Ephemera

As I reported last time, I finally unearthed the stash of medals that were donated along with this collection. Many of these medals were made by Tiffany & Co., the company famous for both its little blue box and because of . . . that movie. You know which one I'm talking about.

You may remember from this post that Tiffany was a member of the Chamber and also designed many of their invitations in the early 20th century.

Anyway, as an early holiday treat, here's a look at some of my favorites. This one, made by Tiffany, commemorates the opening of the NYC subway in 1902, which the Chamber was an instrumental proponent of--I think the front was meant to be personalized:




This one, also by Tiffany, commemorates the opening ceremony of the NYCC's building on 65 Liberty Street in lower Manhattan:




This is some sort of acknowledgment of the New York Stock Exchange, though I don't know when it was made or what it was for exactly:




Most of these medals are engraved with the name of their maker, but only a few are still housed in their original box. The Tiffany medals sit in a velvet bed and the lining seems like silk:


And one last medal, from the Paris Chamber of Commerce:


I apologize for the spotty photo quality--it has been a rather busy couple of weeks! Does anyone else think its weird that people used to make commemorative medals all of the time? Does anyone still do this?

I will be on vacation for the next couple of weeks, so no more posts until the new year. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season.

Ephemera

The Beginning of the End

In lieu of a lengthy blog post today, I am posting this short post just to mark the occasion--today, we received our final 9 record cartons of unprocessed material from off site storage! Needless to say, we are very excited. We have been processing like mad all week in an attempt to get as much done as possible before the holidays, and we've made a lot of progress just in this past week. So I think we deserve a little pat on the back!

We did a quick survey of the new boxes this morning and finally found all the medals I remember seeing, way back at the beginning of the project. I'll try to post some pictures of some of the medals soon. At least two of them were made by Tiffany & Co., one marks the opening of the new Chamber building in 1902, and one marks the opening of the NYC subway (of which the Chamber was a major proponent). It was a very cool Friday morning discovery!

The Beginning of the End

Presentations and Portraits

The Researching New York 2008 conference was last Thursday, so Katie and I finally had our conference debut. It was kind of a whirlwind of a day--train to Albany early in the morning, quick lunch and registration at SUNY Albany, hour and a half presentation and panel discussion, and then right back to Manhattan so Katie could make it to class that evening.

Overall, it was a very good experience, and our audience responded well to the presentation with questions and interest and compliments. Our session was on "Records of Business" and we shared the stage with a woman from the Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site who gave a presentation on 19th century ledger books from canal stores. It was striking when the moderator noted the difference in size between our collections--we began our project with over 300 boxes and her focus was on four ledger books. Of course, this meant that the scope of our presentation was much broader (not only do we have a large quantity of material, that material spans two centuries of history), while she was able to narrow in on more detail. I think it provided a nice contrast for our audience.

One of the cool things about presenting in Albany was that a curator from the New York State Museum was in attendance. Prior to the conference, we had emailed back and forth concerning the NYCC's portrait collection which was donated the NYS Museum at the same time that Columbia acquired the NYCC's paper records. Before the NYCC moved out of their home on 65 Liberty Street,

these portraits were hung in the Chamber building's Great Hall:

We didn't have time to check out the portrait collection in person while we were in Albany, but lucky for us and everyone, you can view digital images of most of the portraits online. We do have several pamphlets in our records detailing the history of the Great Hall and some of its most famous portraits.

According to a NYCC pamphlet, the hall was, "notable for its grandeur and rich detail . . . designed along lines similar to the early Guild Halls of London." Its main use was for member meetings and receptions. Because of the Chamber's many prestigious members and industry influence, many of those meetings and receptions welcomed distinguished guests, such as Edward, Prince of Wales, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Katie and I are still dying with curiosity to know what the Great Hall looks like now, especially since we know the portraits aren't there anymore. There are so many amazing historical building in New York, its frustrating that many of them aren't open to the public. Maybe one year the Chamber building will make it on the list for the openhousenewyork weekend and we can finally get a look inside.

Have a great holiday!

Presentations and Portraits

From Albany to Buffalo

I have realized that one major thing that I have neglected to write about here is how involved the NYCC was in the development of not only New York City, but New York State as well. Its members were instrumental in the realization of several key initiatives in the region - including the Erie Canal.

