New-York Historical Society
Encyclopedia
The New-York Historical Society is an American history
museum and library located in New York City
at the corner of 77th Street and Central Park West
in Manhattan
. Founded in 1804 as New York's first museum
, the New-York Historical Society presents exhibitions, public programs and research that explore the rich history of New York and the nation. Its landmark building is currently under renovation, with its reopening scheduled for November 2011. Since 2004, the president of the Historical Society has been Louise Mirrer
, who was previously Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs of the City University of New York
.
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The New-York Historical Society holds an extensive collection of historical artifacts, works of American art, and other materials documenting the history of the United States and New York. It presents deeply researched exhibitions on a variety of topics and periods in American history
, such as George Washington
, Alexander Hamilton
, Slavery in New York
, The Hudson River School
, Abraham Lincoln
, Ulysses S. Grant
, Tiffany
designer Clara Driscol, and the history of the Constitution
. The Historical Society also offers an extensive range of curriculum-based school programs and teacher resources, provides academic fellowships and organizes public programs for adults to foster lifelong learning and a deep appreciation of history.
The New-York Historical Society’s museum is the oldest in New York City and predates the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
by nearly 70 years. Its art holdings comprise more than 1.6 million works. Among them are a world-class collection of Hudson River School
paintings, including major works by Thomas Cole
and Frederic Edwin Church
; iconic genre and history paintings including works by William Sidney Mount
and Eastman Johnson
; a vast range of American portraits, including paintings by Rembrandt Peale
and Gilbert Stuart
; all 435 of John James Audubon
’s extant preparatory watercolors for Birds of America
; and an encyclopedic collection of more than 800 works documenting the full range of representational sculpture in America from the colonial period to the present day . The Historical Society also holds an important collection of paintings and drawings by marine artist James Bard
. The museum holds much of sculptor Elie Nadelman
’s legendary American folk art collection, including furniture and household accessories such as lamps, candlesticks, textiles, glass, and ceramic objects, as well as paintings, toys, weathervanes, sculptural woodcarvings, and chalkware . The Historical Society’s holdings in artifacts and decorative arts include George Washington
’s camp bed from Valley Forge, the desk at which Clement Clarke Moore
wrote “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” one of the world’s largest collections of Tiffany
lamps and glasswork, and a collection of more than 550 late ninteenth-century American board games .
Its research library contains more than three million books, pamphlets, maps, atlases, newspapers, broadsides, music sheets, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings. Among its collections are far-ranging materials relating to the founding and early history of the nation; one of the best collections of 18th century newspapers in the United States; an outstanding collection of materials documenting slavery and Reconstruction; an exceptional collection of Civil War
material, including Ulysses S. Grant
’s terms of surrender for Robert E. Lee
; collections relating to trials in the United States prior to 1860; American fiction, poetry, and belles-lettres prior to 1850; a broad range of materials relating to the history of the circus; and American travel accounts from the colonial era to the present day .
, 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 11 of the city's most prominent citizens, including Mayor DeWitt Clinton
. At the meeting, a committee was selected to draw up a constitution, and by December 10, the Historical Society was officially organized.
In 1813, nine years after its founding when the Historical Society's first catalogue was printed, they 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 Historical Society suffered under heavy debt during its early decades. In 1809, the Historical Society organized a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Henry Hudson
in New York Harbor
. Inspired by the event, the Historical 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 Historical Society to mortgage some of its books, which were redeemed only in 1823.
The Historical Society and its collections moved frequently during the 19th century. In 1809, the Historical 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 Historical 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 50 years. The Historical Society later acquired a collection of Egyptian and Assyria
n art which was later transferred to the Brooklyn Museum
.
The central portion of the present building on Central Park West
was completed in 1908, to designs by architects York and Sawyer
. In 1938 that central block was extended and sympathetically completed by the construction of pavilions on either end, with Walker & Gillette
as architects. That extension project stands among the last examples of Beaux-Arts architecture completed in the city and in the entire country.
Two stained glass 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 because 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.
The Historical Society uses an archaic spelling of the name New York; hyphenating the city's name was common in the 19th century when the Historical Society was founded.
