New-York Historical Society
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The New-York Historical Society is an American organization located in New York City and dedicated to the preservation of the city's history. The society operates a museum and library at its current headquarters in Manhattan at the corner of 77th Street and Central Park West. It also operates many public educational programs. Since 2004, the president of the society has been Louise Mirrer of the City University of New York.
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[edit] History
The society was founded on November 20, 1804, largely through the efforts of John Pintard, who for some years was secretary of the American Academy of Fine Arts, as well as the founder of New York's first savings bank. He was also among the first to agitate for a free school system. The first meeting comprised eleven of the city's prominent citizens, including Mayor DeWitt Clinton. At the meeting, a committee was selected to draw up a constitution, and by December 10, the society was officially organized.
In 1813, nine years after its founding when the society's first catalogue was printed, the society owned 4,265 books, as well as 234 volumes of United States documents, 119 almanacs, 130 titles of newspapers, 134 maps, and 30 miscellaneous views. It had already collected the start of a manuscript collection, several oil portraits, and 38 engraved portraits.
The society suffered under heavy debt during its early decades. In 1809, the society organized a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Henry Hudson in New York Harbor. Inspired by the event, the society petitioned and later obtained an endowment from the New York State Legislature, to be financed by a lottery in 1814. The failure of the lottery resulted in a debt, forcing the society to mortage some of its books, which were redeemed only in 1823.
The society and its collections moved frequently during the 19th century. In 1809, the society and its collections moved to the Government House on Bowling Green,which had been constructed as a residence for the President of the United States, but which was unoccupied after the relocation of the capital to Philadelphia. In 1816, the society moved again to the New York Institution, formerly the city almshouse on City Hall Park. In 1857, it moved into the first building constructed specifically for its collections, at the then-fashionable intersection of Second Avenue and 11th Street, where it stayed for the next fifty years. The society later acquired a collection of Egyptian and Assyrian art which was later transferred to the Brooklyn Museum. The central portion of the present building on Central Park West was completed in 1908.
Two stained windows of exceptional note are found in the library on the 2nd floor. One represents The Arrival of Henry Hudson and was designed by Mr. Calvert of the Gorham Manufacturing. The second one, on the right-hand side of the information desk, is called the Huguenot memorial window, or more formally, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. It is one of Mary E. Tillinghast's most recognized achievements, due to the fact that it is a large and handsome window prominently displayed in an easily accessible spot and that it is inscribed in the lower left corner "Copyright July 1908. M.E. Tillinghast" and in the lower right signed in her script, "Mary Tillinghast Fecit 1908." The window was underwritten by Mrs. Russell Sage, who had also been instrumental in other windows done by Miss Tillinghast. She is probably the most outstanding American stained glass women designer, and had been a partner for seven years with John LaFarge until going out on her own. Before that, she had worked under the umbrella of the Tiffany studio in the embroidery department. She lived in a sumptiously French decorated apartment at #3 Washington Square N., the home of a number of famous artists, from William Glackens to Edward Hopper. It was Hopper who occupied her studio upstairs from her apartment, where she died in December of 1912. That studio still exists today behind the facade of the NYU School of Social Work.
The society's collection continued to grow throughout the 20th century, but renewed financial woes in the 1970s and 1980s forced the society in the early 1990s to limit access to its collections to professional researchers. In 1988 hundreds of paintings, decorative art objects, and other artifacts that were stored in a Manhattan warehouse were found to be covered in mold and damaged. Many of the objects were on long term loan to the museum. In 1995, grants from the city and state restored public access under the direction of Betsy Gotbaum. Recently private grants have allowed the society to begin building an on-line catalog of its collections.
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- New York Times; July 10, 1988; Hundreds of paintings, decorative art objects and artifacts that the New-York Historical Society is storing in a Manhattan warehouse are in such acute stages of deterioration that some may be permanently lost. Hundreds of paintings, decorative art objects and artifacts that the New-York Historical Society is storing in a Manhattan warehouse are in such acute stages of deterioration that some may be permanently lost. ... "It's tragic that the situation was allowed to deteriorate to the point that it was," said Christopher Forbes, the associate publisher of Forbes magazine and a trustee. "The nadir has been reached. "The museum's director, James B. Bell, said it would take "several conservators several lifetimes" to restore the damaged works. In particularly poor condition are as many as 100 of the approximately 300 European and American paintings in the possession of the historical society and an undetermined number of roughly 3,200 works of early American decorative art and artifacts that had previously been stored in a warehouse in Paterson, New Jersey, and in a townhouse on West 76th Street. In late 1986 and 1987, after the society's board of trustees received a report on the collection's condition from a consultant, these works were transferred to an art warehouse in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. In a tour of the Chelsea warehouse last week, the paintings were found to be covered with white mold and mildew and splattered with what appeared to be house paint or acid. Some canvases were torn, some had flaking paint and others had separated from their frames. Museum conservators said that the seriousness of the mold could be determined only after close examination of each painting, but that its possible effects ranged from slight to ruinous. ...
- New York Times; August 14, 1988; Last year, with yearly expenses of $5.8 million, the society showed a deficit of $3.5 million. The market value of the society's endowment dropped from $12.4 million last year to around $7.6 million now, in part because of covering the deficit and in part because of the stock market collapse last October.
- New York Times; August 28, 1988; In recent weeks, the New York Historical Society, which for years had used money from its endowment and from a few wealthy trustees and patrons to compensate for growing annual deficits, finally reached the end of the line. Facing possible bankruptcy, the board dismissed nearly a quarter of its museum staff, closed half of the gallery space and curtailed visiting hours. James B. Bell, the society's director since 1982, resigned last month, and the trustees enlisted an 11-member committee of businessmen and arts administrators, headed by John D. Macomber, former chief executive of the Celanese Corporation, to rescue the 184-year-old institution.
