In 1937, WNYC’s popular Sunday morning program was dedicated to the “shut-ins” of New York City. Whisperings and Musings spoke to those who were bound to the home or hospitalized and in need of a little entertainment, a word of cheer, and of course, “greetings upon the celebration of birthdays and anniversaries.” Many listeners sent in their own poems about forgotten love, historical events, boyhood memories, and even about how cars were going too fast on the streets in the 1930s.

From the About Page in the program notebook:

Whisperings and Musings – Fan Mail About Page

(NYPR Archives Collection/NYPR Archive Collections)

Station chief, Commissioner Frederick Kracke, reached out to fellow Commissioner of Hospitals, Dr. Sigismund Goldwater, to promote the radio show in various hospitals.

Whisperings and Musings – Fan Mail Commissioner Letter

(NYPR Archives Collection/NYPR Archive Collections)

Most listeners wrote they were pleased with the various poems read or the singers featured on the show. Among the most requested performers were: Dorothy Wood, Connie Alba, and the Chordsters. Who were they? We’re looking into it.

Whisperings and Musings – Speed on the Streets Poem

(NYPR Archives Collection/NYPR Archives)

While most letters praised the show, helping the lonely find solace with the radio program, some were displeased, like this letter from David:

Whisperings and Musings – Fan Mail May 9, 1937

(NYPR Archives Collection/NYPR Archive Collections)

David was dissatisfied with the way the song “Old Man River” was played on air. “Now I think that the song should never have been allowed to be played in such a manner. The song should be played in the original and only way, and records of the song can still be obtained!”

Some letters pleaded with program producer J. Berger to be given the opportunity to perform on the show, like this butcher who really just needed to catch a break:

Whisperings and Musings – Fan Mail Butcher Letter

(NYPR Archives Collection/NYPR Archives)

This is just a brief glimpse of the many letters sent to Whisperings and Musings. Although there are no extant broadcast copies of the show, these letters do help provide the reader with a sense of program and what it meant to its listeners in 1937.

To see more fan mail, check out the Whisperings and Musings Tumblr Page!

During World War II a number of WNYC staff went to serve in the armed forces. To keep them up to date with what happening at the station, The Transmitter newsletter was launched in early 1944. Edited by newsman Mike Jablons, it was a typical in-house publication featuring staff updates, happenings, changes and challenges for the municipal station in wartime New York. Recurring columns included “Patch Chords”, “The Mailbag”, and “Behind the Mike”, which Jablons wrote himself. 

The Transmitter was sprinkled with humor (often sexist) and generally made an effort to kep the news upbeat, while informing its uniformed readers of marriages, births, adventures and incidents within the WNYC community. “The Mailbag” consisted of letters addressed to the station from staffers abroad. The radiomen tell of their training, trials and travails, but mostly of how much they missed their radio home and “that lady atop the Municipal Building,” a reference to the gilded copper statue of a woman called Civic Fame.

From April 1944 Transmitter “Mailbag”

(WNYC Archive/WNYC Archive Collections)

Because of wartime security the newsletter was prohibited from publishing the addresses of those abroad but Jablons would connect those in the service with the addresses of their fellows in arms if they wished to correspond with each other.

Letters from abroad

(WNYC Archive/WNYC Archive Collections)

Among the highlights mentioned are a fire in the Municipal Building, election night, D-Day, and WNYC’s 20^th Anniversary. But for the most part it’s an informal effort by staffers to stay in touch in “this war-torn world” with news of familiar spaces and co-workers happenings, no matter how common place. Details of a broken water cooler and Jablons accidentally flipping the power switch in Master Control are included.

We’ve created a page where you can read through all of the issues of The Transmitter that we have from 1944, generously donated to the WNYC Archives by former newsman Edward Goldberger. You can read an excerpt of a letter from Edward himself in this post.

The depths of the East River have long been a treasure trove of unexpected finds. In this episode of New York: A Portrait in Sound, you’ll hear from some of the divers who braved its murky waters in the 1960s.  

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Barney Sweeney was an independent professional diver, hired to recover items lost in New York Harbor and its adjoining rivers. He surfaced many items, both strange and mundane, and collected some good stories along the way. Barney was one of the divers interviewed for this episode on East River Divers.