The Historical Society's collection continued to grow throughout the 20th century, but renewed financial woes in the 1970s and 1980s forced the Historical Society to limit access to its collections to professional researchers. In the 1980s they used endowment invasion
to pay their annual operating costs and cover their salaries to the point where by 1988 they had only enough money in their endowment to pay for another 18 months of operating expenses. Barbara Knowles Debs
from Manhattanville College
was named interim director of the Historical Society. In the same year 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
. Since the late 1990s, the New-York Historical Society has invested significantly in facility and installation upgrades and has increased its operating budget by 160 percent to enhance and expand its public programs, while maintaining a balanced budge from 1998 to the present. Recent renovations to the Historical Society include new galleries and exhibition spaces, the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture, a state-of-the-art library reading room, and a new facility to house and provide access to the letters and manuscripts of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
. In 2005, the Historical Society was among 406 New York City
arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg
.
Under the direction of Louise Mirrer, a three-year, $65 million renovation of its landmark building on Central Park West is currently in progress and scheduled for completion in November 2011 to enhance public access to the institution's resources. After reopening, the Historical Society will offer a multimedia installation of major themes of American history through stories and figures from New York's past and an all-new, interactive children's history museum.
History of the United States
The history of the United States traditionally starts with the Declaration of Independence in the year 1776, although its territory was inhabited by Native Americans since prehistoric times and then by European colonists who followed the voyages of Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The...
museum and library located in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
at the corner of 77th Street and Central Park West
Central Park West
Central Park West is an avenue that runs north-south in the New York City borough of Manhattan, in the United States....
in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. Founded in 1804 as New York's first museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
, the New-York Historical Society presents exhibitions, public programs and research that explore the rich history of New York and the nation. Its landmark building is currently under renovation, with its reopening scheduled for November 2011. Since 2004, the president of the Historical Society has been Louise Mirrer
Louise Mirrer
Louise Mirrer, Ph.D., is President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society, the oldest museum in New York City. Under Mirrer’s direction, the New-York Historical Society has launched a series of groundbreaking exhibitions, including Slavery in New York; New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil...
, who was previously Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs of the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
.
Overview
History of the United States
The history of the United States traditionally starts with the Declaration of Independence in the year 1776, although its territory was inhabited by Native Americans since prehistoric times and then by European colonists who followed the voyages of Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The...
, such as George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
, Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
, Slavery in New York
History of slavery in New York
Slavery in New York was instituted when the New Amsterdam fur trading-post developed into a farming colony in the 17th century; the first African slaves were imported by the Dutch West Indies Company to New Amsterdam in 1626...
, The Hudson River School
Hudson River school
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...
, Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
, Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
, Tiffany
Louis Comfort Tiffany
Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements...
designer Clara Driscol, and the history of the Constitution
History of the United States Constitution
The United States Constitution was written in 1787, but it did not take effect until after it was ratified in 1789, when it replaced the Articles of Confederation. It remains the basic law of the United States...
. The Historical Society also offers an extensive range of curriculum-based school programs and teacher resources, provides academic fellowships and organizes public programs for adults to foster lifelong learning and a deep appreciation of history.
Collections
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
by nearly 70 years. Its art holdings comprise more than 1.6 million works. Among them are a world-class collection of Hudson River School
Hudson River school
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...
paintings, including major works by Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century...
and Frederic Edwin Church
Frederic Edwin Church
Frederic Edwin Church was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters...
; iconic genre and history paintings including works by William Sidney Mount
William Sidney Mount
William Sidney Mount was an American genre painter and contemporary of the Hudson River School.-Biography:...
and Eastman Johnson
Eastman Johnson
Eastman Johnson was an American painter, and Co-Founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, with his name inscribed at its entrance...
; a vast range of American portraits, including paintings by Rembrandt Peale
Rembrandt Peale
Rembrandt Peale was an American artist and museum keeper. A prolific portrait painter, he was especially acclaimed for his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson...
and Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...
; all 435 of John James Audubon
John James Audubon
John James Audubon was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats...
’s extant preparatory watercolors for Birds of America
Birds of America (book)
The Birds of America is a book by naturalist and painter John James Audubon, containing illustrations of a wide variety of birds of the United States. It was first published as a series of sections between 1827 and 1838, in Edinburgh and London....
