Kenneth R. Cobb
Alice Austen House, Staten Island Landmark
Pauline Toole
Revisit the 1964-1965 World’s Fair at DORIS
Andy Lanset
Socialists on the City Airwaves
Kenneth Cobb
Welcoming Home the Troops, 1945
NYC Municipal Archives
New Visions of Old New York

Alice Austen House, Staten Island Landmark

This past June 17, 2025, art historian and curator Bonnie Yochelson discussed her new book, Too Good to Get Married: The Life and Photographs of Miss Alice Austen on DORIS’ popular “Lunch & Learn” program. Yochelson’s biography explores Austen’s groundbreaking photography and how she challenged gender norms of her era. For those who missed the illustrated talk, it can be viewed on DORIS’ YouTube channel.

Staten Island Block 2830, Lot 49, 1940 “Tax” Photograph collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

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.

Researchers are often advised to begin their quest with the secondary sources available in the Municipal Library. And among them, the “vertical files” are particularly useful. Arranged by subject, they contain printed articles, unique ephemera and visual materials. Often cited in For the Record articles, the files did not fail to come through for information about Alice Austen, her house, and the history of its origins in the 17th century, near demolition in the 1960s, and full restoration in the 1980s.

Robinson’s Atlas of Staten Island, 1907. NYC Municipal Archives

Elizabeth Alice Austen was born on Staten Island in 1866. At age two, she and her family moved into the nearby home of her grandfather, John Austen, where she lived until shortly before her death in 1952. Austen’s aunt introduced Alice to photography in the 1880s. Over the next fifty years, Austen created more than 7,000 glass-plate negatives and prints. Her images chronicled Staten Island, New York City, and particularly focused on the life of her friends and social circle. In 1917, her life partner, Gertrude Tate, joined Austen in the house where they remained until financial losses resulting from the Great Depression led them to lose the property in a bank foreclosure proceeding. Shortly before her death in 1952, an Austen photograph appeared on the cover of Life magazine and led to wider recognition of her talent. Austen’s photographs are now considered among the finest produced in America in the late 19th and early-20th centuries.

Assessed Valuation of Real Property, Town of Edgewater, Staten Island, 1873, “Old Town” Records collection. NYC Municipal Archives

Alice Austen’s grandfather John Austen purchased the family home in 1844. It had been originally constructed as a one-room farmhouse in the 17th century and went through many years of gradual additions and alterations. Austen transformed it to the Gothic Revival style recognizable today. The Library’s vertical file helps to tell the story. The New Yorker magazine printed a “Talk of the Town” article on September 30, 1967. The uncredited author described a visit to “a benefit punch-and-supper party being given by an organization called—with portmanteau clumsiness characteristic of so many ardent champions of good causes—Friends of the Alice Austen House and Esplanade.” At that time, according to the article, a real-estate syndicate owned the house along with two parcels of adjacent land that they intended to demolish to make way for a cluster of high-rise apartment buildings. The article described the house, “long, low-roofed, and engulfed in the leafy jungle of a long-abandoned Victorian garden,” surrounded by a “jumble of old barns and outbuildings in the shadow of an enormous horse-chestnut tree.”

Gateway to America, The Alice Austen House and Esplanade, Friends of the Alice Austen House and Esplanade, 1968, pamphlet. NYC Municipal Library.

As is often the case with vertical file contents, the “NYC Historic Homes - Alice Austen House and Esplanade” folder also included ephemera such as a copy of an illustrated pamphlet, Gateway to America: Alice Austen House and Esplanade, dated 1968, prepared by the Friends group, mentioned in the New Yorker article. It is interesting to note that the “Friends,” listed in the pamphlet turned out to be very prominent mid-century New Yorkers: photographers Berenice Abbott and Edward Steichen; architects Philip Johnson and Robert A.M. Stern; historic preservationists Margot Gayle and Henry Hope Reed, Jr., among others. VIPs who apparently saw the importance of preserving the Austen homestead also included Joseph Papp, Alfred Eisenstadt, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The Friends succeeded in having the Austen house designated as a Landmark in 1971. According to the Landmark Designation Report in the Library collection:

“On the basis of a careful consideration of the history, the architecture and other features of this building, the Landmarks Preservation Commission finds that the Alice Austen House has a special character, special historical and aesthetic interest and value as part of the development, heritage and cultural characteristics of New York City.... Accordingly,... the Landmarks Preservation Commission designates as a Landmark the Alice Austen House, 2 Hylan Boulevard.” [November 9, 1971]

Staten Island Block 2830, Lot 49, 1980s “Tax” Photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

The Alice Austen House and Esplanade, Friends of the Alice Austen House and Esplanade, n.s. pamphlet. NYC Municipal Library.

