MCNY Blog: New York Stories

Now that the weather has (finally) taken a turn towards summer, many New Yorkers are likely thinking about escaping the city for the beach in the months ahead. Fleeing the city for the seaside is...

https://blog.mcny.org/2018/05/30/hitting-the-beach-in-the-19th-century/

The lights come up on a picturesque farm scene. It’s March 31, 1943, opening night at the St. James Theatre on 44th Street. The stage’s sole occupant is an older woman at work at a butter ch...

https://blog.mcny.org/2018/04/11/happy-75th-birthday-oklahoma/

The Collections Department loves to take you behind the scenes. We’ve written before about the loans process at the Museum, shared our experiences serving as a guard at evening events, and d...

https://blog.mcny.org/2018/03/08/behind-the-barrier-deinstallations-rotations/

To celebrate the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, we searched our collections for past winter sports extravaganzas held in New York City. In December 1936, the Winter Sports Show...

https://blog.mcny.org/2018/02/09/one-ton-of-ice-clowns-on-skis/

  The 2017 Women’s March was a worldwide protest held on January 21, 2017, to advocate legislation and policies related to human rights, women’s rights, immigration and healthcare reform, ra...

https://blog.mcny.org/2018/01/22/2017-womens-march-one-year-later/

In 2015, the Museum of the City of New York digitized and catalogued almost 300 hand fans—nearly fifty percent of our collection—thanks to a grant from the Fan Association of North America (F...

https://blog.mcny.org/2018/01/11/fantastic-fans/

Sophie Tucker was born Sonya Kalish on January 13, 1886, in Tulchin, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. Several months after her birth, her family immigrated to the United States and later...

https://blog.mcny.org/2017/12/14/20202/

On September 26, 1957, West Side Story, a new musical opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway. In his opening night review, New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson called the musical...

https://blog.mcny.org/2017/11/09/when-love-comes-so-strong-west-side-story-at-60/

One of the best things about a registrar’s job is the satisfaction that comes from verifying information, seeking out missing documentation, and tying up loose ends. As registrars, we are commi...

https://blog.mcny.org/2017/10/11/the-hunt/

In May 2017, the Museum’s Manuscripts and Ephemera collection accessioned a 1950s-era Civil Defense kit that was compiled during the Cold War by Mr. Ernest Thomsen, then a resident of Hollis, Q...

https://blog.mcny.org/2017/09/12/civil-defense-during-the-cold-war/

The Museum’s ongoing exhibition Activist New York recently debuted a new case study that explores the battle over birth control and obscenity laws that raged in New York at the turn of the 19th...

https://blog.mcny.org/2017/08/03/gertrude-hoffman-and-the-dance-that-offended-public-decency/

It’s the summer solstice and the king and queen of the fairies are quarrelling in a forest. Queen Titania has stolen a favored serving boy of King Oberon. Or, maybe it is the impending nuptials...

https://blog.mcny.org/2017/07/25/when-mortals-dream-at-night-in-the-summer/

During the winter and early spring of 2016, the Museum photographed and catalogued over 400 mid-century garments from our costumes and textile collection through our Dressing Room project, funded...

https://blog.mcny.org/2017/06/26/truman-capotes-black-and-white-dance/