A Look at "The Book": The Fall and Rise of the Telephone Directory
It can't have escaped your attention that there has been a lot of talk recently about the imminent demise of the book, at least the print version. But what about the book? Both the New York Times and...
View ArticleMaury and the Menu: A Brief History of the Cunard Steamship Company
In 1907 the Cunard Steamship Company launched the first of their Express Liners, the Lusitania and the Mauretania, ships that become bywords for speed, luxury and elegance in transatlantic travel. They...
View ArticleNew York City Land Conveyances 1654-1851: What They Are and How They Work
On microfilm, in olde worlde language, in undecipherable hand writing. Who cares? This is digitized, right? Yes, sometimes, often, and not yet. Being a librarian, I spend a lot of time rummaging...
View ArticleWho Lived In a House Like This? A Brief Guide to Researching the History of...
The Library's Milstein Division is home to one of the largest free United States history, local history, and genealogy collections in the country, and many of our patrons are writing their family...
View Article1940: What's Going On
Released April 2, 2012 by the National Archives, the Sixteenth United States Federal Census is an exciting and important document. It describes the lives of Americans caught between two cataclysmic...
View ArticleDirect Me NYC 1786: A History of City Directories in the United States and...
New York Public Library's Direct Me NYC 1940 project recently digitized a selection of New York City 1940 telephone directories, in order to help patrons online search the 1940 census. Before the...
View ArticleThe Woolworth Building: The Cathedral of Commerce
April 24th sees the one hundredth anniversary of the opening of the Woolworth Building, at 233 Broadway. In 1913 the Woolworth Building was the tallest inhabited building in the world, and would remain...
View ArticleWhy Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and One That Was)
Between 1892 and 1954, over twelve million people entered the United States through the immigration inspection station at Ellis Island, a small island located in the upper bay off the New Jersey coast....
View ArticleCan You Help Find the Descendants of Seneca Village?
A story from NPR's blog, The Lost Village in New York City, about Seneca Village, describes how historians have been unable to trace any of the descendants of the people who lived there....
View ArticleA Look at "The Book": The Fall and Rise of the Telephone Directory
It can't have escaped your attention that there has been a lot of talk recently about the imminent demise of the book, at least the print version. But what about the book? Both the New York Times and...
View ArticleMaury and the Menu: A Brief History of the Cunard Steamship Company
In 1907 the Cunard Steamship Company launched the first of their Express Liners, the Lusitania and the Mauretania, ships that become bywords for speed, luxury and elegance in transatlantic travel. They...
View ArticleNew York City Land Conveyances 1654-1851: What They Are and How They Work
On microfilm, in olde worlde language, in undecipherable hand writing. Who cares? This is digitized, right? Yes, sometimes, often, and not yet. Being a librarian, I spend a lot of time rummaging...
View ArticleWho Lived In a House Like This? A Brief Guide to Researching the History of...
The Library's Milstein Division is home to one of the largest free United States history, local history, and genealogy collections in the country, and many of our patrons are writing their family...
View Article1940: What's Going On
Released April 2, 2012 by the National Archives, the Sixteenth United States Federal Census is an exciting and important document. It describes the lives of Americans caught between two cataclysmic...
View ArticleDirect Me NYC 1786: A History of City Directories in the United States and...
Before the telephone directory, there was the city directory, a book that listed the names, addresses, professions, and in some cases ethnicity, of people in a particular town or city. Many of these...
View ArticleThe Woolworth Building: The Cathedral of Commerce
April 24th sees the one hundredth anniversary of the opening of the Woolworth Building, at 233 Broadway. In 1913 the Woolworth Building was the tallest inhabited building in the world, and would remain...
View ArticleWhy Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and One That Was)
Between 1892 and 1954, over twelve million people entered the United States through the immigration inspection station at Ellis Island, a small island located in the upper bay off the New Jersey coast....
View ArticleCan You Help Find the Descendants of Seneca Village?
A story from NPR's blog, The Lost Village in New York City, about Seneca Village, describes how historians have been unable to trace any of the descendants of the people who lived there....
View ArticleEmigrant City: Two Stories
Emigrant City is a project by New York Public Library’s NYPL Labs, in cooperation with the Library’s Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, and the...
View ArticleGenealogy Tips: Searching the Census by Address
Ever wondered who lived in your home before you? Perhaps it was someone famous? Or someone infamous. Maybe you have tried searching for your great-grandparents in old census records, but you are having...
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