Soon after, in 1976, the City took title to the property, and in 1984 restoration of the house began. This information is gleaned from another item in the vertical files. An article in the Staten Island Advance, dated January 11, 1988, quoted Parks Commissioner Henry Stern’s remarks at a ceremony marking commencement of the restoration in 1984: “If we were dedicating this park because of the fabulous view, that would be enough. If we were dedicating the restoration of the house because it is a 17th-Century home of historical importance, that would be enough. If we were dedicating this house because of the brilliance of Alice Austen, that would be enough. But to have all these three things come together makes this an enormous event for New York.”

The history of the Austen House in the “Friends” brochure and other published sources provide the necessary dates to pursue research in the Municipal Archives collections. For example, the “Old Town” collection, recently processed and partially digitized with support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission is one source. The ledgers in the collection had been assembled by the Comptroller shortly after consolidation in 1898. They consist of administrative and financial records from all the towns and villages newly incorporated into the Greater City of New York. Among them are the records of assessed valuation of real estate. Given the importance of revenue from property taxes it should not be surprising that the Comptroller made sure those records were preserved.

Maps and atlases in the Archives locate the Austen homestead in the Town of Edgewater. In the 1873 Assessment Roll for the Town of Edgewater John Austin’s property on Pennsylvania Avenue is described as one house on one acre of land, valued at $3,000, with the tax bill $45.00; “Paid” carefully noted on the roll.

Property Card, Staten Island, Block 2830, Lot 49. NYC Municipal Archives.

The Property Card series are another essential resource in the Archives for research about the built environment. As noted in many previous For the Record articles, the cards list ownership, conveyance, building classifications, and assessed valuation data, generally from the 1930s through the 1970s. Each card also includes a small photographic print (also known as the “tax photographs”). The card for the Austen confirms Austen’s loss of the property to the bank during the Great Depression.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s 1971 designation report focused on the architectural significance of the “picturesque and charming example of the Gothic Revival style of architecture.” Similarly, most news accounts about Alice Austen and her house failed to acknowledge Austen’s relationship with her life partner Gertrude Tate. More recently, works such as Yochelson’s book have painted a more complete picture of Austen’s life and her role in the LGBTQ community. Today, the Alice Austen House is a New York City and National Landmark, on the Register of Historic Places, a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s distinctive group of Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios, and is a National site of LGBTQ+ History. The LGBT-NYC Sites Project provides a well-researched description of the house and the significance of Alice Austen.

Revisit the 1964-1965 World’s Fair at DORIS

Promotional card distributed by corporate participant, Sinclair Oil, 1964 New York World’s Fair.

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. The “vertical files” contain new clippings, handouts, media releases, leaflets and other documents that librarians compiled and stored in vertical file cabinets. The files on the 1964-65 World’s Fair are extensive. File folders in alphabetical order ranging from Accommodations to Women document both the 1939 and 1964 Fairs. The exhibit also includes items from the Municipal Archives, including donated ephemera such as a Sinclair Oil dinosaur.

Proposed exhibit for corporate participant, Sinclair Oil, 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Sinclair Oil dinosaur mascot, plastic model, 1964 New York World’s Fair.

The Fair ran for two years, April 22 through October 18, 1964, and April 21 through October 17, 1965. Industrial and technological changes premiered at the Fair included color television, push button phones, and air conditioning. If you ask New Yorkers of a certain age what they recall about the 1964 World’s Fair, a flood of fond memories are disclosed. The 1964-65 fair conjures futuristic images, modern inventions and youthful excitement for those who attended. Some remember it as a monument to a less-troubled city and country. Others hold a less positive view of the Fair.

In The Power Broker, for example, author Robert Caro characterized it as Moses’ last grasp at immortality. It was a way to achieve a bigger goal:  “…a dream out of his youth that had remained bright in his old age—a dream of a great park, the greatest in New York City, the greatest within the limits of any city in the world, the ultimate urban park, rus in urbe supreme, a park worthy of being named “Robert Moses Park…. The Fair, he realized at once, might at last be the means to achieve it. For the site of the Fair, like the site of the dream, was the Flushing Meadows.”