I was reminded of this last week when I read this article about how commercial shipping is returning to the Erie Canal, albeit slowly. The Erie Canal was first mentioned in the Chamber’s minutes of 1786, and the Chamber later issued a pamphlet expounding the advantages of the Canal. DeWitt Clinton, governor of New York at the time, was a member of the Chamber.

The Canal officially opened in 1825, after 7 years of construction, connecting Albany to Buffalo and allowing shippers to continue south to New York City on the Hudson River, thus sealing NYC's fate as the commercial center of the nation. The website for New York State Canals quotes Clinton as saying, "The city will, in the course of time, become the granary of the world, the emporium of commerce, the seat of manufactures, the focus of great moneyed operations. And before the revolution of a century, the whole island of Manhattan, covered with inhabitants and replenished with a dense population, will constitute one vast city.”

Here is a stereoscopic image of the Erie Canal from 1869, found in the NYCC collection:

The article doesn't mention the NYCC, nor does the Wikipedia article (though we may fix that). I think this illustrates how little researchers really know or understand about how fundamental this organization was to the history of New York.

But that will soon change! Processing is on track and progressing with lightning speed. We are currently working our way through an enormous amount of committee minutes, reports, and records.

In the meantime, you can relive your childhood music class and download an MP3 of "The Erie Canal Song (Low Bridge, Everybody Down)" which pretty much encompassed the entirety of my knowledge of the Erie Canal and New York cities as a kid. I'm sure you are familiar with it, although Katie claims to have never been taught this song in music class (why not, California State Board of Education?). Apparently the Dady Brothers love the Erie Canal enough to record an entire album devoted to it.

On a completely unrelated, non-archives note, last week was a great week to live in New York City. We cheered determined runners in the 2008 NYC Marathon which passed through my neighborhood in Brooklyn:

And we celebrated our country in homes, restaurants, bars, and the streets. This is the crowd that I walked my bike through on my way home Tuesday night:

Enjoy your week, in New York City and everywhere else!

From Albany to Buffalo

"Navigating the Air"

As I've said before, a really great way to get a feel of an individual's papers or an organization's records is to begin combing through correspondence files. In the case of an individual's correspondence, it is a chance to "hear" the person's voice in an intimate way that may not come through in that person's professional or public writing. In the case of an organization's correspondence files, it gives you a glimpse of the day to day routines and encounters of the administration and staff.

Last post, I mentioned that Katie and I had just uncovered a whole slew of "re-organized" correspondence files. Although many of these letters have proved to be interesting and important, so far my favorite find is this letter from J.F. Cameron (unsure if that's a correct interpretation of the handwritten signature):

As you can see, this letter was sent in June 1862, which is about 40 years before the Wright brothers successfully launched their Wright Flyer. I guess its just provides further proof that there were others out there testing "aerial ships" and "flying machines" well before Orville and Wilbur began their experiments. I think its interesting that this inventor would have written to the NYCC offering a demonstration; he says that he hopes to, "carry passengers and merchandise," so presumably there lies the connection to commerce and industry. I haven't been able to find any reference to this J.F. Cameron in relation to aviation (though I realize that I may be reading the name wrong), which leads me to wonder if he either wrote this letter before he was successful in flying his aerial ship, or if his flight was just never documented. He seems pretty confident about accomplishing this flight however: "I trust you will not condemn my petition because it seems marvelous. I am prepared and fully confident to prove my assertions." You would have to assume that this guy had at least gone through some test runs, right?

I don't know what the Chamber's reaction to this epistle was--we have no record of a reply. But I am hoping that, fascinated by the possibility of "navigating the air," they at least allowed the guy to give it a try.

Have a great Halloween!

"Navigating the Air"

"Famous People"

So, as we expected, the minute we finished putting together our presentation and resumed processing, we came across some really wonderful material that we wish we had found earlier! We've started processing some boxes labeled "Alpha Files" which have turned out to be mostly correspondence, but not just regular, boring, administrative, should-we-install-a-new-elevator-in-the-building type correspondence. No. This correspondence is all the really interesting correspondence that Katie and I have been waiting patiently to uncover since the start. This is the stuff that is going to make people say "Wow!" as often as Katie and I have been saying "Wow!" as we work our way through it (Read: a lot). Here are some of the big names: Thomas Edison. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. General William T. Sherman. Theodore Roosevelt. Et cetera, et cetera. Most of it (that we've delved into so far) ranges from the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s.

