WPA Federal Art Project Photographs

The Municipal Archives collection of photographs created and/or acquired by the New York City Unit of the Federal Writers’ Project has served as an essential and useful resource since its acquisition by the Municipal Library in 1943. For the Record featured WPA photographers Ralph de Sola and Clifford Sutcliffe and images from the collection have illustrated dozens of articles.

“Man Reading,” color sketch for a mural at the New York Public Library, by Edward Laning. W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Photographer: not recorded, n.d. Federal Art Project Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

This week, For the Record highlights a second W.P.A.-created photograph collection. Accessioned by the Municipal Archives in 1983, the collection of 1,635 black and white prints had been originally assembled by Audrey McMahon, regional director of the W.P.A. Federal Art Project (FAP) for New York and New Jersey. The New Deal FAP program created employment for artists and teachers and, as McMahon said, made art “a reality in the public’s daily experience.” [Smithsonian American Art Museum.] During the first few years of its operation, the four main creative divisions of the FAP (murals, sculpture, easel painting, and graphic art) produced more than fifty thousand works of art in New York City. 

“City Hall,” lithograph by Harry Tashey. W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Photographer: not recorded, n.d. Federal Art Project Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

The photographs in the 1983 accession are all stamped: “Federal Art Project W.P.A. Photograph Division.” They date from 1936 to 1942. They are arranged in seven series: easel art, exhibits, index of design, murals, creative photography, posters, and sculpture. The name of the photographer is usually indicated on the reverse along with the name of the artist whose work is depicted and the date of the photograph. 

Daniel Kahn and Carolyn Gottfried Kahn donated the collection to the New York Archival Society in March, 1983. The Society deeded the photographs to the Municipal Archives. There is not information about how the Kahns acquired the collection. However, based on their West Village home address, it is possible that they were neighbors of Audrey McMahon (who lived at 27 Washington Square North, according to New York City directories.)     

Although the photographs are black-and-white they are still an important contribution to the Archives’ documentation of the remarkable W.P.A. programs. Researchers are invited to contact the Municipal Archives for information about access. The following is a small sample of images from the collection.   

“West 17th Street,” oil painting by Alice Neel, W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Photographers: Nader and Arnold Eagle, August 18, 1937. Federal Art Project Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

“The Cycle of a Woman’s Life,” fresco located at the Women’s House of Detention, Greenwich and 6th Avenue, New York City, by Lucienne Bloch. W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Photographer: not recorded, n.d. Federal Art Project Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

“Six Day Bicycle Race,” sculpture by Chaim Gross. W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Photographer: Levy, May 15, 1940. Federal Art Project Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

“Conquest of the Air,” oil on canvas by Dane Chanese. W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Photographer: Levy, October 19, 1948. Federal Art Project Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

“N.Y. Landscape,” woodcut by Fred Becker. W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Photographer: Arnold Eagle, December 18, 1936. Federal Art Project Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

“Peck Slip,” woodcut by Charles E. Pons, W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Photographer; von Urban, n.d. Federal Art Project Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

“N.Y. Landscape,” woodcut by Fred Becker. W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Photographer: Arnold Eagle, December 18, 1936. Federal Art Project Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

“Poster Project,” poster designed by Harry Herzog. W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Photographer: Noble, January 27, 1938. Federal Art Project Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

“Flight,” mural located at North Beach Airport, Marine Terminal by James Brooks. W.P.A. Federal Art Project. Photographer: James Brooks, April 11, 1941. Federal Art Project Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

“I Say Its Spinach!” - Robert Moses, Master Letter Writer

Robert Moses, long known as the “Master Builder,” could also be remembered as the “Master Letter Writer.” Evidence of his communication style can be found in many Municipal Archives collections. Always clear and direct, to-the-point and often quite blunt, Moses seemed not concerned whether he was insulting or rude. His prolific communications have served as a bonanza for researchers investigating virtually any topic concerning twentieth-century New York City and more broadly U.S. urban history.  