Brochures, 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Souvenir plate. 1964 New York World’s Fair.

According to Caro, ever since the 1920s, Robert Moses had envisioned turning the ash heap in Queens into a large park. In the mid -1930s he had a chance when the trio of federal, state and City governments funded park infrastructure to create the 1939 World’s Fair: The World of Tomorrow. Projected to reap a $4 million profit for the City that would fund a ribbon of parks throughout Queens, and managed by Grover Whelan, the Fair was a financial disaster. Most of the exhibits and buildings constructed for the event were bulldozed and debris littered the post-fair site which soon became overgrown and swampy. After World War II it was under consideration as the location for the United Nations, despite its deteriorated condition. The next evolution was the proposed 1964 World’s Fair with a theme, “Peace through Understanding.” Quite a lofty sentiment but one that did not suffuse the multi-year build or the Fair itself.  

In 1959, Mayor Robert Wagner petitioned the federal government for authorization to hold the Fair in Flushing Meadow Park, formerly the site of the 1939 World’s Fair. The federal government approved the proposal. The governing body for world’s fairs (nowadays called Expos), the Bureau Internationale des Expositions, rejected the proposal because it violated rules on timing and location. Moses didn’t help matters. As a result, European countries boycotted the Fair, except for Spain.  

This did not deter Robert Moses who had become the President of the World’s Fair Corporation, forcing Kopple out. Moses focused recruitment efforts on the rest of the world. Ultimately, the Fair’s 144 attractions included pavilions from 80 countries, 24 States and 350 companies, trade associations, organizations and religions.

The Clairol Building in the Industrial Area offered a hair color analysis to women over the age of 16. 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Twenty-four African countries showcased various cultural traditions in the pavilion dedicated to that continent. France, Denmark, Sweden and Greece were represented by commercial associations showcasing their wares. Swiss engineering was well-represented by the Sky Ride. The government of Israel declined to participate; a coalition established the American-Israel Pavilion. Close by, the Kingdom of Jordan displayed the recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls and a poem decrying the status of Palestinian refugees which triggered substantial outcry and protests.   

General Motors “New Futurama” show and the Vatican’s display of the Michelangelo sculpture Pieta were enormously popular. In Futurama, riders floated through various scenes imaging the ocean, desert, and city at a future point, showcasing new inventions. The “It’s a Small World” show produced by Pepsi Cola along with the Disney Corporation collected an entry fee, none of which actually went to UNICEF. Ford Motors debuted a new car: the Mustang. And Sinclair Oil’s dinosaur symbol was omnipresent. The beauty products manufacturer, Clairol, offered women older than 16 an opportunity to peer into a big plastic bubble for the purpose of receiving an analysis of the person’s best hair color.

Schaefer Beer, a Brooklyn brewery, sponsored a “Resturant of Tomorrow” along with a beer garden and exhibit on brewing in the F&M Schaefer Center. In addition to this pastel drawing, the Municipal Archives collection includes several plans in various formats for this pavilion. Schaefer was boycotted by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) for discriminatory practices. 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Almost all of the pavilions were temporary structures, demolished at the end of the Fair in 1965. Remnants of the Fair still exist in Flushing Meadow Park. They include the Unisphere, the New York State Pavilion, the Hall of Science and Industry, the Terrace on the Park, and the Marina, which was constructed especially for the Fair. The NYC Pavilion is now the home of the Queens Museum.  

“Fair is Fair,” sheet music, 1964 New York World’s Fair.

The Fair opened at the height of the Civil Rights movement. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. had delivered his inspirational I Have A Dream speech at the March on Washington in 1963. A coalition of Americans, led by the Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) were organizing around the country for the right to vote, leading to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. 

New York City was not immune from the battle for civil rights. The “Freedom Day” school boycott in February 1964, rent strikes, protests against employment discrimination, a six-day uprising after a detectives shot a young man in Harlem had all ratcheted up pressure for the City to address racial inequity. The Fair offered an opportunity to respond to demands for fair and equal employment, quality schools, substandard housing, discriminatory pricing, among other issues.    

Site map, 1964 New York World’s Fair, Flushing Meadow, Queens, New York.