Ok, this is all pretty exciting, to say the least. But here's the bad news (and here is what points to a possibly major problem archivists may encounter while processing a collection): All of these items of correspondence were very obviously taken out of their original order. Katie and I are guessing that at some point (indicators point to the late 1960s or 1970s) someone in the Chamber of Commerce decided to comb through all of the correspondence amassed over the years and pull out all of the . . . well, really cool stuff. That person then decided to "reorganize" these correspondence files according to his/her own subject classification system. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I don’t think this person was going by any sort of standard subject classification system. This 1970s person removed all of the "cool!" correspondence from their original files, re-foldered them in (acidic) folders, slapped a subject label on them and called it a day. Maybe some of these correspondence files were originally filed by subject and that subject was retained when they were re-foldered, but who can be sure of that? Not me, and not Katie.

Ok, so in most cases, this is not such a big deal. In most cases, the folder title "Statue of Liberty, 1886" (dated added by us) is perfectly fine. It's not the job of the folder title to point out that folder contains a letter by General Sherman; instead, it’s the job of the archivist to point out in the series statement that a researcher should be aware that there are some really amazing correspondents in the correspondence files, possibly noting that Sherman is one of them. So what's the problem, you ask? The problem is that sometimes the subject title given by this well-meaning 1970s person is inaccurate or inadequate. So we have to check and make sure we correct those mistakes. This turns into a bigger problem when you come across folders with no title, or general and ridiculous titles like "Famous People." Famous according to whom? What if we go through this folder and don't find a single name we recognize? Is it that our knowledge of American History is lacking (yes, in some cases) or is it that a person that was famous in 1899 is now just an obscure footnote in history (yes, in some cases).

Anyway, to cut a long story somewhat shorter, in order to fix this mess that this 1970s person left behind, we have ended up with several correspondence folders that are merely dated, rather than given a subject title. This makes things somewhat more difficult for researchers (hint to researchers: the "1890-1899" folder is pretty impressive) but it keeps us from subjectively imposing our opinions and guesses on to this collection. It also keeps us sane.

And now since you have so patiently read through my rant against the imagined 1970s person, I'll show you some of the cool stuff:

I'll bet zillions people over the years have had stationery that reads, "From the desk of . . . " But Thomas Edison's stationery reads, "From the Laboratory of Thomas Edison." How many people have stationery like that?

Roosevelt attended the opening ceremony and banquet for the dedication of the new Chamber of Commerce building on November 11, 1902.



Since the above letter is dated November 6, 1899 I'm not sure if this means that Roosevelt also attended the Annual Banquet for 1899 or if this is a confirmation way, way in advance of the building dedication.

That's all for today, but later I'll try to get around to posting some more from the correspondence files. Have a good week!

"Famous People"

Researching New York 2008

As I mentioned in my last post, Katie and I haven't been as focused on processing the last couple of weeks as we usually are. I am very happy to report that we have been accepted to give a presentation on the collection at a state history conference, Researching New York: Perspectives on Empire State History, which is taking place next month in Albany. Sponsored by the State University of New York, the conference aims to bring together historians, researchers, archivists, librarians, teachers, curators, and filmmakers to engage in each other's work and research. In particular, the conference is supposed to act as a forum to highlight resources available to researchers and encourage new scholarship.

Even though the conference isn't until next month, we have to have our presentation ready for the commentator by next week. So, accordingly, we've been working like crazy on it--night and day, day and night. It's a PowerPoint, but hopefully a much more entertaining PowerPoint than typically presented--we are fortunate enough to have a fairly visually interesting collection.

So if you're interested in New York history, and if you will happen to be in Albany on November 20, check out the schedule and try to come to our presentation. If you can't make it, don't worry, you will probably see it in bits and pieces here over the next couple of months.

Researching New York 2008