Graphic materials created during the Moses era are noted for their quality. City Planning Commission Report, 1940-1950, Mayor William O’Dwyer Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Two series accessioned from the Department of Parks contain the greatest volume of his correspondence: General Files, during the period when he served as Commissioner (1934-1960), and his records as a City Planning Commissioner (1940-1956).  

Marine Park, Staten Island, Report to Mayor LaGuardia, 1940. City Planning Department Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

The bulk of the General Files records pertain to the agency’s daily operations. However, examining the intellectual content of this series shows that Moses also responded to a wide range of issues outside of the Park system. The files contain copies of letters written by him as Chairman of the Office of Committee on Slum Clearance and City Construction Coordinator. This material provides extensive documentation of his activities related to subjects such as highways, housing, and airports, as well as the 1964/65 World’s Fair.

In addition to the Parks-series, significant quantities of correspondence generated by Moses appear in the mayoral collections. From Mayor LaGuardia through Wagner, there are dozens of folders – in the Departmental series – e.g. Parks, City Construction Coordinator – and in the subject files, with letters from Moses.    

Another notable feature of Robert Moses’ correspondence is its accessibility. His records are well-indexed. In the Parks series, for example, Moses, or more likely his secretary or possibly the filing clerk, assigned a subject to every document and placed it in labeled folders arranged alphabetically.   

For the Record will let Moses take over from here:

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1941 “Necessarily long and technical”

Moses included a cover letter written to Mayor LaGuardia (Moses usually addressed him as “Major”), dated October 30, 1941, as part of his printed report on “Construction and Restoration of Monuments, Memorial and Historic Buildings.” Never one to sugar-coat a subject, he informed LaGuardia “We have inherited from past administrations some God-awful monstrosities in the form of monuments. We are also the legatees of some very fine things.”

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1938 “Exclusively for bicycle riders”

Robert Moses’ reputation for building a vast highway system catering to automobile transportation is well deserved. He began with the Southern State Parkway on Long Island in 1927 and ended with an extension to the fabled Long Island Expressway in 1972. And, in between, he constructed the Cross-Bronx Expressway, perhaps the most controversial urban highway built in America.  So perhaps it is surprising to find this letter, dated May 20, 1938, informing Deputy Mayor Henry Curran that “In the meantime, and off the record, I am also arranging to open the Long Island Motor Parkway from its beginning at Nassau Boulevard to Alley Park as a bicycle path exclusively for bicycle riders.”

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1957 “Hornswoggled”

A letter from Whitney North Seymour, President of the Municipal Art Society, on January 3, 1957, seems to have especially irked Mr. Moses: “I don’t know who invented the term “new slums” or what it means, and don’t propose to be hornswoggled into any such silly controversy.”  He added, for good measure, “When, by the way, did the members of your Society stop beating their wives?”

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1956 “Subject:  Polo Grounds”  

The imminent departure of the Giants National League baseball team from their stadium at the Polo Grounds was a huge concern. But as can be discerned from this letter to James Felt, Chairman of the City Planning Commission, Moses saw it as an opportunity to build more housing.

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1954 “The Third Avenue EL”  

Within a week after Mayor Robert Wagner took office in January 1954, Moses pressed him for a decision regarding demolition of the Third Avenue Elevated Railroad. As Moses explained, “It is obvious that completion of the Second Avenue Subway is a long way off.”  “It may well be ten years.” Little did he know.

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1957 “Looks rather foolish to us”   

Moses’ reaction to an idea by the New York Central Railroad to build motels “on gratings” was not encouraging, “Doesn’t at first blush seem a very brilliant or profitable way of using railroad rights of way, even if there is a demand for cheap hotel accommodations.” 

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1938 “Henry Hudson did discover the Hudson River” 

This correspondence to Henry Curran may have meant something to the Deputy Mayor, but otherwise seems opaque. 

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1943 “I say its Spinach”  

Reporting to Mayor LaGuardia on a meeting about the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Moses took the opportunity to comment on social workers: “These people never get anywhere, and it is a waste of time to get excited about their plans.” Moses believed parks and playgrounds would solve all social ills and so concluded to the Mayor: “If I had the sense God gave geese, I would have insisted that the only thing worth accomplishing was to get rid of Raymond Street and substitute a playground.”