In early April, the Brooklyn chapter of CORE announced a “stall in” at which drivers would run out of gas or otherwise have their automobiles incapacitated along the five roadways leading to the Fair. The protest was opposed by CORE national leader James Farmer, but the local activists persisted. On opening day, the City deployed more than 1,000 police officers along the highways. Despite the local organizing, and perhaps because of City government’s threats, very few drivers participated, and the “stall in” was unsuccessful. But protests continued throughout the duration of the fair, including pickets at the Florida exhibit at which four young women were arrested for holding illegal placards and trespassing. Regular protests occurred at the Schaeffer Brewery location, protesting employment discrimination.

New York State Pavilion, color rendering. 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Speaking at the opening of the Fair in 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed the Fair’s theme:  Peace Through Understanding.

“This fair represents the most promising of our hopes. It gathers together, from 80 countries, the achievements of industry, the wealth of nations, the creations of man. This fair shows us what man at his most creative and constructive is capable of doing.

But unless we can achieve the theme of this fair--"peace through understanding"-unless we can use our skill and our wisdom to conquer conflict as we have conquered science--then our hopes of today--these proud achievements--will go under in the devastation of tomorrow.”

Student protestors drowned out portions of the President’s speech by shouting chants of “Freedom Now” and “Jim Crow Must Go” to the dismay of the leaders assembled for the event.

Even Dr. Ralph J. Bunche the Under-Secretary for Special Political Affairs at the United Nations had complaints. He wrote Governor Nelson Rockefeller about the limited representation of Black people in the film shown at the New York State Pavilion. The Governor defended the film, exhibiting a lack of awareness. For example, for the section depicting the City’s nightlife, he wrote “. . . in the section showing New York City at night, there are shots taken of chorus lines in two night clubs and the Rockettes . . .  there is at least one Negro girl included in the Rockettes shown in the film.”

Aerial photograph of Flushing Meadow Park, 1961. New York World’s Fair Corporation Report #1, May 8, 1961.

Aerial photograph of Flushing Meadow Park, 1964. New York World’s Fair Corporation Report, January 1965.

Like its predecessor, the 1964-65 World’s Fair was not a money-maker. Moses and the Fair Corporation had projected a $53 million surplus in year one which would be used to repay the City, investors and to fund improvements to Flushing Meadow Park. Instead, the Fair ultimately operated at a loss. In July, 1964, a confidential letter to business and media executives called the Fair a fiasco. Only 27 million people visited the fair in its first year, far short of the 40 million promised by Moses.

The Department’s exhibit New York World’s Fair 1964-65 will be open to visitors through March 2026. The exhibit uses photos and ephemera from the Municipal Archives and Library collections to highlight key exhibits and features of the fair. 

The symbol of the World’s Fair, the Unisphere, rose 140 ft. above a reflecting pool.

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.

BPS 12625: WNYC Director Christie Bohnsack (in bowtie, far right) at a reception at the WNYC studio in the Municipal Building, July 31, 1929. Mayor Jimmy Walker is at the microphone. Photograph by Eugene de Salignac, Department o Bridges/Plant & Structures Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Change began with Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia’s second term in 1938. La Guardia had run with the support of the relatively new American Labor Party (1936-1956), a nexus of labor leaders and former Socialist Party members who rebranded themselves as the Social Democratic Federation.

La Guardia appointed Morris S. Novik as director of WNYC. Novik arrived from WEVD, a station owned and operated by the progressive Jewish Forward and founded by the Socialist Party as a memorial to its late leader, Eugene Victor Debs. The connection was unambiguous—and not lost on La Guardia’s opponents.

Daily Worker article about lefty teens on WNYC, from August 29, 1940.

Within weeks, critics seized on a WNYC travelogue that painted an unusually rosy picture of the Soviet Union while avoiding criticism of Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship. The broadcast touched off a political storm, complete with calls to shut down the station and a formal investigation. The controversy eventually collapsed when it was revealed that the program had been produced by a subsidiary of the American Express Company as a piece of travel promotion. Still, the episode appears to have had a chilling effect.

Left-leaning voices were not barred from WNYC after that, but Novik seems to have been cautious about offering airtime to overt socialists or communists. One notable exception came in August 1940, when the station aired a program featuring five young members of junior lodges affiliated with the Communist Party-influenced International Workers Organization (IWO). The Daily Worker reported the teenagers spoke out against a proposal for a military draft, responding to a group of youths who had endorsed a national call-up on Youth Builders a week earlier.

