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37.
Johannes Nevins (1627-before 1672).
Document pertaining to a plot of land. Manuscript document, signed, with wax seal. New York, 6 July 1658. RBML, Van Courtlandt Papers
The seal on this document is the first seal of the City of New York,
granted to New Amsterdam in 1654 and used until 1659. The document, signed by
Johannes Nevins, the Clerk of the Burgomasters from 1658 to 1665, confirms Oloff
Stevenszen Van Courtlandt's (1600-1684) ownership of a plot of land on Stone Street.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Cremin, 1970
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38.
New York City, Coroner's Office.
Minutes of the Coroner's Proceedings in the City and County of New York. Manuscript on paper, 1747-1758. RBML
These early reports kept by John Burnet for New York City and County
document colonial attempts to establish causation of injuries related to
untimely and unnatural death. They offer an invaluable insight into the history
of forensic pathology in America, showing the fees and duties of the coroner as
well as documenting court testimony in criminal and civil proceedings.
Gift of Mrs. Charles Blyth Van Courtlandt Martin
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39a.
Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827).
Portrait of Alexander Hamilton. Watercolor on ivory, (4.5 x 3.5 cm.), ca. 1780. Office of Art Properties
39b.
Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) and Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton (1757-1854).
Gold double-band wedding ring of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, and wedding
handkerchiefs of Alexander and Elizabeth Hamilton, 1780. RBML, Hamilton Memorabilia
American portrait painter, naturalist, and patriot, Charles Willson Peale
was a distinguished painter of American statesmen of the Revolutionary era; of
George Washington alone, he painted some sixty portraits. This miniature of
Hamilton (1755-1804) is thought to have been painted in 1780, the year of his
marriage, at the instance of his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler. She is credited with
embroidering the silk mat. At the time, Hamilton was serving as Washington's
secretary and aide-de-camp. He studied at King's College in 1773 and 1774, but
his education was interrupted by the American Revolution. The renamed Columbia
College granted him an honorary master's degree in 1788.
(Portrait) Gift of Edmund Astley Prentiss; (Wedding Ring and Handkerchiefs) Gift of Furman University Library through the
suggestion and assistance of the Hamilton family descendents: Mrs. Marie Hamilton
Barrett and Mrs. Elizabeth Schuyler Campbell, 1988
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40.
Tammany Society.
Journal & Rules of the Council of Sachems of Saint Tammany's Society. Manuscript on paper, 1789 - 1796. RBML, Kilroe Tammaniana Collection
The Tammany Society was founded in New York City by William Mooney, a
Revolutionary War soldier, as a patriotic fraternal order in opposition to the
Society of the Cincinnati, an organization of officers. This volume records its
first meetings. In order to mock the aristocratic Cincinnati, the society was
named for Tammany, an Indian chief, and used American Indian names, imagery and
ceremonies. Focused on youth, young men who could not normally participate in
political events could experience something of politics within the society, and
it developed into a political club, its clubhouse known as Tammany Hall.
Led by Aaron Burr, the Society helped to carry New York for Thomas
Jefferson in the election of 1800. It became increasingly political by the
nineteenth century and enjoyed the support of newly arrived immigrants through
its program of aiding and helping them to become citizens. "Boss" William M.
Tweed, the society's most powerful member, ruled New York like a despot, and
Tammany Hall became synonymous with City Hall. Tammany retained considerable
influence into the twentieth century until Robert Wagner was elected mayor on an
anti-Tammany ticket.
Gift of Edwin Patrick Kilroe, 1942
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41.
Archibald Robertson.
New York from Long Island. Ink and color wash on paper, (43.8 cm. x 62.2 cm.), ca. 1795. Office of Art Properties
Immigrating from Scotland in 1791, Robertson set up practice in New York
City as a miniaturist. In addition, he also made numerous landscapes and city
views. Together with William and Thomas Birch, who worked in Philadelphia, he
helped to introduce the English topographical watercolor tradition in the United
States. This view across the East River to Manhattan, depicting an expansive
landscape, stems from that tradition. The building at the right is George
Washington's headquarters. The location is identified in an inscription across
the bottom of the sheet.
Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan
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42.
DeWitt Clinton(1769-1828).