Several For the Record articles have highlighted the Robert Moses collections and/or his activities. From the Dank Recesses: The Department of Parks General Files provides some general background about the Parks collections. Documenting the New Deal, The Aerial Views of Robert Moses and most recently, We Shall All Be There: Dedicating Shea Stadium, also draw on Moses-related records.

Find of the Week: Central Park Topographical Maps

City records convey data, instructions, or information, generally without embellishment.  But there are exceptions, and this Find of the Week is an outstanding example.    

Topographical Maps in the Matter of Opening Central Park, New York, July 1855, Title Page. NYC Municipal Archives.

The image depicted is the title page of a ledger “Topographical Maps in the Matter of Opening Central Park, New York, July 1855.” Created by City surveyor Roswell Graves, the ledger contains 40 plates depicting the topographical features of the land that would become Central Park.   

Topographical Maps in the Matter of Opening Central Park, New York, July 1855, sample plate. NYC Municipal Archives.

Beginning in 1807, surveyor John Randel, Jr., produced a map for the Commissioners Plan of 1811, which imposed a grid of streets and avenues creating uniform blocks from Houston Street north to 155th Street. By the time Graves surveyed the land for Central Park, the blocks had been divided into lots to facilitate development. Each plate of the Graves ledger displays three blocks in what would become the park—from 59th to 106th Streets, between Fifth and Eighth Avenues.   

Topographical Maps in the Matter of Opening Central Park, New York, July 1855, sample plate. NYC Municipal Archives.

The ledger is currently being appraised in the Conservation Laboratory to determine treatment and re-housing measures that will ensure its long-term preservation. Look for future articles for updates and information about the provenance of this significant item.     

This Find of the Week is apropos of the upcoming annual Earth Day celebration (April 22), given that it pertains to one of the more popular places on earth – New York’s Central Park.   

We Shall All Be There: Dedicating Shea Stadium

On April 8, 1964, Robert Moses, then President of the New York World’s Fair Corporation, received an invitation to the upcoming dedication of Shea Stadium from City Parks Commissioner Newbold Morris. In his usual direct fashion Moses replied: “Many thanks. We shall all be there.”

Flushing Meadow Municipal Stadium, Brochure, 1963. Department of Parks General Files, NYC Municipal Archives.

In 1962, the National League had awarded one of two new teams franchised that year to New York City as a replacement for the Dodgers and Giants following their defection to California in 1958. Known as the New York Mets, the team played their first two seasons at the Polo Grounds. Shea stadium would serve as their home for the next forty-four years.

Invitation, 1964. Department of Parks General Files, NYC Municipal Archives.

This week, For the Record highlights Municipal Archives and Municipal Library collections that document the Shea Stadium dedication ceremony sixty years ago, on April 16, 1964. 

Thanks to the City’s mayor-centric form of government, the first stop in the quest for information, especially on 20th century topics, is the mayor’s records. Comprehensive in scope and well-described, the mayoral record collections date from the mid-19th century to the present. Construction and dedication of Shea Stadium took place during Mayor Wagner’s term in office (1954-1965). 

Reviewing the inventory of records from Wagner’s Department of Commerce and Public Events office revealed just one folder labeled “Shea Stadium.” The reason for the relative paucity of data in this series became clear in a memorandum from the file dated February 18, 1964: “Because Shea Stadium is Park Department property, the entire dedication ceremony, including the invitations and souvenir program, is being handled by [Parks] Commissioner Newbold Morris and his staff.” (Louis Olshan to Ambassador Richard Patterson, Commissioner, Department of Commerce and Public events.) 

Like the mayor’s papers, the Archives’ collection of Parks Department records, particularly during the era of Commissioner Robert Moses, are comprehensive and well-described. Even though Moses had resigned from his post as Parks Commissioner in 1960 to plan the New York World’s Fair of 1964-65, Parks Department record-keepers continued their meticulous work through the 1960s. As cited in For the Record From the Dank Recesses--The Department of Parks General Files  Parks series have served a wide range of research topics.   