No recordings of explicitly socialist programming from this period survive in the Municipal Archives’ WNYC lacquer disc collection. Newspaper radio listings from late October 1944 and 1945, however, do note a couple of broadcasts titled “Socialist Labor Talk” and “Socialist Party.” These election-season talks include an appearance by Joseph G. Glass, the Socialist Party candidate for mayor.  

Darlington Hoopes in 1952. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Running for Mayor In 1949, and in his earlier campaigns, Congressman Vito Marcantonio campaigned on the progressive American Labor Party line. As such he was included among equal time broadcasts. While such broadcasts were not uncommon because of the FCC provision and leased time, Socialist and Communist Party officials were also heard occasionally in 1930s and 1940s on the major national commercial networks CBS, NBC, and the Mutual Broadcasting System.

The earliest surviving WNYC recordings featuring socialist speakers date well after Novik’s tenure and continued to air under the FCC’s equal-time provision. In October 1952, Darlington Hoopes, the Socialist Party’s candidate for president, addressed issues of affordability and economic insecurity, criticizing both Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Harry Truman’s Fair Deal. Hoopes argued that the socialist model pursued by Britain’s Labor Party offered a path seriously worth considering.

That same year, WNYC listeners also heard from the leading socialist candidates running for U.S. Senate in New York. Socialist Party candidate Joseph Glass used one broadcast to distinguish his views from those of Nathan Karp of the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) and Michael Bartell of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). All three contenders appeared on Campus Press Conference, where newsmakers faced questions from a panel of local college newspaper editors and reporters.

In the November 5th program, moderated by a young Gabe Pressman, Glass argued for cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security and maintained—reluctantly—that communist aggression in Korea needed to be resisted.

Karp of the SLP appeared two days earlier, focusing primarily on party doctrine rather than specific policy proposals. While a bit strident here, he reportedly mellowed in later years and did stand-up comedy at SLP conventions and meetings.

Bartell of the SWP, the Trotskyist candidate, appeared on October 28, 1952. He began by laying out a basic definition of his party as a revolutionary socialist one achieving its goals through democratic means.  The balance of time was spent responding to questions about the Korean conflict, the Soviet Union, China and the Berlin blockade. In his last few minutes Bartell called for an end to an economy based on military armament, a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea, and the abolition of the Smith Act. This law imposed criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence and required all foreigners over the age of 14 to register with the federal government.  

Norman Thomas, 1937. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

In January 1953, prominent American Socialist Norman Thomas delivered the address “What Are We Voting For?” at the Cooper Union Forum. The talk was distributed nationwide through the National Association of Educational Broadcasters’ tape network—the first non-commercial radio syndication system, initiated by WNYC.

In this talk Thomas decried our vote for electors over the popular vote, and the role played by southern white supremacist Democrats blocking civil rights legislation. He argued that on average, there are not large differences between Republicans and Democrats. His answer, in part, is what he called a “democratic socialist party.” Thomas also called for international control over atomic weapons, campaign finance reform, and transparency over “the fog of words.”

Thomas,  a serial Socialist Party candidate for President (1928-1948), would be heard over the municipal station another six times as part of the Cooper Union’s Great Hall series of talks between 1953 and 1964. He also appeared on WNYC’s broadcast of The New York Herald Tribune Book and Author Luncheon in 1964, where he addressed civil rights, nuclear disarmament, and poverty, while warning progressive listeners against political fatalism.

In 1957 “Mrs.” Joyce Cowley, a rare woman candidate with the anti-Stalinist Socialist Workers Party, ran for New York City Mayor. A year earlier she had been a candidate for the New York State Senate. She echoed much of what had been said by Bartell but did emphasize the need for civil rights. She also demanded the removal of the SWP from the Attorney General’s list of subversive organizations. Cowley called for an end to nuclear weapons tests, production for peace, not war and charged that the Democratic Party had conspired to keep the SWP off the ballot.

Michael Harrington portrait photograph from the dust jacket of The Other America. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Although the Democratic Socialists of America would not be founded until 1982, the phrase “democratic socialist” appeared sporadically in 1920s and ‘30s news reports, particularly in reference to Europe, but slowly came into more frequent use during the Cold War. In the 1960s and ‘70s, Norman Thomas and writer and activist Michael Harrington often self-identified as democratic socialists to signal a clear rejection of Soviet communism while maintaining a socialist critique of capitalism. Harrington’s usage of the phrase in the 1960s and ‘70s helped cement “democratic socialism” as a recognizable label in U.S. political discourse.