Letterbooks. Bound manuscript on paper, Vol. 17, 1808-1816, of 24, 1785-1828. RBML, DeWitt Clinton Papers
Congress established the First Bank of the United States, headquartered in
Philadelphia, in 1791. By 1816, Congress chartered the Second Bank of the United
States. In the manuscript from DeWitt Clinton's own letterbooks shown here,
Clinton argues passionately that New York City deserves to be the home of the
national bank, writing: "New York is the commercial capital of the union. In her
center is one third of our commerce and from here is derived one third of our
revenue. There are ten times more goods purchased here." Clinton's wish
prevailed, marking the commercial and political ascendancy of New York over its
rival Philadelphia. The library's DeWitt Clinton holdings contain 15 volumes of
letters received by Clinton (1785-1828), 8 volumes of letterbooks of his own
letters and writings (1793-1828), and one volume of miscellaneous papers in
various hands.
Gift of William Schermerhorn, 1902
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43.
Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-1892).
United States Custom House. Watercolor and black ink on paper, (21 cm. x 36.5 cm.), ca.
1834. Avery Architectural & Fine Arts
Library, Drawings and Archives, Alexander Jackson Davis Collection I
In 1833, Davis and his partner Ithiel Town won the competition for the U.S.
Custom House to be built on the site of Washington's inauguration, down the
street from Trinity Church. The architects lost control of the construction,
that being given to Samuel Thomson, and the finished building lacks the majesty
of this drawing particularly in the reduction of the dome. A magnificent
section, this drawing shows Davis in full command of his artistic and
architectural powers. The proportion and harmony of the design are wedded to a
direct and rich exposition of the architectural structure and detail.
It is hard to overestimate Davis's position in American architecture of the
nineteenth century before the Civil War. Davis designed civic and urban
buildings for the burgeoning city of New York, and with his friend, the
landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing, brought to life the romantic vision
of Gothic cottage in the Hudson Valley. Fortunately his work survives in large
numbers in three major repositories: the Avery Library, the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, and the New-York Historical Society.
Purchase, 1940
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44.
Trinity Church, New York, perspective view. Watercolor on paper (52.6 x 67 cm.), ca. 1840. Avery Library, Drawings and Archives, Upjohn Collection
At the head of Wall Street stands Trinity Church built by the dean of
American Episcopalian architects, the Englishman Richard Upjohn. Upon his
arrival in the United States, Upjohn passed the first five years in Boston where
he met Dr. Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who became the Rector of Trinity in 1838.
The standing structure of the church was found to be unstable and the new rector
called in Upjohn to build a new church, which was dedicated in 1846. This
rendering, thought to be executed by Fanny Palmer, an artist for Currier
& Ives, portrays the urban church as a typical English countryside
church rather than the dominant element of its neighborhood.
Upjohn was joined in his practice by his son, Richard Michell Upjohn, most
famous for his design of the Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford. His son,
Hobart, also became an architect, with a practice in the New York area and North
Carolina. Hobart's son, Everard, also an architect, taught at Columbia for many
years. Upon the request of Avery Librarian Talbot Hamlin, Everard and his
children gave his family's architectural drawings to the library through a
series of donations, the last in 1983. The papers of the firm were donated to
the New York Public Library.
Gift of the Upjohn Family
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45.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865).
Manuscript letter in John Hay's hand, signed by Lincoln, to Columbia
University President Charles King. Washington, D.C., June 26, 1861. RBML, Columbia College Papers
At commencement exercises held at the Academy of Music on June 27, 1861,
President King announced that the University was conferring an honorary Doctor
of Laws degree on President Lincoln. Preoccupied by the events of the Civil War,
Lincoln could not travel to New York to receive the degree, so Professor Francis
Lieber was sent to Washington to present the diploma. Lincoln wrote to President
King to thank him for the honor. Signed by Lincoln, the text of the letter is in
the hand of John Hay, one of Lincoln's two private secretaries. The divisiveness
of the Civil War, as well as the election of 1860, was doubtless in the
President's thoughts when he wrote of preserving the country's institutions and
of the honor being a gesture of "confidence and good will," awarded two months
after the war began.
Gift of Janet Haldane and her children, 1983
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46.
Louis Prang (1824-1909).
Views in Central Park, New York. Boston: L. Prang & Co., 1863-1869. 5 series of 12 chromolithographic cards, (6.3 x 10.1 cm. each) Avery Library, Classics Collection
By the mid-nineteenth century, New York City had expanded northward at such
a precipitous pace that the question of open space was addressed by legislators,
who passed an act to create a large public park. In 1857, the same year that
Columbia College moved uptown to Forty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue (where it
remained until 1897), a competition was announced for the design of Central
Park. The entry selected for the site (which originally extended from
60th to 106th Streets between Fifth and Eighth Avenues)
was the now-famous Greensward Plan, created by Calvert Vaux (1824-1895) and
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903).
