For the last three months I have been treking to the New-York Historical Society on the Upper West Side, where the head archivist Sue Kriete has been generous enough to take me under her wing. N-YHS, the oldest historical society in New York, and the second oldest in the country, has a huge backlog of collections and a very interesting history. It was founded in 1804 by a group of “gentleman historians” who wanted to preserve history in the broadest sense. The Society did not develop a concrete collecting policy until late in the 20th century, and consequently they have amassed enormous backlog. While the backlog is considerable, their collections are also diverse and fascinating. With so much work to be done the Society is glad to have NYU interns.
As an intern I was given three small collections to organize that had been in the Society’s backlog for years. The first collection contained three boxes of papers belonging to George McAneny, a reformer, preservationist and New York civil servant in the 19th century. His collection contained correspondence, press clippings, material from events given in his honor and awards. It told the story of a man deeply devoted to the city and to civic reform. He assisted in the consolidation and streamlining of the burgeoning subway system, battled against Robert Moses to protect Castle Clinton in Battery Park, and drafted zoning bills that would later aid in historic preservation efforts. While sifting through the papers I discovered that his son Herbert also had a presence in the collection. The collection was passed on to N-YHS from the Princeton New Jersey Historical Society, where Herbert McAneny had once served as president. In the papers were a number of photographs, correspondence and books that had made it into the George McAneny material. Organizing this collection presented me with the challenge of arranging this varied material, and deciding which materials should be maintained. Ultimately, the McAneny material was given its own series reflecting the passion for preservation exhibited by George McAneny.
The second collection I managed documented a 1980’s preservation effort to turn the area around the Flatiron Building into a historic district. Known at the Ladies’ Mile, the area contains a number of former department stores that were once the center of the female driven consumer culture of the Gilded Age. The collection, the Drive to Protect the Ladies’ Mile, was given to N-YHS by the New York Preservation Archives Project (NYPAP). NYPAP was created to help save material related to the preservation movement in New York, but is not a repository itself, and consequently, the material primarily concerns the people who did the preserving and their efforts. Made up mostly of letters of support, research and administrative material, this collection would be very helpful to researchers interested in historic preservation, but not necessarily of interest to historians of architecture or consumer culture.
Lastly, I worked on the small photographic collection given to N-YHS by photographer Jane Hoffer, who spent four years between 1975 and 1979 interviewing and photographing female police officers in the field. The end result was a rich collection of prints and transcripts that give a lot of insight into the world of policewomen, especially during a time when they were relegated less and less to traffic divisions and desk work. As the only collection with any kind of original order, it was by far the easiest to arrange, however, it contained the least contextual information, so I had to dig a bit deeper. I interviewed Jane Hoffer herself, who is still a working photographer in New York. She provided the information I needed to situate the collection in a broader historical context. Without Jane’s input, I would not have known that a bound photo essay in the collection had been made independent of any exhibits. She also informed me that the photographs had been shown at two galleries and a museum before arriving at N-YHS, and that a selection of photographs from the same project are housed at the New York City Police Museum.
Each collection raised a unique set of problems and questions. The small size of the collections along with Sue’s invaluable guidance enabled me to conquer these challenges. I have described the specific challenges each collection raised, but they also presented me with issues in housing and contextualization. Ultimately, I learned two major lessons from my time at N-YHS. The first: experience is the only way for me to encounter the problems that crop up in processing. I can’t anticipate the kinds of questions a collection will present to me. I can’t anticipate them from a classroom. At N-YHS I was not only able to tackle those problems, but working with Sue allowed me to ask the questions I couldn’t answer on my own. It has set me on the road to preparedness for larger projects, and has certainly given me a framework for the kind of thinking needed to sort out these questions in a way that provides the best, most accessible and appropriately contextualized collections. The second lesson I learned is that N-YHS is a very unique organization, which has experienced the ebb and flows of archival practice over two centuries of collecting. I was given the chance to visit other departments, sit in on meetings and take part in the kind of events that inform the institutional culture at N-YHS. As an intern at a large, reputable institution in one of the most museum and library dense cities in the world, I was afforded a glimpse into the work it takes to maintain such an enormous repository. I saw first hand the way in which the archives, as a department, functions within the larger institutional framework and the direction they are headed in for the future.