Submerged in the waters of the river, visibility is low, as sediment clouds the water, and divers would have to go very much by feel. Barney Sweeney would float above the riverbed and probe the mud with a long pole to avoid raising clouds of unsettled muck around him. 

In his day, Sweeney made newspaper headlines with some of his finds, which included cars, washing machines, and a murder weapon he found stuck in the branches of a submerged Christmas tree—a pistol that shone there “like an ornament.” (New York Magazine did an article more recently about strange things found in the river.)

Below you can hear Barney tell the intriguing tale of recovering a diamond worth $25,000.

Sweeney also frequented the pages of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Tugboats beware!

1953 mention in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

(Brooklyn Daily Eagle/Brooklyn Newstand)

Below you can hear Sweeney discuss the dead bodies he’s resurfaced, and the death of his father, who was also a professional diver. You can read an article here about an 8-year-old boy Sweeney found in 1957 who had drowned in the Hudson River. He also briefly discusses his diving gear, which you can learn more about here.

Sweeney graces the Brooklyn Daily Eagle again in 1957, looking for a sunken freight car.

1957 article from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

(Brooklyn Daily Eagle/Brooklyn Newstand)

Towards the end of his career, work for independent divers was beginning to thin. Companies that required it would have their own diving crews on call, rather than turning to freelancers like Sweeney. He tells the interviewer that there are only 3 or 4 other New York independent divers that he knows of at the time in the 1960s. But divers still explore the river today. The NYPD has their own scuba division and ecologists probe the river for life and pollution levels.

Cataloging Special Collections is like digging through a box of Cracker Jacks. You purchase a snack hoping that an additional prize is contained inside. After picking through your edible treat, you fingers grasp a hidden prize- maybe a decoding ring, a sticker, or some other trinket. Sometimes that prize has value, other times it is simply fun to find the prize, even if it has no value; and then there are times when the Cracker Jack assembly line forgot to put a prize in your box. A similar thing happens in cataloging. The university purchases old items and special collections, and many times, there are unexpected objects to be found in the collections. Sometimes, you find an academic’s notes, an old photograph used as a bookmark, or some newspaper clippings. Other times, you find less rewarding prizes, like spiders, dust, cobwebs, and more spiders.

Recently, through the cataloging of the Asian Religions Collection (ARC), catalogers stumbled upon some of fun finds. While the Asian Religions Collection was purchased by FSU, it previously had many homes. One of these earlier owners was Galen Eugene Sargent. As a professor of philosophy and comparative literature at Indiana University, Sargent kept multiple notes and bookmarks in his ARC books. Many of these items managed to remain inside the books throughout the years. Cataloger Elizabeth Richey was lucky enough the stumble upon many of these hidden treasures.

The most commonly found items within these books were annotations and handwritten notes. In fact, we found enough notes to fill a small box. These notes appear to be written by Sargent, and they provide us with a glimpse into his work and research interests. There was also a small collection of bookmarks. Actual bookmarks from the Indiana University bookstore and Lagniappe Book Shop in New Orleans were found, while other items used as bookmarks were found. A few favorite bookmark finds include cigarette cards, bookstore receipts, a sleeve of Rokusei Ryokan tissues, and a photograph of actress Marianne Hold.

While these found items within the collection were used for more academic purposes, like annotating and marking passages of note, other finds were more aesthetically pleasing. Hidden in the pages of some books were pressed flowers. Others included pressed butterflies. While we cannot pin an exact date to these pressed pieces of nature, we can guess that some date back to the 1960s.

When cataloging older, previously owned materials, you never know what you will find. You’re sure to come across a lot of dust and spiders, but that just makes finding notes and photographs all the more rewarding.

Last month, Mike posted about a recent gift of books from alumnus Peter Webb. I have cataloged them and they can be found via this search. Mike mentioned in passing that the gift included copies of some of Charles Eastman’s books in their original dust jackets:

E98.R3 E15 1911 c.2 and E99.D1 E183 1909 c.2

Since dust jackets on hardcover books are common today, these may not seem all that exciting. But dust jackets from the early 1900s and before are quite rare, even in special collections libraries. See this recent post from the University of Virginia about a collection of 19th-century books in original dust jackets, donated by Tom Congalton.

