Blog - For The Record — NYC Department of Records & Information Services

Honoring Black History Month, 1990

New York City municipal broadcasters like Channel L and WNYC-TV provided access to video technology that under-served communities were often denied or excluded from. Operating from 1977 to 1991, Channel L produced a large number of programs that focused on issues that affected the lives of black Americans, with titles like “Black Leadership in NYC,” “Black Folk Art,” “AIDS in the Black Community” and many more.

On February 21st, 1990, Channel L aired a call-in talk show hosted by then State Senator David Paterson, titled “Honoring Black History Month.” Now, 30 years later, the Municipal Archives is digitizing tape from the Channel L collection, including this Black History Month tape. This is part of an ongoing effort to preserve and make available the Archives’ large audio/visual holdings. Program guests included community activist Elombe Brath, Hunter College philosophy professor Frank Kirkland, artist Glenn Bolton AKA Daddy-O and music producer Robert A. Celestin. Together with calls from the New York City public, they discussed the legacy of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the freeing of Nelson Mandela, the impact of rap music on American culture and Black History Month in general.

Honoring Black History Month, February 21st, 1990. Channel L collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated February 21st, 1965 and April 4th, 1968, respectively. For decades since, the content of their lives and the ideals they died for have shaped the basic way in which we discuss and remember the Civil Rights movement that came to define the 1960s. For these commentators in 1990, only a single generation had come to adulthood since the death of Dr. King. Now, another 30 years later, the conversations recorded in this video are no less relevant.

Honoring Black History Month, February 21st, 1990. Channel L collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Callers did not need to look to the past to find inspirational leaders fighting for racial justice, though. On February 11th, 1990, only 10 days before this program aired, Nelson Mandela was freed from his 27-year imprisonment in South Africa as the Apartheid system began to dissolve. Mandela would go on to make a pan-African tour before meeting other leaders around the world, including President George H.W. Bush, Pope John Paul II and the first black mayor of New York City, David N. Dinkins. The time span from Mandela’s release to today is roughly the same as the time span from Malcolm X’s death in 1965 to 1990 when this video was made.

Honoring Black History Month, February 21st, 1990. Channel L collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

By 1990, rap music had grown from block parties in The Bronx to a rapidly expanding cultural phenomenon, but was still seen by some as inflammatory and controversial. Although it now is one of the most financially successful and appreciated musical genres in the world, many people in 1990 viewed groups and artists like NWA, Public Enemy and Ice-T as emblematic of problems with black culture in America. Yet many others, like Robert A. Celestin, saw rap for what it was- the voice of a new generation of black Americans, unwilling and incapable of tolerating an unjust system any longer.

In addition to the WNYC-TV and Channel L collections, the NYPD surveillance film collection at the Municipal Archives has rarely seen films of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and The Black Panthers available for viewing online now on the NYCMA website. http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/NYCMA~3~3

Incorrigibles — Bearing Witness to the Incarcerated Girls of New York

The Municipal Archives has opened a new exhibit at 31 Chambers Street featuring images and information about “incorrigible” girls confined in the New York State Training School for Girls (1904–1975) in Hudson, New York. Artist Alison Cornyn is the director of a transmedia project that tells the stories of the “incorrigible” girls. Kathleen Hulser is the public historian for the project.

The “Incorrigibles” exhibit at the Surrogate’s Court building, 31 Chambers Street.

The box of documents that launched the Incorrigibles project.

In 2013, the owner of a thrift store in Hudson, New York, was parsing her way through a local yard sale for items to sell in her store. She stumbled upon a small cardboard box which contained documents from the 1920’s and 30’s—personal photos and letters, news clippings, medical records, intake forms, and parole paperwork. She purchased the box for five dollars and shared with me its contents. The stories and lives contained in this box were the impetus for Incorrigibles. These found documents all pertained to girls—as young as 12 and as old as 16—who had been incarcerated at the New York State Training School for Girls, an institution that today we would call a youth prison.