Today, it would be impossible to imagine Manhattan without this urban
oasis. In the park's first decades, its distinctive blend of English picturesque
and more rugged American style captivated the entire nation. Numerous prints,
stereograph photographs, and souvenir books celebrated what quickly became one
of New York City's major tourist attractions. These color lithograph album
cards, issued in series for mounting in scrapbooks (a Victorian pastime), depict
favorite landmarks. The first three series were published in 1863, and the last
two in 1869, by the Louis Prang firm, one of the finest lithographic concerns in
the United States. All five series in full are known to exist only at Avery.
Purchase,1986
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47.
Architectural Iron Works of New York.
Illustrations of Iron Architecture, Made by the Architectural Iron Works
of the City of New York. New York: Baker & Godwin, Printers, 1865. Avery Library, Classics Collection
This catalogue of buildings, storefronts, and architectural elements is a
noteworthy example of Avery Library's unrivalled collection of more than ten
thousand catalogues from the American building trades. Daniel D. Badger's
Architectural Iron Works was one of the larger American foundries producing
cast-iron architecture. In 1865 Badger decided to advertise his firm's work with
this volume listing its principal productions, including about four hundred
buildings and storefronts in New York, but also ones in Richmond, Virginia, and
Sacramento, California–not to mention Alexandria, Egypt, and Panama. The book
also featured claims for cast iron as a new building material and, most
important, 102 lithographic plates of architectural details as well as whole
facades, printed by the prominent firm of Sarony Major & Knapp.
Plate III (one of a handful of color plates) shows the E. V. Haughwout
Building (1857), designed by architect J. P. Gaynor as an emporium for the sale
of glassware, silverware, clocks, and chandeliers, and the first New York City
store to have an elevator for customers. The cast-iron facades at the northeast
corner of Broadway and Broome Street recall the arched windows set between
columns at Venice's Biblioteca Marciana, testimony to Badger's assertion "that
whatever architectural forms can be carved or wrought in wood or stone, or other
materials, can also be faithfully reproduced in iron." The Landmarks
Preservation Commission designation report quotes an architectural historian on
the significance: "In this one building are combined the two elements that
provided the basis for today's skyscraper–the load-bearing metal frame and the
vertical movement of passengers."
In parallel, one might say that in this one publication are combined the
elements that provided the basis for the flourishing of trade catalogues for
decades to come -- promotional writing and mass printing technology, in the
service of prefabricated materials and building parts.
Purchase, 1944
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48.
Daly's Theatre, New York.
Account book. Manuscript on paper, 1872. RBML, Dramatic Museum Manuscripts
Augustin Daly (1838- 1899), playwright, adaptor and critic, is considered
one of America's greatest theatrical managers. Daly's first original work was
the wildly successful melodrama Under the Gaslight (1867). He opened his
first New York theater, The Fifth Avenue, in 1869, and a few years later
established Daly's Theatre on Broadway with a stock company in which John Drew
and Ada Rehan were stars, and many other nineteenth century luminaries appeared
from time to time. Some stars, like Clara Morris, left the fold, but others,
like Ada Rehan, John Drew, Mrs. Gilbert, and James Lewis stayed with him for
years.
The library's Daly's Theatre records include ten volumes of business
records connected with the daily operations of the theater from 1872 through
1899, including income and expenditures, rosters of personnel, attendance books
for members of the company, salary accounts, receipt books and one volume with
directions for the settings for various plays.
Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum Collection, transferred to RBML, 1956
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49.
Charles Follen McKim (1847-1909).
Typed letter, signed, to Stanford White, with initial sketch of Low Library. New York, July 24, 1894. Avery Library, Drawings and Archives, Stanford White Collection of
Correspondence and Drawings
When Columbia purchased the property on Morningside Heights, it was the
first time that the university had acquired land with the express purpose of
building a campus. The university had previously occupied existing buildings on
other sites. At the 49th Street campus, the university utilized the buildings of
the Deaf and Dumb Asylum even after new buildings by Charles Coolidge Haight
were erected. A competition for the new campus was announced and McKim, Mead and
White were chosen from the competitors, who included Richard Morris Hunt, Haight
himself, and Ware and Olmsted.
The focal point of the new campus was the library, named in honor of Abiel
Abbot Low by his son President Seth Low, who donated one million dollars to
erect this building. In this draft of a letter to his partner Stanford White,
Charles McKim, the lead designer, explains that he cannot go golfing in Europe
with White as President Low has cut out such a lot of work for him. On the verso
of this letter emerges the conception of Low Library, remarkably close to the
final version.