Current research on the history of dust jackets agrees that “they are a phenomenon associated with, and resulting from, the introduction of publishers’ cloth in 1820 … It is natural that publishers should have thought of furnishing protective wrappings after they began issuing books in cloth-covered boards, for these casings (bindings) were more permanent and soon became more decorative than plain boards, and any means for keeping them in their original condition until they reached the hands of buyers would be to the publishers’ advantage.”¹

So publishers’ production and use of the dust jacket was driven by practical reasons, and became widespread. Today they are scarce because buyers in the 19th-century thought of dust jackets only as disposable packaging. Still, they are an important component to consider when studying the book as an artifact.

G. Thomas Tanselle, the expert in this subject area, has compiled a list of 1,888 surviving examples of dust jackets from prior to 1901 in his Book-Jackets: Their History Forms and Use. It is hoped that an online database may be created and built upon for further research.

Here are a few of the examples held by Amherst College:

The New England Country / Clifton Johnson (Boston : Lee and Shepard, 1897) PS3519.O225 N6 1897  (#97.79 in Tanselle’s published list)

Equality / Edward Bellamy (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1897) HX811 1887 .B5 c.2 (Tanselle #97.6)

3 views of volume 1 of Letters of Emily Dickinson / ed. by Mabel Loomis Todd (Boston : Roberts Brothers, 1894) PS1541.Z5 A3 1894 (Tanselle #94.85) (Note in the picture on the far right that the discoloration of the endpapers gives evidence that this jacket is most likely original to this copy)

Print appears only on the spine of this dust jacket on Strangers and Wayfarers / Sarah Orne Jewett (Boston and New York : Houghton Mifflin, 1890) PS2132.S8 1890 (Tanselle #90.23)

Lastly, two examples from the 1930s, by which time publishers had long since figured out that placing graphics and advertising on paper dust jackets was much more economical than elaborately decorating cloth bindings.

PS3507.O827 C38 1934 and PS3507.O827 C37 1936

¹ Tanselle, G. Thomas, Book-Jackets: Their History, Forms, and Use (Charlottesville, Va. : The Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 2011), 8-9.   The book contains three essays originally published in 1971, 2006, and 2010. For a concise overview of the subject, Tanselle himself also recommends the chapter “Book-Jackets” in Anthony Rota’s Apart from the Text (New Castle, Del. : Oak Knoll Press, 1998) 124-141.

We have a very large and rare 1905 map in our holdings that was dirty and falling apart. Last year, we collaborated with the Land Title & Survey Authority of British Columbia (LTSA) and the BC Archives to conserve and digitize it. This is the story of why that conservation treatment happened and how it was done.

Low-resolution version of Map of New Westminster District, 1905. Reference code AM1594-: MAP 138. A high-resolution version is available from our online search.

The 1905 Map of New Westminster District is almost 1 metre wide and over 2 metres long. It shows District Lots and other divisions of land for all of Metro Vancouver and as far east as Hope.

The LTSA has been actively conserving and digitizing the maps in its custody. Its own copy of this map is in very poor condition. The map was originally published for distribution but there are only a handful of copies left in public institutions. Although our copy was in bad condition, it was better than the others. LTSA proposed a pilot inter-institutional collaboration: the best available copy of the map would be conserved and digitized, the digital file would be distributed to the partners, and our paper map would be returned to us for storage and long-term preservation. Conservation and digitization work would be paid for by the BC Archives and LTSA.

The conservation work was complicated, as the map was in rough shape (and huge!). It needed to be cleaned so that all the information would be readable. Many pieces had fallen off or were barely clinging to the worn-out cotton backing fabric. The pieces had to be put back together so that it could be digitized safely. The work was done by Jean Topham, a Victoria conservator with decades of experience, with the assistance of Carly Wemyss. They provided us with photographs of the treatment process.

Detail of edge tear before treatment. Photograph Sue Bigelow.

Detail of staining and tears before treatment.

The surface of the map was cleaned by hand. This had to be done carefully, since the paper was brittle and the map was in pieces in many places.

