Digital Collections

Links

• Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America: Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner, 1935-1955
  Over 29,000 photographs primarily of architectural subjects, including interiors and exteriors of homes, stores, offices, factories, historic buildings, and other structures concentrated chiefly in the northeastern United States, especially the New York City area, and Florida.
  
  
• Cartoonist Thomas Nast vs. Candidate Horace Greeley
  In 1872, Thomas Nast, the premier cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly, waged a scorched-earth assault against the presidential campaign of Horace Greeley, the famous and influential founder and editor of the New York Tribune.
  
  
• Changing New York: Photographs by Berenice Abbott, 1935-1938
  343 black and white photographs by Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) from her Changing New York Works Progress Administration/ Federal Art Project documenting the city's rapidly changing environment.
  
  
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
  This site allows you to search and read newspaper pages from 1900-1910 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Includes New York City newspapers, The Sun and the Evening World.
  
  
• Crime in New York 1850-1950
  This collection offers access to primary materials documenting nearly a century of investigation, arrest, judgment and incarceration of many famous and unknown criminals in New York City. Materials have been gathered from the Lloyd Sealy Library's Special Collections at John Jay College and includes photographs and trial transcripts.
  
  
• Detroit Publishing Company Photographs, 1880-1920
  This collection of photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company Collection includes over 25,000 glass negatives and transparencies as well as about 300 color photolithograph prints, mostly of the eastern United States including New York City.
  
  
• Digital Gallery (NYPL)
  Digital Gallery provides access to over 337,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs,
  
  
• Five Points Site
  Archaeologists and historians rediscover a famous nineteenth-century New York neighborhood.
  
  
• Freedom's Journal
  The "first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States. The Journal was published weekly in New York City from 1827 to 1829. All 103 issues have been digitized and placed into Adobe Acrobat format."
  
  
• Harlem History
  This site presents a wealth of archival treasures and scholarship from Columbia University about the history of one of the world's most famous and influential neighborhoods.
  
  
• Harlem: 1900-1940
  An exhibition from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture that includes a timeline, biographies, a section for teachers and other information about the African American community in Harlem.
  
  
• How the Other Half Lives
  The full-text, complete with original illustrations, of the original, 1890 edition of Jacob A. Riis' How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York.
  
  
• LaGuardia and Wagner Archives
  A repository for 20th century New York City political and social history covering the mayoralties of LaGuardia, Wagner, Beame, Koch, and more.
  
  
• Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906
  This online collection contains 45 films of New York City dating from 1898 to 1906 from the holdings of the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting, & Recorded Sound Division. Provides streaming short films from the Edison Company and the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, including footage of Ellis Island, Central Park, skyscrapers, and subways.
  
  
• Lost Museum
  An interactive recreation of P.T. Barnum's nineteenth century museum on Lower Broadway and the fire that consumed it. Includes essays and an archive.
  
  
• MAAP: Mapping the African American Past
  Web-based examination of New York City's African American history includes videos, audio, maps, images and teaching materials.
  
  
• Maps of New Netherland, New Amsterdam, and New England
  Based on an exhibition mounted by Fordham University.
  
  
• Mid-Manhattan Library Picture Collection Online
  A collection of 30,000 digitized images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923.
  
  
• Moving Uptown: Nineteenth-century Views of Manhattan
  Traces Manhattan's urban evolution as it has been recorded in 19th-century prints, drawn primarily from the Eno Collection of New York City Views and the I. N. Phelps Stokes Collection of American Historical Prints, both held at the New York Public Library.
  
  
• Museum of the City of New York: Byron Collection
  This database consists of over 22,000 photographs of New York City and its environs taken by the Byron Company between 1890 and 1942.
  
  
• New York City Digital Collection of Historical Books
  A subset of the Making of America digital library (the University of Michigan site), this collection consists of over 400 volumes focusing on New York City. The “Refine this search” link at the top of the page allows you to search by keyword within this collection.
  
  
• New York City Landmark Preservation Commission Designation Reports
  The Neighborhood Preservation Center and New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission have joined together to provide free online access to Landmark designation reports. Designation reports explain the architectural, historical or cultural significance of an individual landmark or historic district. Work in Progress.
  
  
• New York City Transit Scenes: Past and Present
  A photographic and historical tour of New York's first subway line, the IRT.
  
  
• New York City Views
  Images of New York City from the NYPL Digital Gallery, a free resource of images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of the Library. This link goes directly to image collections of New York City from the Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy.
  
  
• New York State Historical Literature
  The Cornell University Library New York State Historical Literature is a collection of 691 pamphlets and monographs with expired copyrights chosen from the Library's extensive collection of New York State Literature.
  
  
• New York Underground (American Experience)
  Web companion to an episode of the PBS television show the American Experience, looks at the construction and impact of New York City's subway system.
  
  
• New York's State and National Registers of Historic Places Document Imaging Project
  Include more than 4000 State and National Register of Historic Places nomination forms and their associated photographs.
  
  
• NewYorkHeritage.org
  NewYorkHeritage.org is a portal to hundreds of free digital collections about New York State's people, places, and institutions contributed by libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions.
  
  
• Notable New Yorkers
  Offers audio recordings and transcripts of interviews with ten influential New Yorkers, drawn from the collections of the Oral History Research Office of the Columbia University Libraries.
  
  
• NYU and the Village: An Urban University in Bohemia
  A virtual tour of New York University and Greenwich Village history including a walking tour, biographical sketches and quotes.
  
  
• Picture Collection Online (NYPL)
  The online counterpart to the illustrious Mid-Manhattan Library’s Picture Collection, this resource is a collection of 30,000 digitized images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923. Browse under the subject “New York City”
  
  
• Seneca Village: A History
  Seneca Village was Manhattan's first significant community of African American property owners. It existed from 1825 through 1857 and was located between 82nd & 89th Streets and 7th & 8th Avenues. Today, this area is part of Central Park.
  
  
• Small-Town America: Stereoscopic Views from the Robert Dennis Collection
  A few big cities -- and many more small towns -- long ago made the Mid-Atlantic States of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut one of the most densely populated regions in North America. This Website presents 12,000 photographs of those three states as they were captured in stereoscopic views from the 1850s to the 1910s.
  
  
• Stonewall and Beyond: Lesbian and Gay Culture
  The online edition of the Columbia University Libraries exhibition on gay and lesbian history and culture, held in 1994 in conjunction with the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the "Stonewall Riots" in New York City.
  
  
• Triangle Factory Fire
  This web exhibit presents original documents and secondary sources on the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire (1911) held by the Cornell University Library. You will find original documents, oral histories, and photographs.