Michael Harrington, a member of the American Socialist Party and head of the League for Industrial Democracy, appeared on the city’s station in 1968. In an interview with Patricia Marx he discussed his influential book The Other America, which exposed the persistence of poverty and inequality in postwar America.

Many socialist ideas—variously labeled, constrained, and contested—have surfaced repeatedly in New York City’s political life and on its municipal airwaves, even during the Cold War period of intense suspicion and retrenchment. The evolution of those voices over WNYC reflects not only shifts in the political climate but also broader debates about democracy, economic justice, and legitimacy in public discourse. Mamdani’s victory suggests that many arguments on behalf of the poor, working class, and disenfranchised, once relegated to the margins, have reentered the civic mainstream, carrying with them a history that is longer, and more complex, than current headlines may suggest.

Andy Lanset (retired) was the Founding Director of the New York Public Radio Archives.

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.  

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. According to news reports the following day, crowds estimated at a half million gave a rapturous thank you to “Ike” as his motorcade made its way from LaGuardia Airport in Queens, to Manhattan, traveling down Fifth Avenue and Broadway and up the Canyon of Heroes. After a brief ceremony at City Hall and a luncheon at Gracie Mansion, Eisenhower’s motorcade brought him to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. His whirlwind day concluded with a banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria. News articles noted that New Yorkers mostly ignored instructions from City officials to hold off on showering the victorious leader with paper, then still needed for the war-effort.  

Baseball fans gave General Dwight D. Eisenhower a standing ovation as his motorcade entered Yankee Stadium, June 19, 1945. The Yankees played the Boston Red Sox. The Sox won, 1 – 0. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

French war-time leader Charles F. De Gaulle greets the crowd from the steps of City Hall during his ticker-tape reception on August 27, 1945. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia stands to his left at the microphones. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives. 

Two months later, on August 27, the Reception Committee let New Yorkers express their gratitude to the French leader Charles F. De Gaulle. Soon after, on September 13, the Committee organized a ticker-tape parade and welcome home ceremony for General Jonathan Wainwright. The Committee again used their considerable skill to stage welcome home events for Admiral Chester Nimitz on October 9, and Admiral William Halsey on December 14.

Reception Committee staff pasted pictures from the events on 30 large (18 by 24-inch) scrapbook pages; usually three or four to a sheet. They are not captioned. The paper has deteriorated but it may not be possible to remove the pictures without causing damage. For now, conservators will clean the photographs and re-house them in appropriate containers. Future digitization will provide public access.

For the Record readers are invited to review a selection of pictures from this unique artifact.

Young spectators seem awed by the passing spectacle. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Wounded service men and women watch the parade from indoors. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Thousands of New Yorkers crowded into City Hall Park to get a glimpse of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and hear his remarks during the reception on June 19, 1945. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Police officers struggle to contain the happy crowds along a parade route, 1945. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Spectators packed the sidewalk in front of the New York Public Library during a parade for returning service men and women, 1945. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives. 

General Jonathan Wainwright steps from the cabin of the ATC plane which brought him to LaGuardia Airport from Washington, D.C., September 13, 1945. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the crowd at his City Hall reception on June 19, 1945. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Police officers struggle to contain the happy crowds along a  parade route. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

A smiling New York City police officer helps keep the crowds at bay, 1945.  Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives. 

Tanks roll up lower Fifth Avenue during a parade for the returning soldiers and sailors, 1945. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey Jr, Commander of the Navy’s Third Fleet in World War II needed a blanket for warmth during his ticker-tape parade on a chilly December 14, 1945. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Soldiers and sailors flank City Greeter Grover Whalen, French leader Charles De Gaulle and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia as they exit City Hall following the reception ceremony on August 27, 1945. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

A parade spectator leaps to greet General Jonathan Wainwright riding atop his limousine during the ticker-tape celebration along lower Broadway, September 13, 1945. Grover Whalen Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

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.

Mapping Early New York, Courtesy of the New Amsterdam History Center.

Rendering of 1660 Castello Plan of New Amsterdam, James Wolcott Addams. I.N. Phelps Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. NYC Municipal Library.

New Visions of Old New York features historical maps, drawings, sketches, and official documents from the New York City Municipal Archives alongside newly imagined, digitally-generated content from the New Amsterdam History Center’s Mapping Early New York project. The selections represent ways in which the lives of women, enslaved people, and Native Americans intersected with the settlement created by the Dutch West India Company.