By bringing together documents from the box, archival research, artworks, and materials collaboratively developed with different communities, Incorrigibles offers a bridge from the past to the present of girls’ incarceration; a means for us to emotionally and intellectually engage with what has and has not changed in juvenile justice and girls’ detention over the last 100 years. Furthermore, the intimate nature of the source documents and firsthand accounts from women who are still alive today offer clear and uninterrupted insight.

Girl on Bench. Spread in artist book.

Unidentified girl poses for a photo on a bench at the Training School.

“Our chief task and aim, then, with delinquent girls is to protect them from the natural consequences of being girls.” Quote from Training School manager Annie Allen, from her treatise, How To Save Girls Who Have Fallen (1910).

The New York State Training School for Girls, originally known as the Women’s House of Refuge, dates from 1887. It was located on a green hill overlooking the Hudson River. Founder and social reformer Josephine Shaw Lowell imagined a gender-separated prison intended to cure “vice” through virtuous country living.

In the early years of the 20th century, such reformers advocated for special women’s courts, then for similar separate courts for families, young men and women. The Wayward Minors Court from the 1930s and 1940s featured in the exhibition tried to apply an “adjustment” approach, rather than criminalizing the young women brought to it, an approach that resonates with the “trauma-informed” and child-centered approaches of today.

Jewell Ward I. Pigment print on archival paper.

Jewell Ward and an unnamed girl pose for a photo at the Training School. Jewell was born in San Marcos, Texas, and sentenced to the Training School in 1921 for being a “disorderly child.” In 1923, she was discharged and sent to live with her mother in Manhattan.

The term “incorrigible,” which means “incapable of being corrected or amended,” was often used to describe girls who came into contact with the criminal justice system. This exhibition questions the language of stigmatization applied to girls who came before the courts, then and now. Close scrutiny of municipal sources on youth reveals a great fear of young women’s sexuality, a preoccupation with sexually transmitted diseases, and a long-standing de facto form of racial discrimination that largely consigned African-American girls to the harshest forms of imprisonment. Teenagers were frequently prosecuted in adult courts and convicted of crimes such as “pick-up,” prostitution, larceny, con games, “dishonest employee,” and shoplifting.

Language Sampler. Muslin and cotton thread wall hanging. Embroidery by Diana Weymar.

In the 20s and 30s girls at the Training School were trained in ‘Decorative Hand-work’ and ‘Cottage Home-Making’ among other things.This embroidery charts the ebbs and flows of words in culture (between 1800 and 2008) according to Google’s n-grams. While the label of being incorrigible is still used in NY as a subcategory of PINS (person in need of supervision) its overall popularity has decreased. In the current DSM we now have oppositional defiant disorder.

Mayor’s Committee on Juvenile Delinquency, 1944. NYC Municipal Library.

Girls have long been criminalized for “incorrigible” or “defiant” behaviors—running away, fighting at home, or staying out late. These actions are often triggered by underlying problems, including physical or sexual abuse, commercial sexual exploitation and survival sex, and neglect.

As the country engages in a national dialogue around racism, sexism, and misogyny—and the convergence of these harsh realities in the lives of girls of color and LGBT/GNC youth—we must review with new urgency why girls were—and are—being pushed into the justice system.

The exhibit is part of an overall project that records and shares accounts of women alive today who were in the Training School. The records of confinement reveal the roots of today’s policies on juvenile justice and pose larger questions about society’s treatment of young women.

The “Incorrigibles” exhibit will be open through April 2020. It is located in an alcove off the lobby of the Surrogate’s Court building, 31 Chambers Street. It can be viewed during the building opening hours—Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Thursdays to 6 p.m.).

It is also open from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the following Saturdays: February 29, March 14, March 28, and April 11.

“The Heart of Chinatown,” 70 Mulberry Street

The recent fire at 70 Mulberry Street, home of many social service organizations and the research center for the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) destroyed a 130-year old building. Called the Heart of Chinatown not only because of the services provided there but because as a neighborhood school it had served the community for decades. When we stood outside the building in the aftermath of the fire, numerous older residents remarked to us, “I went to school there.”

PS 23 Manhattan, July 22, 1929. BOE 3276, NYC Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

As the home of New York City Government’s historical records, it seemed possible that the Municipal Archives held records depicting the neighborhood and the school. Indeed we do.