This shows the contrast of the light area that has already been cleaned with the area darkened by surface dirt and mold. Fragments of eraser are visible on the surface.

After cleaning with erasers, the surface was wet-cleaned with distilled water. The surface is fragile and becomes more delicate while it is wet.

Cleaning with Q-tips and distilled water.

The old backing fabric was not capable of providing stable support for the paper map and needed to be removed. Before that could happen, the torn areas of the plan needed to be reinforced temporarily so they would stay in place.

Hollytex polyester fabric applied to the front surface with an adhesive that won’t dissolve in water.

The map could then safely be flipped over. The old backing fabric was removed slowly, in sections, with water. Once it was gone, pieces of thin Japanese tissue were applied to the back where there were tears and losses.

The cotton backing fabric has been removed from the left and front sections and tissue strips have been stuck down with starch paste.

With the tears and loose pieces secured with tissue on the back, the map could be flipped over and the Hollytex fabric on the front removed.

The adhesive on the Hollytex fabric was dissolved with solvent and the pieces peeled off.

Deacidification solution was sprayed on the back of the map to make the paper less acidic.

Spraying a water-based deacidification solution.

While the map was still damp, the back was reinforced with sheets of thick Japanese mulberry paper with wheat starch paste. The map was too large for this to be done easily by one person.

Jean and Carly lay down a sheet of backing paper. It looks very thick because it is being supported by a sheet of polyester fabric during this step.

The backing paper layer, without its polyester fabric support, was tapped to make sure it was well bonded with the map and there were no loose areas or air bubbles.

Jean and Carly tap the damp backing paper in place with brushes made for that purpose.

Excess water was removed from the backing paper using blotters.

Jean removes dampness. The map is not perfectly flat at this point.

Paper strips were pasted along the edges and the map was flipped face-up again. The edge strips were pasted to the table and it was left to dry. The pasted edges provided light tension as it dried, keeping it flat.

Last, translucent heat-set tissue was applied around the outer edges and linen tape was applied at both ends for added protection.

Heat-set tissue has been applied along the edge shown at left.

Now this map, which could only be viewed on a large table at the Archives, is available online in high resolution for everyone to use. We’d like to thank the LTSA and the BC Archives for their financial contributions and for managing this successful collaboration.

It’s a pleasure to announce that Sandra Carrera is the first ever winner of the Updike Prize for Student Type Design!

You may have noticed that the trophy is also a fully-functional composing stick. We had a great evening with a lecture from Tobias Frere-Jones last Thursday, but if you missed it you can still visit the level 3 gallery cases to take a look at the type specimens of our four finalists:

Sandra Carrera, Picara (First Prize)
Chae Hun Kim, Hodoo
Prin Limphongpand, Rizvele (Runner-Up)
Yeon Hak Ryoo, Tranche

The specimens will be on display, with items from the Updike Collection that influenced the type design, until March 19th. Kudos to all four finalists who did a great job!

Picara, the winning typeface, was influenced by a type specimen published sometime in the 1770s by Antonio Espinosa, and we’re happy to announce that we’ve made the book available in its entirety online:

If you’re a student interested in type design, don’t forget that the 2016 competition starts now! Stop in to work with the collection or just learn more about it and the rules for the prize.

And if you want to be notified about next year’s Updike Prize ceremony, stay tuned to this blog, or send us your email address to be added to our mailing list.

Now that our Heritage Lottery Funded project has come to an end, we wanted to write one final post to thank our readers who followed along with the National Union of Women Teachers archive collection.  Both the cataloguing and education outreach projects have allowed us to increase accessibility to the collection, and shed a bit more light on these formidable women, determined to level the playing field of gender equality.  If you’d like to keep up to date with archive related education resources and blog updates (including classroom lesson plans and activities), head to our new site Archives For All, or the Newsam Library & Archives’ blog Newsam News. Archives get the reputation for being dusty, stuffy places.  What collections like the NUWT prove is that archives are anything but useless papers of the past.  History’s tendency to repeat itself, as issues of the past continue to present themselves as issues in the present, is no more evident than in collections like the NUWT.  The NUWT disbanded in 1961, after achieving equal pay for men and women teachers.  Yet, 50+ years on, women continue the fight for equal pay, equal representation, and equal opportunity. During a recent school workshop about life during the First World War, I asked a group of Year 3s, ‘Why are archives important?  Why do we bother saving – and looking – at all of this stuff?’  One very clever student raised his hand, and gave the following impassioned explanation:

we need the archives… because we need to learn from our old mistakes so we don’t make them again! – Year 3 student at St Joseph’s in Camden, positioning himself to take my job