Shea Stadium and parking fields, photograph, n.d. Department of Parks General Files, NYC Municipal Archives.

Searching the Department of Parks General Series in 1964 resulted in a thick folder labeled Shea Stadium. The contents provided detailed information about work needed to complete the stadium in time for the opening, as well as ceremony planning details. According to a memorandum, dated January 30, 1964, “The Opening should be dignified.” It is not clear why this sentiment needed to be stated. Other decisions delineated in the document include, “Guy Lombardo is to play before the game,” and the “National Anthem to be sung by Robert Merrill.”  

Memorandum, January 30, 1964, William Adams to William Berns, Subject: Meeting for Opening Day Ceremonies at Shea Stadium. Department of Parks General Files. NYC Municipal Archives. 

Another mayoral series, the newspaper clipping scrapbooks, also proved to be informative. The scrapbook series date to 1895 and continue to the administration of Ed Koch. During their heyday—the mayoralties of LaGuardia through Beame—their thoroughness and utility are superlative. 

Shea Stadium - New 1964 Home of the New York Mets, excerpt from brochure, 1964. Vertical File, Municipal Library.

Let’s Go Mets Pamphlet, 1964. Mayor Wagner Office of Commerce and Public Events. NYC Municipal Archives.

With the advent of easily searchable digitized media, researchers may be tempted to skip examining the scrapbooks, only accessible via cumbersome microfilm or hefty volumes. This would be a mistake. The search for Shea Stadium news articles is a good example. Scrolling through the microfilmed scrapbook of April 1964 news articles, researchers will not be surprised by the many stories on the new stadium and the upcoming World’s Fair opening. But what may not be expected are the numerous articles about a “Stall-In” orchestrated by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Planned to take place on World’s Fair opening day, CORE announced that hundreds of drivers would travel on the highways leading to the fairgrounds and deliberately stall-out their automobiles to cause massive traffic jams. The purpose was to draw attention to discrimination and racism at the Fair. Based on the reporting, City officials can only be described as “freaked-out” by the prospect of this disruption to the big event. Researchers interested in how this story played out are welcome to visit the Municipal Archives and read through Mayor Wagner’s scrapbooks.    

The Municipal Library’s vertical files are another reliable source of information about all aspects of the city and its government. Although the Shea Stadium vertical file lacks news clippings from the 1960s, it does contain an excerpt from The Municipal Engineers Journal, Fourth Quarterly Issue, 1963. Written by Richard Q. Praeger, partner in Praeger-Kavanagh-Waterbury, Consulting Engineers, the paper provides a very thorough and detailed history of how the stadium came into being.   

The narrative starts by stating “. . . to attract Major League baseball back to New York it would be necessary to build a modern sports stadium with good parking facilities, centrally located and accessible . . . The lack of such a facility had been the major excuse used by the Giants and Dodgers for the move to the West Coast.” Construction on the new stadium began in November 1961, and was substantially completed by the dedication ceremony in 1964—lightening speed for municipal construction projects.     

Reserved Parking Placard, 1964. Department of Parks General Files. NYC Municipal Archives.

Although Mayor Wagner’s Public Events office had relinquished planning the dedication ceremony to Parks, they retained responsibility for developing the guest list. Their file includes several pages of potential invitees—the usual city officials, plus major league baseball team owners and other prominent citizens. On one list, however, a staffer scribbled, “What about women?” 

The day after the  dedication ceremony, the Mets took to the field for their home-opener against the Pittsburg Pirates. Fate was not with them that day and they lost 4 to 3. But according to the Times report on the next day, fans loved Shea Stadium: “Fabulous Stadium Delights Fans.” The story sub-head continued: “Gleaming Ball Park Widely Acclaimed as Out of This World.” (The New York Times, April 18, 1964.)   

Shea Stadium lasted as the Mets home until 2008 when it was dismantled. The site is now part of the parking lot of the new Citi Field.  

The Curious Case of the Lighting of the Williamsburg Bridge

Every now and then, while processing a collection, an archivist stumbles into a mystery that just needs to be solved. This is exactly what happened recently to our team cataloguing the Manhattan Building Plans collection at the Municipal Archives. 

