Blog Posts by Subject: New York City

One can scarcely think of any park in NYC — or any city, really — without envisioning the ubiquitous pigeon there as well. Despite signs requesting you not feed the birds in adjacent Bryant Park, the library has more than its share of feathered patrons.

When the question arrived in our inbox at Ask NYPL, I noticed the email address ended in ".jp"

Mariko had approached the Asian Division of the Library of Congress. She asked if there was any possibility of finding information about her mother's employer, a Mrs. Obata, as she wanted to write about her. In 1931, Mrs. Obata had performed a traditional Japanese dance in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel "wearing a Kimono with a Shimada wig." When Mrs. Obata danced there, she was the only Japanese member of the Rubinstein Club — a women's choral group founded in New York in 1887. The reference specialist suggested that 

While I was in the neighborhood (visiting the library of the American Museum of Natural History - AMNH), I serendipitously noticed that the New-York Historical Society (NYHS) was next door. After visiting the AMNH, I decided to check out the library of the historical society.

The following post was written by guest blogger Vanna Valdez, Benefits Outreach Worker, NYC Hunger Free Communities Consortium.

The New York City Hunger Free Communities Consortium (NYCHFCC) is a collaboration of New York City’s leading anti-hunger, nutrition, and aging organizations (AARP Foundation, City Harvest, Council of Senior Centers and Services of NYC, Food Bank for NYC, Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, NYC Coalition Against Hunger, NYC Department for the Aging, Public Health Solutions, and United Way of New York City). This project works towards the creation of a hunger free New York City, with a particular focus on aiding the especially vulnerable  

• Landlord-Tenant Disputes: Heat and Hot Water, Eviction, Foreclosure
• Complaints with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTA)
• Consumer Fraud and "Rip Offs"
• Discrimination based on Race, Gender, Sexual Orientation

One of the treasures of the New York Public Library is the photographic publication "Fifth Avenue, New York, From Start to Finish." Luckily for us, this rare and beautiful collection of photographs has been digitized for anyone to view at any time — with the added advantage of being able to zoom in and truly examine the world in 1911 all up and down New York City's central avenue. Let's take a walk up Fifth Avenue in 1911 and see what kind of interesting things there are. You can click on any image if you would like to zoom in for more details. In the above panorama, you can see the Washington Square Arch at the far left.

In 2010, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded The New York Public Library's Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division a three-year grant for its New York City Historical Geographic Information Systems project, which builds digital cartographic resources from NYPL's historical paper map and atlas collections.

Drama, comedy, dance, music and romance! I found them all on 42nd Street and you can too!

If you love Broadway musicals old and new, along with drama, romance and some comedic repertoire, then the Great White Way is where you know you can enjoy a day or night out in New York City. It may become an adventure navigating and obtaining those coveted Broadway tickets. There are many websites that offer discount codes, but there are other ways to see a show at a reasonable price.

Did you know that there were more than 150 books about New York City published last year? Given this prodigious output, the New York Society Library, in hosting the New York City Book Awards, makes a significant contribution by directing Big Apple lovers to books that "evoke the spirit or enhance the appreciation of New York City." The 17th annual awards ceremony this May was my first, but it won't be my last. This is a literary event I'll surely try catch in the future.

Every year, spring sparks my desire to get out of my stuffy apartment, stretch my legs, and enjoy what the city has to offer. I want to enjoy a little time outside or find an event that requires some movement.

This year the musical Newsies got nominated for eight Tony Awards. The popularity of the Disney Broadway show based on the Disney film has led many of our younger patrons to ask about the newsboys and the strike they led in 1899 on which the film and play  are based.

Don't Shhhh me!.... NOT this time.

We are about to conclude the second season of our Lower East Side Heritage Film Series and for the closer we are ALL TALK.

I read Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities years before I moved to New York, back when I wrote for community newspapers in my home state of Delaware. Jacobs wrote sensibly, without pretense. She observed things closely, and drew logical conclusions. She obviously cared about her subject passionately, but her arguments were not emotional. They were deductive. I admired Jacobs tremendously.

It was time to represent New York City and the Wikipedians showed up in force to do so! Wiki Gangs of New York was a Wikipedia editathon which took place at the Stephen A Schwarzman building on April 21, 2012 using the specialized collections of the Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History and Genealogy and the Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division. With so much great material on hand to reference, Wikipedia grew with specialized local information about New York.

Shhhh.... this one is silent.

One of the great things about silent film is the fact that it is, well, silent.

While this attribute certainly draws attention to body language and visual storytelling, it also provides a blank canvas. As someone who composes and arranges music, this proves a great opportunity to sharpen my skills and have a bit of fun, dropping different types of music into a set of scenes. The fun happens when music intended for one purpose magically enhances another. It is proved to be a much more laborious a task, as I am not able to rely on the timings (and ease of scrolling) as one would with a digital version.

A recent question at the reference desk was how to find more about the sculpture of the large button threaded with a needle that stands in the Garment District of New York City at 7th Avenue and 39th Street. This query reminded me of a previous blog post I had written on locating information on a specific painting. The process for looking for information on a sculpture or sculptor is similar, but I thought I would highlight some of the search strategies and resources for sculpture that are different from painting.

The genealogy world is buzzing with today’s release of the 1940 Federal Census, but some have been disappointed to discover that the newly released data cannot yet be searched by name. Never fear, NYPL to the rescue!

NYPL Labs has created a fantastic new online tool to help you locate New Yorkers in 1940. In conjunction with the Milstein Division, One-Step, and the National Archives, our tool will help you find any New Yorker listed in the telephone directory. Direct Me: NYC will help you get from the name in the directory to the census information by using One-Step to convert the address to enumeration district and opening up the corresponding census 

Happy birthday to Charles Mingus, who would have officially become a nonagenarian this coming April 22, 2012 — a word I am certain he could have cleverly crafted into a title. And to celebrate one of the most unique and gifted voices in not just the jazz world, but, in my opinion, the whole of 20th century music, we are projecting on 16mm this wonderfully insightful film capturing Mingus at a very specific period in his life. A must see for all fans of Charles Mingus.

STAR TREK. The Musical! OK, not really, but even Mr. Spock would find fascinating what we dug up in the Library's Billy Rose Theatre Division about the original Star Trek actors before they went stellar. Who knew that Nichelle Nichols sizzled in the local cabaret scene before taking up her earpiece on the starship Enterprise? Or that George Takei was an activist (OK, not surprising), or that William Shatner, of Shatner's World; We Just Live in It..., first trod the Broadway boards over 50 years ago? Dust off your Klingon dictionary and stay tuned as we bring you the stage origins of Kirk, Spock, Sulu, and crew, and boldly go where