On a personal note, this is my last week as the Archive’s Education Coordinator.  I have been so lucky to be a part of this team, this archive, and to have had the opportunity to work with such dynamic schools and community members. While working with school pupils (whether they’re Year 2 or university students), the focus has always been on the archives – of course.  But alongside that, our objective has been to encourage critical enquiry, investigative skills and above all, to encourage students to question everything both in and outside the history classroom.  Go to the source, and then question that source, that issue, that argument. I was recently reading Angela’s Ashes, and was struck by this passage, where Frank describes his teacher.  Mr O’Halloran’s words pretty much sum up why we think history education, which fosters all of those above skills, is so important…

He says, You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can’t make up an empty mind.  Stock your mind, stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it – Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

You can also page through a final typescript of a Willa Cather title, ready to be sent off for printing.  Looking at the typescript, the thought comes to mind of how it must have felt to hold a completed novel before sending it on its final journey to the printers and subsequent release to the public.  Do you hope to someday find yourself in the same position – holding that completed story you have so carefully crafted before sending it off for publication?  Of course, now you’ll probably hit a key on a keyboard, rather than viewing a typed manuscript as did Ernest Hemingway and Willa Cather, along with so many others. 

Image courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, LC-USZ62-42538

Yesterday, the President announced his intention to appoint Laura A. DeBonis and Solomon B. Watson IV to each serve three-year terms as members of the Public Interest Declassification Board.  You can find a link to the White House press release announcing the appointments here.  The members of the PIDB look forward to working with Ms. DeBonis and Mr. Watson as they continue their efforts to improve declassification and modernize the classification system.

As we prepare our touring programme for the Hosts & Champions exhibition that will open on the 9th march in Trinity Church, Irvine, Jocelyn Grant, one of our Exhibition Assistants, provides an update on some of the material she has been researching working with the Commonwealth Games Scotland Archive.

During the 84 year history of the Commonwealth Games, Scotland has now had the honour of hosting this event a total of 3 times. Twice in Edinburgh for the 1970 and 1986 Games, and of course in Glasgow this past year. For 11 days Edinburgh and Glasgow came alive in a flurry of sporting events that engaged and inspired the whole country. However the effect of these Games did not disappear after each closing ceremony, instead each Games has sought to provide a lasting legacy that would continue to encourage and support the surrounding community. In particular each city has often benefited from the addition of new venues.

Edinburgh 1970

The 1970 Games is often considered the Commonwealth Games of ‘firsts’. It was the first to use metric measurements, the first to use new technology to provide an electronic photo finish, and the first Games that the Queen attended. However it also produced two purpose-built venues that continued to serve its community during, after, and for the next Edinburgh Games in 1986! These venues are the Royal Commonwealth Pool and Meadowbank Stadium.

Meadowbank Stadium

Newsletter 9, May 1970

At the grand cost of £2.8 million Meadowbank Stadium was built to accommodate athletics, fencing, wrestling and had its own dedicated velodrome.

Meadowbank Stadium under construction

While this facility was purpose built, the Edinburgh Newsletters in the archive provide an insight into how this stadium was intended to serve its surrounding community after the Games had finished. As the first newsletter released states:

“This centre has been designed to be a lasting asset to the capital city of Edinburgh and the whole of Scotland”

Seen as a ‘Capital Asset’ this centre was refurbished for the 1986 Games and once again played host to a number of sporting events, before continuing to provide a facility for the surrounding sport community. It was this community that launched a petition when threats of closure became imminent (Save Meadowbank Campaign) and helped to ensure that the stadium stayed open. Today it continues to host multiple sporting events such as the Scottish Judo Open, Karate competitions and roller derby (See here for more information about current events).