Bayard Street Elevation, 1891. Architect CBJ Snyder, NYC Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The oldest record in the Municipal Archives pertaining to the building is the “Application for Erection of Buildings,” filed with the Department of Buildings in 1891. Submitted by prolific school architect Charles B. J. Snyder, the building was designed to serve as an elementary school, through grade 8, with 31 classrooms and a capacity of 1,694 students. The total cost of construction was $130,000. During his tenure from 1891 to 1922, Snyder designed more than 400 schools for New York City, the greatest expansion of public schools in American history. Snyder schools are noted for the abundance of natural light flowing into the classrooms through oversize windows.

Kindergarten Painter, PS 23, Manhattan, June 3, 1935. BOE 5489, NYC Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Kindergarten Art Class, PS 23, Manhattan, June 3, 1935. BOE 5491, NYC Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Arts and Crafts, PS 23, Manhattan, June 11, 1947. BOE 13010, NYC Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Board of Education officials designated the building as Public School (P.S.) no. 23. In 1915, the Board decided to add “distinctive” names to many of the numbered schools. P.S. 23 became “The Columbus School,” in recognition of the then-predominantly Italian-American population it served at that time. By the 1930s, increased immigration from China was reflected in the student body. In the late 1940s, the school also served as a venue for adult-education programs designed to assist the many newcomers to the city.

Overcrowded class in English for Foreigners, PS 23, Manhattan, October 1, 1946. BOE 12294, NYC Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

English class with Chinese interpreter, PS 23, Manhattan, October 1, 1946. BOE 12293, NYC Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Adult class in English, PS 23, Manhattan, May 13, 1952. BOE 20636, NYC Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

In June 1976, the building was de-commissioned as a school. The city maintained ownership however, and the building became the home for several community groups, including the Chinatown Manpower Project, which offers vocational training, employment services and educational programs; H.T. Chen and Dancers, a modern dance company; and the Chinese American Planning Council. It also houses collections and research materials from the Museum of Chinese in America.

The photographs illustrating this blog are part of the Municipal Archives’ Board of Education collection. Although the images are dated, the names of those depicted in the pictures were not recorded. If anyone recognizes a parent or grandparent or older neighbor in the photographs, please let us know so we can include their names in the historical record.

New York City Hurricane Relief for Puerto Rico: 1899

In the song “America,” in “West Side Story,” Anita and her friends sing of Puerto Rico: “Always the hurricanes blowing/always the population growing/and the money owing...”

It may always have been that way, but in the last three years Puerto Rico has been hit with a devastating hurricane, a couple of minor ones, several earthquakes, island-wide power blackouts and a persistent financial crisis. But the deadliest hurricane in Puerto Rican history—even after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017—remains Hurricane San Ciriaco, which killed more than 3,300 people as it barreled across the island in six to nine hours in 1899.

The entire storm, then known as the West Indian Hurricane or the Great Bahamas Hurricane of 1899, lasted 28 days—the longest-lived Atlantic hurricane on record—as it made its way up from Cape Verde through the Caribbean, Puerto Rico, Florida, North Carolina and finally out to sea. It lashed most of the Caribbean, but by far did the most damage and took the most lives in Puerto Rico.

The storm was so bad that it was front page news in The New York Times for several days at a time when the sensational Dreyfus Affair dominated the news—and it sparked a massive relief effort spearheaded by Washington and New York City, under Mayor Robert Van Wyck and Governor Theodore Roosevelt.

Much of the story is told in the Municipal Archives through letters and appeals for help from the Military Governor of Puerto Rico—which became a U.S. possession a year earlier as a result of the Spanish-American War—and the U.S. War Department to Van Wyck. An index to The New York Times articles about Puerto Rico from 1899 to 1930 compiled by the CUNY Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos is very helpful.

It was spotted off Cape Verde on August 3, but it wasn’t covered by the The New York Times until the August 8 edition, which contained a small story saying that a cyclone hurricane had slammed into the Island of Guadalupe on August 7 and that “many houses had their roofs blown off and were flooded and some of them were destroyed but no fatalities were reported.”