; and an encyclopedic collection of more than 800 works documenting the full range of representational sculpture in America from the colonial period to the present day . The Historical Society also holds an important collection of paintings and drawings by marine artist James Bard
James Bard
James Bard was a marine artist of the 19th century. He is known for his paintings of watercraft, particularly of steamboats. His works are sometimes characterized as naïve art. Although Bard died poor and almost forgotten, his works have since become valuable...
. The museum holds much of sculptor Elie Nadelman
Elie Nadelman
Elie Nadelman was an American sculptor, draughtsman and collector of Polish birth.-Early years:...
’s legendary American folk art collection, including furniture and household accessories such as lamps, candlesticks, textiles, glass, and ceramic objects, as well as paintings, toys, weathervanes, sculptural woodcarvings, and chalkware . The Historical Society’s holdings in artifacts and decorative arts include George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
’s camp bed from Valley Forge, the desk at which Clement Clarke Moore
Clement Clarke Moore
Clement Clarke Moore was an American professor of Oriental and Greek literature at Columbia College, now Columbia University. He donated land from his family estate for the foundation of the General Theological Seminary, where he was a professor of Biblical learning and compiled a two-volume...
wrote “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” one of the world’s largest collections of Tiffany
Louis Comfort Tiffany
Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements...
lamps and glasswork, and a collection of more than 550 late ninteenth-century American board games .
Its research library contains more than three million books, pamphlets, maps, atlases, newspapers, broadsides, music sheets, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings. Among its collections are far-ranging materials relating to the founding and early history of the nation; one of the best collections of 18th century newspapers in the United States; an outstanding collection of materials documenting slavery and Reconstruction; an exceptional collection of Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
material, including Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
’s terms of surrender for Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee
Robert Edward Lee was a career military officer who is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War....
; collections relating to trials in the United States prior to 1860; American fiction, poetry, and belles-lettres prior to 1850; a broad range of materials relating to the history of the circus; and American travel accounts from the colonial era to the present day .
Early history
The Historical Society was founded on November 20, 1804, largely through the efforts of John PintardJohn Pintard
John Pintard was an American merchant and philanthropist.He was a descendant of Antoine Pintard, a Huguenot from La Rochelle, France. He was orphaned when his mother died when he was "a fortnight old" and his father died when he was about eighteen months old according to p 102 of "Letters from...
, 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 11 of the city's most prominent citizens, including Mayor DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt Clinton
DeWitt Clinton was an early American politician and naturalist who served as United States Senator and the sixth Governor of New York. In this last capacity he was largely responsible for the construction of the Erie Canal...
. At the meeting, a committee was selected to draw up a constitution, and by December 10, the Historical Society was officially organized.
In 1813, nine years after its founding when the Historical Society's first catalogue was printed, they 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 Historical Society suffered under heavy debt during its early decades. In 1809, the Historical Society organized a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Henry Hudson
Henry Hudson
Henry Hudson was an English sea explorer and navigator in the early 17th century. Hudson made two attempts on behalf of English merchants to find a prospective Northeast Passage to Cathay via a route above the Arctic Circle...
in New York Harbor
New York Harbor
New York Harbor refers to the waterways of the estuary near the mouth of the Hudson River that empty into New York Bay. It is one of the largest natural harbors in the world. Although the U.S. Board of Geographic Names does not use the term, New York Harbor has important historical, governmental,...
. Inspired by the event, the Historical 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 Historical Society to mortgage some of its books, which were redeemed only in 1823.
The Historical Society and its collections moved frequently during the 19th century. In 1809, the Historical Society and its collections moved to the Government House on Bowling Green
Bowling Green (New York City)
Bowling Green is a small public park in Lower Manhattan at the foot of Broadway next to the site of the original Dutch fort of New Amsterdam. Built in 1733, originally including a bowling green, it is the oldest public park in New York City and is surrounded by its original 18th century fence. At...
,which had been constructed as a residence for the President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, but which was unoccupied after the relocation of the capital to Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
. In 1816, the Historical 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 50 years. The Historical Society later acquired a collection of Egyptian and Assyria
Assyria
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
n art which was later transferred to the Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an encyclopedia art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At 560,000 square feet, the museum holds New York City's second largest art collection with roughly 1.5 million works....
.
The central portion of the present building on Central Park West
Central Park West
Central Park West is an avenue that runs north-south in the New York City borough of Manhattan, in the United States....
was completed in 1908, to designs by architects York and Sawyer
York and Sawyer
The architectural firm of York and Sawyer produced many outstanding structures, exemplary of Beaux-Arts architecture as it was practiced in the United States. The partners Edward York and Philip Sawyer had both trained in the office of McKim, Mead, and White...