Royal Commonwealth Pool

Royal Commonwealth Pool

Royal Commonwealth Pool being finished for the upcoming Games

Costing a totally of £1.6 million at the time, the Royal Commonwealth Pool is now a listed building and has created a lasting impact, with the facility also being used for both the 1970 and 1986 Games. Recently a major refurbishment – costing £37 million – was completed in 2012,  and the pool continues to provide an exceptional facility and venue for events, continuing it long tradition of participating in the Commonwealth Games by hosting the Glasgow 2014 diving competition! Now considered one of Scotland’s key monuments of the post-war period the pool continues to host diving competitions, waterpolo championships and more (the Commonwealth Pool’s events page can be found here).

Glasgow 2014

For the 2014 Commonwealth Games, Glasgow received a number of impressive venues and additions that have now gone on to host or benefit the local community. A particular highlight was the transformation of the exciting venue at Hampden Park.

Hampden Park

Hampden Park during te Games Closing Ceremony

Hampden Park is well known in Scotland as the home to the national football team and was once the largest stadium in Europe. While this venue is not new, it underwent an impressive transformation for Glasgow 2014 with the playing surface being raised a total of 1.9m to transform the venue from a football stadium to a track and field facility.

This venue has contributed to the Game’s lasting legacy by giving its track to another venue! As part of the Glasgow 2014 iniative to distribute sporting equipment across the country, the track is finding a new home in Grangemouth Stadium and Crownpoint in Glasgow’s East End (more can be read about this story here), adding to the legacy created by the Games that looks to encourage a world-class sporting system.

There were many more venues involved in Glasgow 2014 that are still contributing to the sporting community in Scotland, and will allow the excitement of the Games to continue! If you have any stories of your time playing sports or watching them at these venues, get in touch!

The Historic Environment Image Researcher, Dr Janice Kinory, has been thinking about a particular image…

‘As a guest blogger, I’d like to use this venue to write about how old images in the HEIR Project collection can provide a fresh perspective on things we think we know as archaeologists.

I first learned about the innovative Roman rotary quern from text books. Having excavated at several Roman sites I have even found bits of rotary querns. I’ve seen complete rotary querns in museum showcases. I even had a fully developed mental model of the use of this implement, envisioning it being used by a solitary individual, possibly a slave, working indoors, grinding grain. In short, I thought I “knew” about rotary querns.

This image, showing a scene from 1930s Palestine, hit me like a thunderbolt for several reasons. Clearly, the presence of the working rotary quern at that date was the first shock, making me think of the Monty Python movie “The Life of Brian,” in which the question what have the Romans done for us is answered at length; the quern clearly needed to be added to that list.

The second thought was that grinding was shown as a social activity, with the two women, possibly a mother and daughter, sharing the work, each with a hand on the wooden drive handle. My third insight was that the work was clearly being performed outdoors, which undoubtedly minimised the inhalation of flour dust.

Most importantly, though, was my final thought: the recognition of the organic mat and cloth beneath the quern on which to gather the flour being produced. I’d never thought about needing a containment mechanism for the flour. I had virtually no chance of finding an organic mat of any type with a quern fragment in an archaeological context and had never seen one included in a museum display beneath a quern. This was, as they say, a paradigm-shifting moment for me.

This image came from the collection of Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford. It was part of their collection of pictures from the Holy Land, with many of the pictures in that group showing sites associated with Christianity. Some, such as this one, focus on the people living in that region in the early to mid-20^th century.

The picture leaves many questions unanswered; we do not know whether or not the photographer was aware that the grinding process dated back to the Roman period, nor do we know whether this was an illustration of contemporary 1930’s life or a staged representation of how things were done when the older woman was a child. Was this an activity for the household, or was the grain being ground in sufficient quantity so as to produce a saleable surplus, generating cash income? The longer one stares at the picture, the more questions come to mind.

With almost 10,000 images already available, I believe that the HEIR Project images have the potential to shift many paradigms. I would love to hear from those who read our blog with their thoughts about this picture.’

