Remembering the Alamo (and its library)

I've been on vacation for the last week and a half, so apologies for the lack of postings. I had originally intended to do a vacation post from the exotic locale of San Antonio, TX (where I grew up and where my family still lives), but that intention got lost in the shuffle of swimming, eating pan dulce, dancing at weddings, and enjoying the intensity of the Texas sun.

My mother is the Library Assistant at the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo. Yes, the Alamo.

The one of "Remember the Alamo" fame. The place where Pee-Wee Herman searched in vain for his beloved bike:

Incidentally, the library does have a basement though I think the Alamo itself does not.

And of course, it is the location of the famous Battle of the Alamo which took place in 1836 during the Texas Revolution. Ron Howard produced a movie about it in 2004, starring these guys as Col. William Travis, David (or Davy, as all children call him) Crockett, and James (a.k.a. Jim) Bowie:

Yes, I know, this has nothing to do with the New York Chamber of Commerce, but since I got a tour of the library and was shown some interesting things from the library's archives, it is technically archives related, right? Anyway, the library welcomes historians, genealogists, students, and general Texas enthusiasts from all over the world. Its collections document the history of Texas and it features a collection of rare books and Texas related publications, family papers, newspapers and periodicals, works of art, and other archival materials that range from photographs to correspondence to maps to lace mantillas to family bibles. Its staff is knowledgeable and accommodating, and I would highly recommend a visit if you happen to be in San Antonio and would like to conduct research on the Lone Star State.

And that is the post that I meant to provide while on vacation. Next post, I promise to return to the NYCC collection and the myriad of wonderful things we are uncovering as processing progresses.

Remembering the Alamo (and its library)

65 Liberty Street

So the weather over the Fourth of July weekend prevented me from doing as much biking and picnicking as I would have liked, but I did manage to get a ride in late Sunday afternoon. I rode from my apartment in Brooklyn across the Brooklyn Bridge and found myself in Manhattan's financial district, that great labyrinth of towering skyscrapers and historic buildings that sits at the tip of the island. And of course, being the dedicated archivist that I am, the first thing I thought was that I would like to ride by 65 Liberty Street, former home of the New York Chamber of Commerce. It's an address that is now burned into my brain since I've read it about a million times now on NYCC correspondence.

This has been one of the true pleasures of working on this collection so far--living in the city that the collection documents and originates from allows me a ready knowledge of the geographical details of the collection. I wouldn’t say that I have an intimate knowledge of the financial district, but I've wandered around in that area enough to know what it feels like. I've stayed at the Waldorf Astoria, the hotel where the Chamber held many of their banquets and luncheons (I can't say I've dined or danced in the ballroom although I did have one very expensive drink at the bar). And when someone complained in a letter about having to trek from upper Manhattan all the way out to Brooklyn, I could definitely relate.

So when I rode up to 65 Liberty Street, I have to admit that I did get a tiny thrill from finally seeing the building, up close and personal. I'm not one of those people who carry around a digital camera, so all I had to document the occasion was a camera on my phone that I rarely use. I took a picture of the seal on the door that says NYCCI (which means the seal was made post-1973 when the New York Chamber of Commerce merged with the Commerce and Industry Association and became the New York Chamber of Commerce and Industry), only to realize later that I don't have whatever multimedia capabilities are required to email photos from your phone. Disappointing, right? So instead of showing you that, I will just point you to this photo of the building that I found on Flickr:

It's probably a much better photo than I could manage anyway.

Now the building is home to the International Commercial Bank of China. I'm pretty curious about what it looks like inside nowadays, and I'm wondering if there are any old vestiges that might be indicative of its former residents. If I ever manage to get inside, I will be sure to have a camera with me.

[UPDATE: After looking around online to see if there was a way to get a tour of the inside of the building, I came across this New York Times article. It says that when the Chamber moved out, the exterior of the building was designated as a historic landmark, but that the interior was not. I guess that means that its very unlikely I would find any traces of what the building looked like while it was occupied by the NYCC.]


As an aside, thinking about this post reminded me of the issue in the archives/special collections profession of keeping collections in or near the areas they originated from versus selling them off to the highest bidder or most prestigious institution, even if that institution might be far removed from the source of the collection. I'd be curious to hear thoughts from anyone who has an opinion on the subject. Personally, I am strongly in favor of keeping collections in close relation to their source, and I think working on this collection has only strengthened that belief. But I know there are dissenting opinions out there, so if you have one, feel free to share it.

65 Liberty Street

Mold: Humble Beginnings

I was at a loss as to what to write about this week. Then, while shuffling through yet another box of 1920s papers, I came across this letter to the Chamber from Edwin J. Clapp (click on the image to enlarge):

I'm sure many of you, like me, have never heard of Edwin J. Clapp. I did a little googling and quickly found that, as I suspected, the letter writer and the author of the "couple hundred copies . . . moulding away" are one and the same. I haven't read the "Port of Hamburg" or the "Port of Boston" and I have no idea whether or not they merit being stored away by the hundreds in a cellar. What was particularly interesting to me about this letter though, is the fact that anything is being stored away in the cellar at all. Ok, a surplus of books, I guess, is acceptable, especially if you have a few hundred copies. But what else is acceptable to store in a cellar?