The current portion of the ongoing grant-funded project is focused on Lower East Side buildings. An interesting set of 18 plans for Block 318, Lot 10, dating from 1905, depict two city-owned structures along the shore of the East River, under the Williamsburg Bridge anchorage, between Tompkins Street and South Delancey Slip. Both buildings had the same designer, Henry De Berkeley Parsons, but each had a different use and were created for two separate City agencies. In one portion of the plans, the Department of Bridges proposed an electric lighting station for the Williamsburg Bridge, while the other half of the plans were for a Department of Street Cleaning rubbish incinerator.

Façade and exterior view of Incinerator Plant – Designed by Henry De Berkeley Parsons, the incinerator plant included exterior ramps for the rubbish carts and a 250 foot smokestack. Dept. of Buildings Plans, NYC Municipal Archives.

The label included on the architectural drawing that was the start of our mystery. Dept. of Buildings Plans, NYC Municipal Archives.

Archivists processing the architectural plans have many resources to help to identify buildings, confirm locations and unravel the story of a city that is constantly growing, shifting and changing. These include commercially-published Sanborn and Bromley Fire Insurance atlases, Topographic and Property Maps, the Department of Buildings Building Information Search (BIS) website and the Department of Finance Property Information Portal. These resources provided scant information about the two buildings, except to confirm that both were standing in 1911, and by 1921 one of the buildings had been demolished.

Sanborn map c. 1906 showing the Department of Street Cleaning’s incinerator building, the Department of Bridges lighting plant and one of the Department of Education’s temporary school buildings. NYC Municipal Archives.

The next logical stop was a Google search. This led to our first real clue, a January 26, 1905 New York Times story titled, “City Lighting Plant Plans are Approved.” The article stated, “Mayor McClellan announced that within four months he will turn the switch to set in operation the first municipal electric lighting plant in New York City. The plant, which will be experimental, will be located under the Williamsburg Bridge, and will be used to light the bridge itself and the temporary school buildings in the vicinity.” This was a good start, but it also added many more questions to be answered. What was an experimental lighting plant? And were there really schools built directly under the Williamsburg Bridge?

A quick search through the Municipal Archives digital gallery answered the temporary school question. Images taken by Department of Bridges staff photographer Eugene De Salignac and lantern slides in the Board of Education collection show several schools on Delancey Street beneath the overpass with children playing in the street. In total, there were eight small school buildings under the bridge to accommodate the ever-growing population of the Lower East Side.

Williamsburg Bridge showing old school house Delancey Street and Mayin Goerick Street, March 27, 1916. Eugene de Salignac, Dept of Bridges/Plant & Structures Collection.

Williamsburg Bridge showing old school Delancey Street Willell and Shuff Street, March 27, 1916. Eugene de Salignac, Dept of Bridges/Plant & Structures Collection.

PS 98 (e), Manhattan: exterior. Temporary building under the Williamsburg Bridge, May 22, 1906. Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

PS 98 (c), Manhattan: exterior. Temporary School #5 under the Williamsburg Bridge, May 22, 1906. Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

PS 98 (d), Manhattan: exterior. Temporary building under the Williamsburg Bridge, May 22, 1906. Board of Education Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Having established that there were indeed schools and a lighting plant constructed under the bridge, it was time to find out the real story. City department annual reports in the Municipal Library provide a treasure trove of insightful information. The Department of Street Cleaning Report for Four Years Ending December 31, 1905, provided the missing information.   

The Department of Street Cleaning, precursor to the Department of Sanitation, had many functions designed to maintain sanitary conditions in the City. Street Cleaning men swept streets, cleared snow, collected and separated rubbish, hauled vast quantities of ash and even removed dead animals from the streets. For many years they loaded rubbish onto scows along the waterfront and dumped the contents into the sea. The resulting pollution fouled waters up and down the eastern coastline. 

Williamsburg Bridge Lighting Plant. Annual Report of the Department of Street Cleaning, 1905. NYC Municipal Library. The Department of Bridges Lighting Plant is on the right, while the Department of Bridges Incinerator with its’ ramp and smokestack are on the left.

