to research and decide between. According to the New York City Campaign Finance Board, as of September 10, 2009 there were a total of 374 candidates running for election!

Still, New Yorkers have been given materials to be informed: The New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB) reported that more than 2.7 million households will receive the 

Have you visited the High Line yet? I haven’t but I am looking forward to making the trip in the near future. The High Line is an elevated train track which fell out of use during the 1950s due to the increased use of interstate highways for freight deliveries. In the late nineties, two New Yorkers came together to start Friends of the High Line, a group whose mission was to keep the historic structure from being demolished. Ultimately, the group partnered with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to reinvent the High Line as a public space. Just a couple of weeks ago the first section of the High Line opened up to the public and the city's response has been very 

As I have mentioned in the past, part of my work entails handling some wonderful photographs. One collection I processed last year was the Photographic Views of the United States, comprised of photographs from locations across the continental U.S., Hawaii and Alaska. While its layout is intuitively alphabetized by state, Matt Knutzen, from the Map Division decided to provide an alternative visual interface, connecting the images with their locations on a map of the United States. To view open the attachment below in Google Earth. Pretty cool, huh? We’re hoping this is just the beginning of our collaboration. I’ll write again about any new ideas or developments.

Just last week, the New York Public Library updated their Flickr Commons photostream. The newest images are from the Milstein Division and include construction photographs of the Woolworth Building as well as block by block street views of both Fifth Avenue (1911) and Broadway (1899).

Who exactly were the Queens of Finance? The New York Herald reserved this title for Victoria Claflin Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin (or Tennie C Claflin). These sisters surmounted incredible odds by establishing a highly lucrative brokerage business on Wall Street in 1869. Born in Homer, Ohio they were not privy to the comforts and education afforded by wealth or high social stature. In fact, their childhood was quite tumultuous. Born to an alcoholic father, the sisters took charge of providing for the family while Tennessee was still an adolescent. Victoria and Tennessee moved to New York with their family and manage their combined living expenses with money 

 As one would guess, Roosevelt Island was not always known as Roosevelt Island. In fact over the past four hundred years it has gone through six name changes. From the Native American Minnahanonck, or “nice island,” to the Dutch name Varckens Island (meaning hogs island) to the English name Manning Island which became Blackwell Island, to American, Welfare Island and finally to the present, Roosevelt Island. Most of these names changes came as ownership was transferred from one party to the next, marking very distinct periods of history for the island which we now know as Roosevelt. Some of these names are descriptive; during the Dutch period, for example, the island was 

 The photograph on the left is of High Island, an 8 acre spit of land between the Pelham Bay and the Long Island Sound, as seen from its more well-known neighbor, City Island. After researching High Island it remains somewhat of a mystery to me. Artifacts have been found on its shores, alluding to a time prior to the arrival of Europeans, but its Siwanoy name is still unknown. Even the origin of its present day name is uncertain. Some would guess that its name describes its physical location in the Northern reach of the city, or perhaps describing the profile of the island which is comparatively high. John McNamara, in History in Asphalt, states that it could be a Dutch name, Haai 

 The watery barriers of islands often prevent the infiltration of outside influences, as seen in the history of Broad Channel. For Hoffman and Swinburne Islands, however, these barriers were intended to keep potentially harmful change from spreading outward. Ellis Island is rightly considered the gateway to New York City during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While this is the case, some immigrants took a detour through Hoffman Island or Swinburne Island. The two man-made islands, designated as quarantines for arriving immigrants, were created in the 1870’s in an area of the Lower New York Bay referred to as Orchard Shoals. Hoffman, the larger of the two, detained 

Believe it or not, all of these names at one point referred to the same place: the only inhabited island in the Jamaica Bay, now known as Broad Channel. Have you ever been to Broad Channel? If you have, then you know that it looks nothing like the rest of New York City. Having spent half of my youth in Queens and the other half on the east end of Long Island, I can say that the Jamaica Bay area looks far more like the latter than the former. How did this happen?