. In 1938 that central block was extended and sympathetically completed by the construction of pavilions on either end, with Walker & Gillette
Walker & Gillette
Walker & Gillette was an architectural firm based in New York City, the partnership of A. Stewart Walker and Leon N. Gillette , active from 1906 through 1945.- Biography :...
as architects. That extension project stands among the last examples of Beaux-Arts architecture completed in the city and in the entire country.
Edict of Nantes
The Edict of Nantes, issued on 13 April 1598, by Henry IV of France, granted the Calvinist Protestants of France substantial rights in a nation still considered essentially Catholic. In the Edict, Henry aimed primarily to promote civil unity...
. It is one of Mary E. Tillinghast's most recognized achievements because 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.
The Historical Society uses an archaic spelling of the name New York; hyphenating the city's name was common in the 19th century when the Historical Society was founded.
Decline and resurgence
Endowment invasion
Endowment invasion is when an institution uses the financial endowment to pay off debts and cover the yearly operating expenses. In New York the practice requires approval from the state attorney general’s office and the New York State Supreme Court; by 2009, however, most states have adopted...
to pay their annual operating costs and cover their salaries to the point where by 1988 they had only enough money in their endowment to pay for another 18 months of operating expenses. Barbara Knowles Debs
Barbara Knowles Debs
Barbara Knowles Debs is an art historian who was the president of Manhattanville College and in 1989 the interim director of the New-York Historical Society.-Biography:...
from Manhattanville College
Manhattanville College
Manhattanville College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college offering undergraduate and graduate degrees, located in Purchase, New York. Founded in 1841 it was known initially as Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart...
was named interim director of the Historical Society. In the same year 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
Betsy Gotbaum
Betsy Gotbaum was the New York City Public Advocate. She was elected as Public Advocate for New York City in 2001, and reelected in 2005. A longtime civic leader, she is the third woman elected to a citywide post in NYC history. Because she ran unopposed in the 2001 and 2005 elections, Betsy...
. Since the late 1990s, the New-York Historical Society has invested significantly in facility and installation upgrades and has increased its operating budget by 160 percent to enhance and expand its public programs, while maintaining a balanced budge from 1998 to the present. Recent renovations to the Historical Society include new galleries and exhibition spaces, the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture, a state-of-the-art library reading room, and a new facility to house and provide access to the letters and manuscripts of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, founded in New York by Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman in 1994, was set up to promote the study and love of American history.The Institute serves teachers, students, scholars, and the general public...
. In 2005, the Historical Society was among 406 New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg
Michael Rubens Bloomberg is the current Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, he is also the 12th-richest person in the United States...
.
Under the direction of Louise Mirrer, a three-year, $65 million renovation of its landmark building on Central Park West is currently in progress and scheduled for completion in November 2011 to enhance public access to the institution's resources. After reopening, the Historical Society will offer a multimedia installation of major themes of American history through stories and figures from New York's past and an all-new, interactive children's history museum.
See also
- List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City
- History of New YorkHistory of New YorkThe history of New York begins around 10,000 BCE, when the first Native Americans arrived. By 1100 CE, New York's main tribes, the Iroquoian and Algonquian cultures, had developed. New York was discovered by the French in 1524 and first claimed in 1609 by the Dutch...
- History of New York CityHistory of New York CityThe history of New York, New York begins with the first European documentation of the area by Giovanni da Verrazzano, in command of the French ship, La Dauphine, when he visited the region in 1524. It is believed he sailed in Upper New York Bay where he encountered native Lenape, returned through...
- Hudson River SchoolHudson River schoolThe Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...
- American History Book PrizeAmerican History Book PrizeThe New-York Historical Society American History Book Prize or simply the American History Book Prize is an American literary award given annually by the New-York Historical Society for an adult non-fiction book on American history or biography copyrighted in the year of the award "that is...
- The Course of EmpireThe Course of EmpireThe Course of Empire is a five-part series of paintings created by Thomas Cole in the years 1833-36. It is notable in part for reflecting popular American sentiments of the times, when many saw pastoralism as the ideal phase of human civilization, fearing that empire would lead to gluttony and...