Department of Street Cleaning workers at the furnaces in the incinerator plant. Annual Report of the Department of Street Cleaning, 1905. NYC Municipal Library.

In 1895, newly-hired Street Cleaning Commissioner Colonel George E. Waring brought the department into the modern age. Almost immediately, Waring banned large-scale ocean dumping and instituted a recycling system. Ashes were taken to landfills, while animal wastes were rendered for fertilizer. Rubbish including rags, paper, and other recyclable goods were further separated into items that could be sold for profit. By 1902, whatever couldn’t be recycled was burned in several new municipal incinerators. The 47th Street incinerator had a small electrical plant capable of creating enough electricity to light the Department’s stables as well as docks and piers in the neighborhood.  

Sorting – The incinerator plant was fitted with with a large sorting ramp where workers separated garbage from materials that could be sold for a profit. Annual Report of the Department of Street Cleaning, 1905. NYC Municipal Library.

Williamsburg Bridge from roof of Grand Street long focus, June 19, 1911. Eugene de Salignac, Dept of Bridges/Plant & Structures Collection. The smokestack visible in front of the bridge was built to bring the smoke above and away from the bridge.

Finally, by 1905, enough trials had been carried out, and it was time to prove the concept of creating enough electrical power by burning garbage on a large scale. This brings us to our original architectural plans. The two buildings were elegantly rendered with simple facades. The Department of Street Cleaning building incinerator plans included details such as the ramps used to bring rubbish into the building as well as the 40-foot sorting machine that was used to separate recyclable materials from the garbage that would be burned. The plans also show that one side of the building would be adjacent to the Delancy Slip for easy extraction of rubbish coming in via scows on the East River. A 250-foot smokestack standing nearly 75 feet above the Williamsburg Bridge would carry smoke away from bridge traffic. The Department of Bridges building was fitted with access to two boilers that were connected to electrical generating equipment on the first floor and a storage battery on the second.  

Plan for smokestack, Williamsburg Bridge Incinerator. Dept. of Buildings Plans, NYC Municipal Archives.

On November 31, 1905, a New York Times headline read, “The Mayor Starts New City Light Plant – The New Bridge All Aglow” after Mayor McClellan pulled down a copper switch to illuminate the 2793 foot span with electricity made by burning the City’s garbage. (In truth, the bridge was not fully illuminated until January 1906.)  

The Engineering Record, from November 11, 1905, stated “The first attempt on a large scale in this country to utilize the electricity made available by burning rubbish has begun.” It was hoped that the $90,000 plant would not only pay for itself but would also save the city $12,000 per year in annual lighting costs. While initial reports claimed that the experiment was a success, it would be short lived. 

The first hint that something was amiss was the absence of information about the experimental plan in the Department of Bridges reports. The only notation came in a single line in the 1906 Annual Report about the use of the land under the bridge: “the greater portion of the land between East and Tompkins Streets has been given over to the use of the Street Cleaning Department, for a rubbish incinerator, and to the construction of an electric light plant for the bridge.” In addition, the 1906 Street Cleaning report did not mention the project, although they had dedicated nearly 30 pages to the experiment the previous year. 

Answers came in a letter to the Mayor from the Street Cleaning Commissioner Macdonough Craven, dated January 23, 1907. Craven spelled out the problems of the project. It seems that when devising his plan, Henry De Berkeley Parsons had not accounted for the difference in electrical usage during the long spring and summer days, versus the darker winter and fall period. The Street Cleaning department discovered it needed to burn more than 1,100 tons of coal to compensate, which appeared to have been an unexpected cost. After one year of operation, the department experienced a net loss of $19,621.  

Letter to Mayor McClellan from Street Cleaning Commissioner Macdonough Craven, dated January 23, 1907. Craven wrote to explain the disappointing results from the experiment of lighting the bridge by burnings the City’s rubbish. Mayors Papers, NYC Municipal Archives.