The news soon grew ominous. In a dispatch filed on August 9th for the August 10th edition—this was, after all, decades before television, the Internet and news-as-it-happens—The Times ran a short story on Page One headlined “WEST INDIAN HURRICANE.” A sub-headline screamed: “GREAT HAVOC IN PUERTO RICO.” The story, filed from Washington, began: “Hundreds of houses have been destroyed and several persons killed by the hurricane that has swept over the West Indies...”

The story reported that military officials in San Juan said cavalry barracks had been destroyed, “many other public buildings partially demolished and hundreds of native houses wrecked; that telephone and telegraph wires are down, and that several people have been killed.” San Juan escaped with relatively minor damage compared to the south, center and west of the island as the storm made its way diagonally northwest from Guayama. 

Copy of cable from George Whitefield Davis, Military Governor of Puerto Rico, to the US War Department. Mayor Van Wyck Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Also on August 9, the military Governor of Puerto Rico, George Whitefield Davis, sent an urgent message to the Secretary of War in Washington D. C. It is among Van Wyck’s papers, and began: “A hurricane of extreme violence passed over Porto Rico [the American spelling at the time before it was changed back to Puerto Rico in 1931] yesterday.”

It went on to say that at least one temporary barrack had been destroyed, but that there was “no injury to shipping here save for two small local schooners, two sailors drowned and San Juan’s lights were temporarily disabled.” But it did warn that outside of San Juan “the losses by the inhabitants is very great and extreme suffering must result.” He noted that there were fears the damage would exceed that of the last big hurricane, San Felipe, in 1876, which caused a famine, and that “many thousands of families are entirely homeless and very great distress must follow."

The situation quickly became much worse. A front-page story filed from San Juan August 10th reported the grim news. “HUNDREDS DEAD IN HURRICANE.” The sub-headlines read: “PONCE A TOTAL WRECK,” and that “Gov. Davis Asks Gifts of Food, Clothing, and Money.” The story said the storm raged for nine hours over Puerto Rico and that in San Juan four “natives” had drowned, 80 homes were demolished and hundreds more unroofed.

Yet San Juan was largely unscathed compared to Ponce, The story continued: “A dispatch by cable from Ponce, sent at 10 o’clock this morning, says the town was almost destroyed. Almost all the frame buildings are down; the bridge is swept away, and there is no communication between the port and the city proper.” Early estimates put Ponce’s damage at $250,000, the equivalent of more than $7 million in today's dollars.

Reports from Humacao, Bayamon, Carolina and other cities and towns were similar, with dozens of deaths to people and livestock. Twenty-three inches of rain drenched Humacao in 24 hours and several other cities recorded similar tolls. The island’s coffee and orange crops were ruined and would not recover for years.

Copy of cable from George Whitefield Davis, Military Governor of Puerto Rico, to the US War Department. Mayor Van Wyck Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

A cable filed by Davis from San Juan that day, which was circulated to Van Wyck’s office recounted the damage and made an urgent plea for supplies.

“Later reports show that hurricane was far more severe in interior and southern part of the island than here,” Davis reported. “Data for the number of Porto-Ricans who have lost everything is deficient but I am forced to believe the number on the island cannot fall below one hundred thousand souls and a famine is impending.... (I ask) that two and one-half million pounds of rice and beans, equal amounts of each, be immediately shipped on transports to Ponce, some here.... There have been many deaths of natives by falling walls.... Several towns reportedly entirely demolished.”

The next day, August 11, War Secretary Elihu Root wrote a letter to Mayor Van Wyck and mayors of other large cities saying that President William McKinley had sent him a telegram asking him to make a public appeal for support “for those who have suffered in Puerto Rico.”

Root wrote that at least 100,000 Puerto Ricans were homeless and destitute. “Unless immediate and effective relief is given, these unfortunate people will perish of famine. Under these conditions the President deems that an appeal should be made to the humanity of the American people… I beg that you will call upon the public-spirited and humane people of your city to take active and immediate measures.”