The cataloguing work on the Continuity of Care project is still going on, with work well under way on the 3000+ applications. The database to the collection now holds over 1000 items. But the number of items that show the abilities of the children themselves can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Opposite is a rare example of the literacy and numeracy skills of one applicant. His name

Handwriting and long division by George Aitken, 1886

was George Aitken as he was fully able to write himself, along with his date of birth. To include an example of his numeracy skills is even more unusual. In his note accompanying these samples, A J Fitch, secretary to the Institution writes:

‘I have seen this lad and have difficulty in discovering his imbecility. The boy reads fairly well – writes and does sums. He is a backward lad consequent upon elipeptic [sic] attacks which prevents his attendance at an ordinary school.’

The Institution had a policy of refusing admission to epileptics. At the bottom of the medical certificate that accompanies most of the applications is the declaration:

‘Cases of Insanity, of confirmed Epilepsy, of the Deaf and Dumb, and of the Blind, are ineligible for admission, except upon payment’.

In reality this policy was readily overlooked. As Fitch himself commented in a note to an 1889 application:

‘ you have however somewhat relaxed your rule as to epilepsy and may be disposed to look favourably’.

Although easy to dismiss this change of heart as motivated by the payments anticpated from the parents, one application from 1891  shows an other side of the Institution. Subject to fits and ‘unable to make any payment’, she was still admitted.

Schoolroom at the Scottish National Institution, c1915

In early 1939 advance tickets to the upcoming World’s Fair were made available in a pre-sale at “bargain prices.” Mayor La Guardia sent his check in, and on February 23, 1939 received ticket No. 1  from Grover Whalen at the steps of City Hall. During the ceremony, La Guardia and Whalen took the opportunity to criticize the practice of giving free passes to city employees, politicians and other people with connections. La Guardia made it clear that this was part of his administration’s stand against corruption. Listen to excerpts from the WNYC broadcast above, or to the complete audio here.

(Audio from the Vincent Voice Library, Michigan State University)

Cathmar Prange is the daughter of John MacKay Shaw, the donor and curator for the childhood in poetry collection that bears his name in Special Collections & Archives. Every winter, Cathmar volunteers to continue organizing and curating her father’s collection and has been doing so for 18 years. She is still discovering things to this day. Here is one of her recent mysteries:

The John MacKay Shaw Collection at Florida State University has the manuscript for a book by Stephen Graham. It is two or three inches thick. Recently a colleague asked me the source of this manuscript, but we remain confused about its subject and whence it came. About the author, we knew little. Looking for something else a few days later, I opened the Third Supplement of Dr. Shaw’s bibliography Childhood in Poetry near the middle. Surprise! The page revealed the illustration of a letter penned by poet Vachel Lindsay to Mrs. Stephen Graham. The book that the illustration was copied from, Lindsay’s Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty, is described on the facing page of the Shaw bibliography. FSU’s library catalog revealed its call number and Special Collections staff retrieved the book from the closed stacks. The letter begins on the flyleaf and continues onto the half title page of the book. It is dated February 13, 1920 and reflects Lindsay’s memories of tramping with Graham and sharing their search for the meaning of life beside their campfires. There is no mention of anything related to the manuscript.

I was familiar with Graham’s name. In 1998, one of FSU’s English professors came into Special Collections and handed me some materials related to Stephen Graham. If the manuscript was part of this offering, it had been handed to somebody else and I never saw it until several years later. Most of these materials I received related to Graham’s leadership of a group who met in the out of doors and shared their poetry not only by reading it, but by performing it as well. These pages too shed no light on the mysterious manuscript.

Further searches of Stephen Graham in FSU’s catalog and in the John MacKay Shaw Collection Finding Aid yielded information but still did not answer my questions. I turned to the Internet. On Wikipedia, an article by Michael Hughes carries a lode of information; Graham’s whole life with titles of many books he had written about his travels all over the world. Hughes wrote this article for the love of it because he felt that Graham has not been given the attention he deserves. He mentions the long “tramps” that Graham and Lindsay shared and their mutual interest in the spiritual aspect of life. After ten years enjoying each other’s company, changes separated them, but they continued their friendship by mail until Lindsay’s death in 1930. Hughes says nothing on Wikipedia about Graham’s interest in poetry however.

Dr. Hughes remarks that late in his life Stephen Graham visited a friend in Tallahassee. Was this friend the professor who gave me the Graham materials?