Sometimes, from beyond the skyscrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you
remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island
-Albert Camus; American Journals (April/May 1946 entry)

In the quote above, Camus reminds us that this skinny piece of land, on which are built so many buildings and skyscrapers, is in fact, an island. What struck me about this quote today weren't its emotional implications but rather the fact that "Island" is not the immediate impression one gets of Manhattan. New York City, however, is actually comprised of many islands - all of which have interesting stories of their own. I enjoy 

The image left is from 1889, taken during the centennial celebration of George Washington's inauguration. I wonder what kind of celebration there will be 100 years from tomorrow . . .

To be sure, one will not need to wait 100 years to see a celebration. Washington, D.C. is gearing up for the largest crowd it has ever seen. I won't be there on Tuesday, but I will be watching. In fact, if you want to join me, stop by the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. We'll be watching inaugural festivities in the South Court classrooms.

 Check out more images here. Happy Thanksgiving!

This certainly is the election of my lifetime. If you’ve already voted today you probably had to wait a while to do so. This morning I’ve been spending time with the Encyclopedia of U.S. campaigns, elections, and electoral behavior. While it was just published in 2008 and is excellent for historical review, so much has changed this election season that I am wondering if an addendum will be published in the near future. I’m looking forward to new studies that will take the innovations used in the 2008 election into account as well as the recent grassroots movements in politics. But for right now, I’m just eager to see who wins. Writing from the edge of my 

 For the most part materials at the Milstein Division include print and electronic resources. A particularly unique collection held in our stacks is a seven-volume set of scrapbooks filled with World War I and World War II shoulder patches. Recently, these scrapbooks were treated by the Conservation Lab staff who lovingly restored them, cleaning the patches and encapsulating the pages. Conservation staff enjoyed this project thoroughly and invited Mr. Burger to the lab to view the newly stabilized albums; the meeting was recorded in the above video. The scrapbooks have been returned to the closed stacks of the Milstein Division and are now available for limited and supervised 

The equation above, however overly simplified, represents the foundation of a family history. In this blog post I want to introduce a few guidebooks and indexes in section 15 of our open shelves. Section 15 focuses specifically on vital records of New York City, mainly records produced by places of worship or notices from newspapers. Below are three items from this section:

To start, let’s revisit the Works Progress Administration’s Guide to Church Vital Statistics in the City of New York, which I mentioned in a blog post a couple of weeks ago. This guide outlines the places of worship, churches and synagogues, in the five boroughs and lists the types of records 

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on dating photographs based on photographic process and contextual clues. If this topic interest you, you may want to visit the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building or two classes on dating and preserving photographs. This Friday, I will be teaching a class called Clues from Family Photographs and next week, Tuesday Erin Murphy, the Associate Conservator for Photographs and Paper, will be offering a class called Caring for Family Photographs. Both of these classes will be held at 3:15-4:30 in the South Court class rooms.

The Milstein Division will be offering Digital Gotham this afternoon at 3:15 in the South Court classrooms which are located in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. Digital Gotham is a free class that explores online resources on New York City history. This hands-on class will introduce myriad resources—from digitized newspapers, magazines, and books to photographs, menus, and maps—many of which are available from your own desktop.

Digital Gotham is open to the public and requires no preregistration. However, seats are available on a first-come-first serve basis, so we encourage you to come five to ten minutes before the class begins. We look forward to seeing you 

Works Progress Administration or the WPA (renamed Work Projects Administration in 1939) was in my opinion, an amazing relief program. Established in 1935 as part of the New Deal by the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the WPA was an ambitious federal jobs program created to provide blue collar and white collar jobs for the unemployed during the Great Depression. Work ranged from road construction to theatrical productions to research for the Library of Congress and the program employed millions of individuals.

Opponents of the WPA criticized its work as nepotistic, wasteful and communist. Regardless, however, of one’s opinion about the WPA, the wealth of