Appeal to Mayor Van Wyck from Secretary of War Elihu Root, August 11, 1899. Mayor Van Wyck Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Appeal to Mayor Van Wyck from Secretary of War Elihu Root, August 11, 1899. Mayor Van Wyck Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

By August 12, a New York Times correspondent had arrived in Ponce and filed this report from that devastated city. The headline screamed: “2,000 DROWNED IN PONCE DISTRICT.” A subhead said: “300 Bodies of Storm Victims Already Buried… Natives Uneasy and Cavalry Patrol is Established… Villages Destroyed.”

The story said the storm had “destroyed the crops and demolished a number of houses on the higher ground, while the floods destroyed bridges and houses and caused great loss of human life.” Some major cities were destroyed and some “entire villages were swept out of existence.” In response, Van Wyck and then-New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt urged New Yorkers to contribute to the “Puerto Rican Hurricane Relief Fund.”

Appeal for aid from Randolph Guggenheimer, City Council President (and Acting Mayor of New York), August 12, 1899. Mayor Van Wyck Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

Appeal for aid from Randolph Guggenheimer, City Council President (and Acting Mayor of New York), August 12, 1899. Mayor Van Wyck Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

By August 13, the storm had left the Caribbean and churned on toward Florida, Cape Hatteras and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But officials in Puerto Rico still had no idea of the exact death toll and the breadth of the devastation.

The following week, two ships, the military transport ship the McPherson and steamer Evelyn of New York and Puerto Rico, reportedly carried hundreds of millions pounds of rice, beans, green peas and bread to Puerto Rico The relief shipment included such supplies as 12,600 vests for women, 4,200 men’s undershirts, 600 pairs of pants and clothes for 215 children. Other transports followed.

Despite the efforts of relief agencies and the people of New York and other cities, the scars of San Ciriaco remained for decades. The final death toll from the entire hurricane was 3,855—with 3,369 of those in Puerto Rico alone. Total damage in Puerto Rico was estimated at $20 million—about $620 million today.

There would be other deadly hurricanes after San Ciriaco, but only Hurricane Maria came close to that death toll in 2017, when an estimated 3,000 perished on the island, though some claim the toll was higher.

Artist in Residence

Julia Weist has been in residence with the Department of Records and Information Services as part of Public Artists in Residence (PAIR), a municipal residency program that embeds artists in city government. Since pursuing a master’s degree in Library Science, New York-based artist Julia Weist’s artistic practice has centered around archives, collections and information resources. Her work has recently been exhibited at the Shed (New York City), the Queens Museum (New York City), the Hong-Gah Museum (Taipei), Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam) and Rhizome, the New Museum (New York City).

On January 15, 1985 Bess Myerson (then the Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs) sent a memo to Norman Steisel (then Commissioner of the Department of Sanitation) about a program that would install official Artists in Residence within various agencies of New York City government. This initiative was inspired by the great success of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who by her own design had convinced the Department of Sanitation to name her as Artist in Residence in 1977. Myerson’s memo—which can be found at the Municipal Archives within the Department of Cultural Affairs collection—states that the Commissioner felt that 1985 was the right time to “push ahead on this idea… to enlist the support necessary to get this project off the ground.” In reality it took New York City government an additional 30 years to begin the program which launched in earnest in 2015. I was selected as the first Public Artist in Residence (PAIR) within the Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) in 2019.

Letter from Bess Myerson, Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs, to Norman Steisel, Commissioner of the Department of Sanitation, 1985. Department of Cultural Affairs Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The contemporary PAIR program is in many ways modeled on the pioneering work of Laderman Ukeles (who is still in residence, more than forty years later). The projects she has initiated at Sanitation are remarkable for several reasons, including the fact that she was embedded into the agency a full decade before there was a single female sanitation worker on the force. Her projects built previously unimaginable bridges around perceptions of the “san men” who maintained the city. One such effort, “Touch Sanitation” (1979–1980), involved shaking hands with every one of the 8,500 DOS workers who would accept the gesture while thanking them for “keeping the city alive.”