Hughes has written a biography of Graham, Beyond Holy Russia: The Life and Times of Stephen Graham. I have scanned this book on line fairly thoroughly several times and have yet to find any mention of our manuscript or an expose of The Poetry Society. I remain in contact with Dr. Hughes in hopes of some avenue opening up to the manuscript.  The latest from Dr. Hughes is that the Harry Ransom Institute in Texas has a copy of it. Stay tuned!

Perhaps the manuscript was written too late in Graham’s life for him to pursue publication, so he had given it to our professor in hopes that he could arrange it. I have written to Dr. Hughes; perhaps between us we can solve the mystery of the Graham manuscript.

Sudden discovery occurs often in my work in Special Collections – far often enough to keep the interest level up and set me off on new adventures each year. The library life is an exciting one – new mystery leaping out while research lays another mystery back to rest.

Hear the voices of the Coney Island barkers, inviting you to experience the World in Wax, the Fabulous Himalaya, the Magic Carpet Fun House, and the Cyclone. They will also entice you to bathe in the ocean, buy an ice cream cone, and take a train ride around the park.

In 1962, Joan Franklin, with her husband Robert, established Cinema Sound, Ltd., an audio recording studio based out of their own home – a town house on the Upper West Side – where they produced documentary portraits of New York City. They explored a very wide range of topics in their programming, and this tape of Coney Island barkers performing is just one of many held in the NYPR archive.

Nathan’s Hot Dogs from the boardwalk, 1954

(Al Ravenna/Library of Congress)

Coney Island was transformed in the 1920s by the completion of the New West End Terminal, now known as the Stillwell Avenue – Coney Island terminal. The then-five-cent subway ride gave the city’s poorer citizens newfound access to the park and boardwalk, giving Coney Island the nickname the Nickel Empire. In 1923, the beaches opened to the public, and the opening of the Cyclone soon followed in the summer of 1927. This shift in the culture of Coney Island transformed the park into the icon it is today.

The raw tape of this particular Cinema Sounds recording features barkers from all over the park, performing specifically at the audio engineer’s request, so in this way it is not entirely candid. You can hear the engineer ask barkers to repeat themselves and have other off-mic exchanges. In the recording mash-up above, you’ll hear clips cut from the repetitive raw tape, including the voice of the engineer. While the exact recording date of the tape is unknown, we can deduce that it must have been made sometime between 1962, when Cinema Sound, Ltd., was established, and 1984, when the World in Wax closed.

In 1997, for the Cyclone’s 70^th Anniversary, WNYC’s Richard Hake did a piece on the roller coaster, a clip of which can be heard in this mash-up piece – the sound of the Cyclone ascending to its famous 85 foot drop. Also, featured at the end is a recording of the song Coney Island Baby, sung by the Excellents in 1962.

The Fabulous Himalaya with Cyclone in background, 2009

(Flickr/Flickr)

Washington Market dated back to 1812 and operated until the early 1960s when the marketplace structures in Tribeca were demolished. The market specialized in produce, and stalls were usually family-run. These small vendors lasted in downtown Manhattan even after their convenience had begun to wane in the shadow of more consolidated business and higher city traffic.

Washington Market property to be sold at auction, 1958

(Walter Albertin/Library of Congress)

In 1962, the market was forced to relocate to Hunts Point in the Bronx. The politics of the relocation and demolition were fraught and the episode above captures some of the animosity surrounding the marketplace at the time, with the scripted voice-over taking a negative view of the old market, full of congestion and confusion, and heralding the Bronx relocation as a bright future for it, spacious and new.

Here is a transcript of the closing exchange on the recording. The exchange is well-placed in this piece, which almost seems to be a propaganda piece in favor of the market’s closing–with this clip aiming to highlight the antiquated presence of the market.

The market was indeed a rugged sort of place, crowded and loud with the hollering of vendors and delivery trucks. It captured and encapsulated more than a century of New York history, but as one vendor is caught saying here, “Nobody, but nobody, can stop progress.”

Produce vendor with his horse-drawn cart at Washington Market, 1960

(Phyllis Twachtman/Library of Congress)

If you want to read a little more about the market, the Project for Public Spaces offers a brief history.