I ask this question (rhetorically, but feel free to answer it) because it seems that along the way of the life of this collection, someone, somewhere decided that many things can acceptably be stored in a cellar. Books. Ledgers. Correspondence. Photographs. Memorabilia. An entire archive of an organization's history.

And that's a part of the background of the physical history of the NYCC collection. Some of it was stored in a basement. Probably a dank, dark basement--is there any other kind? (As a caveat, I'm from Texas where no one has basements. Or real attics, for that matter.) Some of it probably became damp from humidity, then dried, then probably dampened again. All of it got transferred to standard record carton storage boxes, and was then transferred to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where it was surveyed, checked for mold, mildew, and general grimey-ness, and was then shipped off to a long term storage facility where it waited until I was hired to process the collection.

This story sounds pretty standard up to this point. But sometimes mold isn't so obvious. Sometimes, you check for mold and it's not there, and then you check again and it is. Sometimes, mold appears, unexpectedly and to the surprise of the newly hired project archivist who is anxious to begin her project. Sometimes, that project archivist and three of her fellow archivists end up taking the 8AM train to a warehouse in New Jersey where over 200 boxes of materials have been quarantined to assess the mold problem and do some badly needed weeding. And that's when, as an archivist, I feel I can relate to Mr. Clapp's indignation on two points. First, who thinks it's a good idea to keep a "couple hundred copies" of anything (well, most anything)? Second, who thinks it's a good idea to store an archive in a cellar?

By the way, Gwynne wrote Clapp back to offer him the books, free of charge. He also concedes that these books should not be "reposing in our basement." If only more people had Gwynne's good sense.

Hope everyone enjoys celebrating our nation's independence this weekend. I will be riding my bike, playing badminton, and picnicking in the park . . . weather permitting, as always.

Mold: Humble Beginnings

Monday Diversions

Since it's Monday and appropriately cloudy with rain in the forecast, I thought I'd take a break from meeting minutes and correspondence and turn my attention to something a little more entertaining--invitations. The Chamber of Commerce held a lavish banquet each year, presumably to congratulate themselves on another year gone and to honor various distinguished guests and members. According to a NYCC publication, for each banquet between the Civil War and World War I,

"an eminent Banquet Committee devoted painstaking attention to an appropriate design for the Program, which was then hand-engraved and colored by Tiffany & Co. Messengers delivered all invitations to the homes of members and their guests."

The NYCC collection holds some samples of these invitations and programs, which I've been organizing this morning. Here is the invitation for the banquet of 1889, held at Delmonico's (a New York restaurant which is still in operation):

Here's a closeup of the Tiffany & Co. signature in the lower right hand corner:

Impressive, no? It's especially interesting to contrast the 1889 invitation with this invitation from 1950:

Hmm. As an archivist, I think I'm supposed to maintain an objective view, and there's that whole thing about not judging a book by its cover, but if I had to chose one or the other to attend, I'm pretty sure I would transport myself back in time to 1889. These guys seem like they would probably agree with me:

That image is from the 1913 banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria where guests were treated to a six course dinner. We don't have the menu for that dinner, but I think it's safe to say that it was probably rather luxurious.

Monday Diversions

"A Wonderful Adventure"

I just finished reading The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham. The novel is set in the United States and Europe in the early 1900's, and traces the lives of Americans as they faced the First World War, the market crash of 1929, and the aftermath of those events. One of its central characters, Larry Darrell, is a young man who at the beginning of the book has just returned from the war and is clearly scarred by his experiences. His childhood sweetheart wants to marry and his and her family and friends want him to either go to college or go into business, but he refuses, deciding instead to "loaf," which translates into traveling around the world, working odd jobs, meeting some sages and scholars, and reading lots of books--clearly Larry made the right decision here. But before he takes off to Paris, his girlfriend tries to convince him to stay by saying to him,

"Henry Maturin was saying only the other day that we were beginning an era that would make the achievements of the past look like two bits. He said he could see no limit to our progress and he's convinced that by 1930 we shall be the richest and greatest country in the world . . . There's never been such a chance for a young man. I should have thought you'd be proud to take part in the work that lies before us. It's such a wonderful adventure."

Larry replies with a laugh, which is exactly how I felt when I read that. I like the idea of young 1920s men looking at their future in business as "a wonderful adventure."