Since the PAIR program was launched there have been 13 artists and collectives invited into various agencies including Department for Veterans’ Services, Department of Corrections, Department for the Aging and others. The fundamental belief behind all of these placements, as articulated by the Department of Cultural Affairs, is that artists are creative problem-solvers who approach issues and processes differently than other groups and communities. This tenet has inspired much of my PAIR work at DORIS during the last year. In that time, I’ve conducted extensive research on the interaction between city government and New York City artists finding fascinating evidence of a complicated relationship stretching back centuries.

On June 12, 1663, “the wife of Hendrick Coutrie” appeared in court and was told that as she had a retail shop she needed to purchase the Burgherright. She replied that her husband was given it by General Stuyvesant for painting his portrait and some sketches of his sons. This is most likely the portrait of Stuyvesant in the New York Historical Society, attributed to Hendrick Couturier. Administrative Minutes of New Amsterdam, Vol. 2, NYC Municipal Archives.

The earliest record I encountered relevant for my research was from the Administrative Minutes of New Amsterdam, Vol. 2 (1663). These court minutes document a resident’s petition that the creation of a portrait commission should satisfy the financial obligation of the burgherright, an early form of city citizenship.

As fascinating as the Archives’ very early records are, I found myself drawn to material from the decades between 1930–1990. I noticed that materials documenting artist-government relations clustered around a few key themes. Repeatedly I encountered attempts to define the words “artist” and “artwork” along with more nuanced terms and phrases such as “aspiring artist” and “commercial artist.” Expanding outward from these base-level definitions I found a myriad of papers attempting to articulate the role that artists play in civic life. Many agencies, especially the Health and Hospitals Corporation (which runs the city’s public hospitals), have tried to articulate a clear set of rules for what art should and shouldn’t be present in various public spaces. I’m fascinated by these lists of rules and the reasons behind them, such as a restriction on “abstract imagery too referential to biological forms. We find that such work, although legitimate, does not appeal to hospital clients.” This limitation was among similar rules such as “Themes should be tasteful, no nudes.”

Each of these content areas—definitions, the role of the artist, rules for public art—have become a composition within my project. Other works in the series focus on surveillance of artists by various agencies, government rubrics for evaluating the quality of artworks and even the role that public statuary and monuments in New York City parks played in international diplomacy after the World Wars.

Julia Weist’s Rubrics (2020) from the series “Public Record.” Archival pigment print, 30x40".

Those interested in seeing the series of artworks that have resulted from my research won’t be able to experience them as traditional public works such as outdoor sculptures or murals throughout the city—although some PAIR residencies result in those outcomes. Instead, I’ve focused on the idea that the records stewarded by DORIS are a form of public space and I’ve decided to “install” my artwork among these materials.

At the federal, state and local level protocols exist that regulate which government records must be kept and made available to the public in perpetuity. The most well-known contemporary example of these regulations in action was the focus on Hillary Clinton’s missing email in the 2016 presidential election. I’ve explored the City’s protocols and, over the course of my residency, have leveraged them to ensure that the artwork I was making would become official government records subject to retention. As a result, my artwork series, entitled Public Record, can be experienced in two ways. First, the public may request to view the compositions through a Freedom of Information Law request on NYC’s Open Records Portal. Typically, this platform is used by journalist, advocates, activists, lawyers and other engaged citizens for transparency into the work of government. In the case of my project, it will be used as an exhibition space. The second way the compositions will be brought into the public realm is through their eventual move into the collection of the Municipal Archives. Every record has a retention period, during which it’s safeguarded by the agency where it originated. The retention period on my artworks will expire one year after the end of service term of the current Commissioner of DORIS, Pauline Toole. After that they will be processed, accessioned and made available to the public through the Municipal Archives. This spring a campaign will be posted on LinkNYC kiosks to announce the project and to explain these two forms of access.

One of the greatest challenges of my residency was the sheer amount of material that the government makes and preserves. During my nine months I reviewed 215 cubic feet of paper in the Archives and yet this accounts for less than 1/10 of 1% of the collection. In order to research the entire collection the length of my residency would need to increase to 1,000 years, assuming the government made no new records in that millennium. We create, we keep and we look. Here’s hoping that cycle persists for the next few centuries in New York City.

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