On the other hand, Craven reported that the Department of Bridges had a net gain of $19,617 for the same period compared to what they would have to pay for the Edison Electric Light Company to supply the power. Craven proposed a solution to the mayor - “All the forgoing has led me to the following conclusion: that because of the large benefit on the part of the Department of Bridges, the entire plant be turned over to them, this Department merely furnishing the paper and rubbish, the heat from which they can use to augment that produced by coal.” 

The final news of the demise of the lighting experiment came in two short 1907 reports. In the first, the Department of Street Cleaning stated that incineration should only be used as a method of disposing of rubbish and not as a power source for the city. In the second the Department of Bridges stated that “the Bridge Lighting Sation opened on November 30, 1905, by Mayor McClellan. Light and power for the bridge was furnished until April 30, 1907, when the station was shut down, current being obtained from the Edison Company.” 

And with that, our facinating mystery of lighting the Williamsburg Bridge was solved.

Recovering Women’s Names in DORIS’ Digital Collections

Have you ever encountered a photograph on the Municipal Archives digital collections platform, where a woman is only identified by her husband’s name or her title, such as Mrs. Julius Ochs Adler or First Lady of Republic of Upper Volta? By many standards, this practice is considered outdated and it limits access for researchers. Additionally, this practice centers Western naming standards, where it is more common for women to take their husband’s last names.

Wife [Eva Sámano de López Mateos] and Daughter [Eva/Avecita Leonor López Mateos Sámano] of Mexican President Adolfo Lopez Mateos. Mayor Robert F. Wagner Collections. NYC Municipal Archives. 

As part of larger diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives, the Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) is embarking on a project to recover women’s names and engage with NYC communities. The first Research-a-thon to Recover Women’s Names coincided with Women’s History Month. It was held earlier this week with participants zooming in from all over the United States. Twelve volunteers and three staff members used a variety of genealogical and primary resources such as census data, marriage announcements, and obituaries to help remediate 64 photograph descriptions.  

One example is highlighted by participant Taryn Brymn, who also volunteers as an interviewer for the Neighborhood Stories Project. In a photograph from the Mayor Robert Wagner collection, Taryn was able to identify two women, the wife and daughter of President Adolfo Lopez Mateos, as Eva Sámano de López Mateos [nee. Bishop] and Eva/Avecita Leonor López Mateos Sámano. Traditionally, Hispanic women do not always take the surname of their husband and if they did, they might add “de” between the maiden name and husband’s name, as Eva Sámano did.

Eva Sámano is Dead at 71. January 9, 1984. The New York Times.

Taryn was able to locate Eva Sámano’s name and some of her accomplishments, such as the founding of the National Institute for Infants, in her New York Times obituary. 

Taryn initially drew limited results for Sámano and Lopez Mateo’s daughter, but then she did a little more digging in Spanish with the search term, “Eva samano de lopez mateos y su hija.” This search yielded many more results. Taryn discovered the nickname of the President and First Lady’s daughter was Avecita or Ave through images from National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico (INAH).  

Another resource used by participants was find a grave, a community-sourced website of over 238 million death memorials. Here, Taryn was able to confirm the name of President Adolfo Lopez Mateos and Eva Sámano’s daughter was Eva Leonor “Avecita” López-Mateos Sámano.  

Eva Leonor “Avecita” López-Mateos Sámano. Find a Grave.

This project was inspired by similar initiatives at  the Seattle Municipal Archives, Chicago History Museum, and Columbia University Libraries. While this project does provide researchers with more access points and clarity by updating photograph descriptions, it is important to acknowledge some of the drawbacks. The legacy of record-keeping means that the project may continue to increase access to women who already had a level of visibility in society such as wealthy, white women or wives of officials.

There is also an unknown factor regarding how these women preferred to identify. Perhaps, some of these women liked being introduced by their husband’s full names and others might not have wanted Mrs. in their title at all. Either way the DEIA initiatives at DORIS will continue to explore other opportunities to provide broader access to the Municipal Archives collections, highlight underrepresented communities in our collections, and garner participation from surrounding communities. 

 Thank you to all the staff members and volunteers who made this event possible!