Katie and I are definitely seeing traces of that optimism and excitement in the correspondence and publications we've come across so far. What I am especially keen on finding though is documentation of the 1929 market crash. So far, the only indication of it is a skip in the meeting minutes of the Executive Committee of the Merchants Association of New York from September 1929 to January 1930. I'm not sure what I'm hoping to find--tear stained business letters, emergency meeting memos, frantic telegrams--who knows. We haven't really gotten to 1929 correspondence or records yet anyway, but I hope we find it soon. Meanwhile, Katie is diligently working away at processing the Chairman's and Secretary's correspondence from the early part of that decade. Apparently, neither of these men placed much importance on keeping an organized and tidy filing system--I guess neither of them anticipated that their records were going to be processed and archived 90 years later. Who ever does, though? So, we forgive you Charles Bernheimer and Charles Gwynne. I'm sure that at the time, keeping six copies of every day correspondence seemed like a good idea.

"A Wonderful Adventure"

Miscellaneous

When people ask me what my job is, I tell them that I am an archivist. When people ask what an archivist is, my answer is either short and somewhat vague (I arrange and describe archival collections) or in depth and detailed (I physically and intellectually arrange archival collections in folders and boxes, and then create descriptive tools such as MARC records and finding aids to help researchers understand what forms of materials are in the collection, how to find specific things in the collection, the intellectual content of the collection, and how that content may be useful to their research). Then there are the follow up questions: What is an archival collection? What's a MARC record? What do you mean by "intellectual arrangement?

Actually, most people don't go that far in their questioning. Most people respond to my explanation with, Oh, you work in a library. But sometimes I explain all of that anyway. I've always thought though, that if people actually saw what I do every day, how archivists take dusty boxes of "miscellaneous" and turn them into acid free boxes of Series 1, Subseries 2, Folders 1-20, and understood all of the research and documentation that goes into writing the description, then people would be way more interested, not just in my job but also in the idea of archives in general. So here are two photos of typical boxes from the New York Chamber of Commerce collection, pre-arrangement.

What is in these boxes? How old are these papers? Why did the Chamber keep them? Where did they come from? Why would a researcher want to see them? At this point, I only have a few, vague answers to these questions. This particular archival collection has a long and storied history, one that it accumulated over the years since its original creation. The collection has been transferred from desk to drawer to cabinet to box, from office to storage closet to basement to warehouse. Along the way it has been exposed to humidity and varying temperatures, not to mention that it has been stewing in its own acidity since birth.

So what do we do when we get a box like this? Well, this is the part of the job that we call processing. It has a certain factory worker ring to it, but I think its usually the part that archivists like most about their job. This is the part where we get to go through boxes and exclaim over weird finds like carved wooden figurines or miniature handwritten journals or the occasional illicit image. We don't have time to read everything--nor would we want to in most cases--but we do get to see the finest details of every collection we process. Some are more exciting than others, but you always hope that you are going to find something unique and noteworthy.

Miscellaneous

Unexpected Finds in Business Correspondence

I've been processing the New York Chamber of Commerce records for about two and a half months now, not including the two days spent in a warehouse in New Jersey (an explanation of those two days deserves its own--forthcoming--post). In an attempt to start organizing what I'm guessing is going to be the biggest series in this collection, I've spent quite a bit of time looking at documents related to the Committee on Arbitration. When the assistant project archivist began work on the collection, I set her up to continue processing the series so I could take a much needed break from the arbitration committee and begin looking at all the "miscellaneous" boxes that had amassed unexpectedly. Of course, "miscellaneous" turned out to be mostly arbitration committee related. Specifically, it is correspondence from the 1910s and 1920s between Charles Bernheimer, then Chairman of the Committee on Arbitration, and various businesses, organizations, and manufacturers in and out of New York City.

I'll be the first to admit that I am not a history buff. Nor have I ever been much interested in business and industry. When my dad encouraged me to take business courses in college, I instead signed up for a course on 20th century European drama (Ibsen to Churchill) and one on women and Japanese fiction (the Tale of the Genji to Banana Yoshimoto). Needless to say, although excited about the challenges of this project from the beginning, I wasn't too sure that the content was going to be of much interest to me. Looking through Bernheimer's correspondence, I came across several letters from all sorts of companies and organizations that caught my eye, namely because they had some amazing stationery. Although stationery of today seems to rely mostly on abstract graphics, seals, or company logos, these letterheads were much more graphically interesting, usually advertising the business's products. The images below are examples of some of my favorites:

I'm sure that the majority of the researchers who use this collection will be business historians, New York City historians, and others with similar interests, but I thought I would point out that archival collections are often rich in graphically interesting materials, sometimes in places you wouldn't think to look. Letterheads, stylized posters, pamphlets, and drawings of all kinds . . . one of my favorite things to come across in a sheaf of administrative records are the doodles and cartoons of a bored note taker. In the age of CAD and digital cameras and Photoshop, it's nice to come across a really lovely hand drawing of an elevator shaft, isn't it? Anyway, even if you aren't interested in looking at architectural drawings or business pamphlets, a quick scan through letterheads of certain decades can turn up some nice finds. (By the way, that pin in the corner of the last letterhead is not part of the illustration, its one of the many fasteners used before paper clips and staples were the norm.)

Unexpected Finds in Business Correspondence