This letter was found within the office correspondence of Stanford White,
where it had been kept under M for McKim. Avery Library received the incoming
and outgoing correspondence from the White family along with other gifts. From
the successor firm, Walker O. Cain Associates, the library acquired many of the
architectural drawings of the Columbia campus. The bulk of the firm's archive,
more than one hundred thousand drawings as well as papers and files, was donated
to the New-York Historical Society.
Gift of the Stanford White Family, 1981
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50.
William Barclay Parsons (1859-1932).
Diary, Rapid Transit System of New York. Typescript, 4 vols., with author's initials in vol. 1, 1900 - 1904. RBML
William Barclay Parsons attended Columbia University and graduated in 1882.
He was the co-founder of the Spectator and became one of the great
developers of the civil engineering projects that ushered America into the
modern age of industrial design. He was chief engineer for the Rapid Transit
System of New York, and designed the original plans for the Interborough Rapid
Transit system which opened one hundred years ago, in 1904. His thorough
examinations of Manhattan's topography resulted in his use of the less expensive
and more efficient cut-and-cover construction method for the first subway lines.
Parsons made an important survey of Chinese railroads (1898-99), was on the
board of consulting engineers for the Panama Canal (1905), and was Chief
engineer for the Cape Cod Canal (1905-14). He served as a colonel in the Spanish
American War and a general in World War I. Even his overseas duty did not
diminish his dedication to improving Columbia University, as he was chairman of
the Board of Trustees, a founder of what would become the Starr East Asian
Library, and a confidant of Nicholas Murray Butler during this time. In addition
to this diary, Columbia received Parson's diaries kept during his work on the
Panama Canal and during World War I, as well as his fine collection of railroad
prints.
Gift of William Barclay Parsons, Jr., 1958
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51.
Lewis Hine (1874-1940).
Welder, Empire State Building, New York. Photograph (40 x 49.3 cm.), 1930-1931. Avery Library, Drawings and Archives, Empire State Building Archive
At the time of its construction, the Empire State Building was the tallest
building in the world, a fascination to everyone. As part of the publicity for
the building, the Empire State Corporation hired photographer Lewis Hine to take
photographs of the workers. Renowned for his social documentary of immigrants,
child labor, and the poor and working classes, Hine was compelled by the
economic realities of the Depression to take this advertising job. His
photographer's eye was, however, unchanged by those realities and delivered an
intimate and often heroic vision of American workers, published as Men at
Work: Photographic Studies of Modern Men and Machines (Macmillan
Company, 1932).
The Hine photographs are part of the Empire State Building archive.
Included in this collection are over four hundred demolition and construction
photographs taken during the razing of the Waldorf-Astoria and the building of
the new skyscraper. There are more than twenty scrapbooks of news items
collected by clipping services that document the publicity blitz promoting the
building. Post-construction the publicity machine continued with the photographs
of dozens of celebrities and political figures who found the Observation Deck of
the Empire State Building the perfect photo opportunity.
Gift of the Empire State Building Corporation, 1971
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52.
September 11th 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project. Oral History Research Office
The Columbia University Oral History Research Office [OHRO], in
collaboration with the Institute for Social and Economic Research Policy [ISERP]
at Columbia University, has undertaken a major oral history project on the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and their aftermath. More than 300
audiotaped interviews have been conducted with a wide variety of people who were
directly and indirectly affected by the catastrophe. Many of the interviews were
conducted within six to eight weeks of the attacks, in order to document the
uniqueness and diversity of experiences of and responses to the catastrophe as
close to the events as possible. Initial funding for the project was provided by
the National Science Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and Columbia
University. The early success of the project was also made possible by a
concentrated effort of volunteer oral historians, historians, sociologists,
journalists and student interviewers.
The objective of the Oral History Memory and Narrative Project is to gather
as many different perspectives on the impact of September 11th as possible, by
asking individuals to narrate their experiences of the events and their
aftermath through the telling of their life stories. The project is designed to
return to the same individuals at least twice, over a period of two years, to
assess the influences of September 11th on their self-understanding over time.
While the nucleus of the project is in New York, an effort has been made to
collect life stories around the country, and the scope of the project will
expand internationally pending future funding. Interviews have been conducted
over a broad spectrum of ethnic and professional categories, and include those
who have been discriminated against or lost work in the wake of the events.
Through the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, clusters of interviews have
been conducted with Afghan-American immigrants as well as refugees, Muslims and
Sikhs, Latinos, and community and performance artists whose lives and work have
been influenced by the September 11th events.
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