A closing event on December 11th brought together the organizers and others in the community to reflect on the exhibit. Maria Iacullo-Bird of Pace University led a panel discussion with Michael Lorenzini (of the NYC Department of Records & Information Services), Drew Shuptar-Rayvis (an Algonkian Historical Consultant for The New Amsterdam History Center), and Kamau Ware (founder of the Black Gotham Experience, which tells the oft-forgotten stories of the early Black residents of New York City).

Still image, Kierstede House. Mapping Early New York, Courtesy of the New Amsterdam History Center.


Archives Conservation Teams Up with the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Municipal Archives’ Conservation staff recently completed a major project to conserve the Brooklyn Bridge drawings collection, which consists of more than 11,000 drawing plans. With the support of a three-year Save America’s Treasures grant from IMLS and a one-year grant from the New York State Library, conservators worked diligently over a nearly five-year period to stabilize and photograph the collection. As part of the project, the Archives’ Conservation Unit collaborated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Scientific Research Department to conduct scientific analysis of selected drawings to determine the composition of media and paper, causes of degradation, and to use infrared imaging techniques to enhance faded writing and drawing in graphite.

East River Bridge, “The Brooklyn Bridge Up Close.” Photograph by Elena Carrara, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The successful collaboration also prompted the Met to mount an exhibition of seven important drawings from the collection in a joint special installation with their Education Department, which opened on December 8th. On view until February 22nd, the installation displays, for the first time since 1983, several of the large-scale presentation drawings created by John and Washington Roebling and Wilhelm Hildenbrand. The longest drawing in the collection, which depicts the full span of the bridge and measures more than 25 feet long, has never been exhibited before. Thus, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see these exquisite drawings in an equally exquisite setting.

Lindsey Hobbs speaking at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on December 9, 2025.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Met invited me to participate in an “Expert Talk” on December 9th along with Marco Leona, the David Koch Scientist in Charge at the Met, and Met Curator, Elena Carrara. Open to the public, the panel spoke about the history and preservation of the collection, the scientific work performed by the Met, and the exhibition process.

Given the size of the collection, not to mention the colossal size of many individual drawings, preserving and exhibiting the collection presented numerous challenges. The Met may in fact be one of few institutions in the world that could successfully mount an exhibition on such a scale. In addition to size, the condition issues the drawings presented posed challenges for conservation, framing, and transport.

“The Brooklyn Bridge Up Close.” Photograph by Elena Carrara, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Prior to their accession by the Municipal Archives, the drawings spent the better part of a century in a dusty carpenter’s workshop beneath the Williamsburg Bridge under the purview of the Department of Transportation and its various historical iterations, where they were often consulted by City engineers for bridge repairs and renovations. Subjected to water leaks, mold, exhaust fumes from surrounding traffic, and rough handling, the drawings took a great deal of abuse. The primary condition issues we encountered included deteriorated paper supports, discoloration, tears and abrasions, local staining, faded media, and damage from mold and degraded adhesives.

To help us better understand how the drawings were created and what specific materials and media we were dealing with, I reached out to the Met’s Scientific Research Department in July 2023 and proposed a collaboration. The Met’s scientists often collaborate with smaller institutions via their Scientific Research Partnerships program to share their extensive analytical capabilities. Their enthusiastic yes to the proposal led to several visits between our institutions and a very productive partnership.

New York Approach, East River Bridge. “The Brooklyn Bridge Up Close.” Photograph by Elena Carrara, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Met’s findings confirmed the presence of certain pigments, such as vermillion, Prussian blue, earth pigments, and smalt, which helped to direct the methods used in our treatment of the drawings. Awareness of the presence of specific pigments also supports guidelines for light exposure given their known light sensitivity. Other findings revealed potential agents of deterioration in the paper substrates of some of the drawings, including rosin and kaolin. Infrared imaging allowed us to read for the first time some of the many notations written by Washington Roebling on the drawings and give a clearer view of intricate details. The imaging and analysis conducted by the Met not only supported our recent treatment efforts and understanding of drawings but will continue to support preservation of the collection in the future.

The work of Archives’ conservators along with the generous support of the Met’s Scientific Research and Education Departments have yielded insights into the Brooklyn Bridge plans that would not have otherwise been possible. The collaboration has been a wonderful opportunity to support a more nuanced approach to the drawings’ treatment and to expand the Archives’ audience for this remarkable collection.

https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/the-brooklyn-bridge-up-close