New York Historical

The New York Historical, known as the New-York Historical Society from its founding in 1804 until 2024, is an American history museum and research library on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Established as New York City's first museum, it explores the richly layered political, cultural, and social history of New York City, New York State, and the nation. The institution presents exhibitions, public programs, and research that reveal the dynamism of history and its influence on the present, serving as a national forum for the discussion of issues surrounding the making and meaning of history.

The institution was founded on November 20, 1804, largely through the efforts of John Pintard, who served as secretary of the American Academy of Fine Arts and founded New York's first savings bank. Pintard gathered 11 prominent citizens, including Mayor DeWitt Clinton, who selected a committee to draw up a constitution, officially organizing the society by December 10. Having witnessed the destruction of libraries during the American Revolution, the founders were committed to preserving historical knowledge. The society suffered heavy debt in its early decades, exacerbated by the failure of a state lottery intended to fund a celebration of Henry Hudson's arrival, which forced the society to pawn some books until 1823. The institution moved several times in the 19th century, occupying the Government House at Bowling Green in 1809, a former almshouse in City Hall Park in 1816, and a purpose-built building at Second Avenue and 11th Street in 1857. Louise Mirrer has served as president since 2004, overseeing major initiatives such as the 2005 exhibition on slavery in New York, the institution's largest theme exhibition in 200 years on a previously unaddressed topic. The organization officially changed its name to the New York Historical on October 28, 2024.

The museum's art holdings comprise more than 1.6 million works, while its independent research library, the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, contains more than three million books, pamphlets, maps, atlases, newspapers, broadsides, music sheets, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings. The library is one of only sixteen institutions in the United States qualified to be a member of the Independent Research Libraries Association. Its manuscript and document collections are particularly strong in 18th-century newspapers, materials documenting slavery and Reconstruction, Civil War archives, pre-1860 trial records, pre-1850 American fiction and poetry, circus history, and American travel accounts. The museum also holds 40,000 artifacts in the Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture, representing the full spectrum of American material culture. Additionally, the institution houses the Center for Women's History, the first of its kind within a major American museum, and the DiMenna Children's History Museum.

The art collection is particularly strong in Hudson River School landscapes, featuring major works by Thomas Cole, including his five-part series The Course of Empire, as well as paintings by Asher B. Durand, Frederic E. Church, Jasper F. Cropsey, Sanford R. Gifford, John F. Kensett, and Albert Bierstadt. It also holds iconic genre and history paintings by William Sidney Mount and Eastman Johnson, and American portraits by Rembrandt Peale and Gilbert Stuart, including the 1768 painting The Children Rapalje by John Durand. The museum owns all 435 of John James Audubon's extant preparatory watercolors for The Birds of America, an encyclopedic collection of over 800 works of American representational sculpture, and paintings and drawings by marine artist James Bard. Decorative arts and artifacts 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, more than 550 late 19th-century American board games, the Jerni Collection of toy trains, and much of Elie Nadelman's American folk art collection. Library highlights include the first documentary evidence of the phrase United States of America, maps drawn by George Washington's cartographers, Napoleon's authorization of the Louisiana Purchase, and Ulysses S. Grant's handwritten terms of surrender for Robert E. Lee. The institution also owns several thousand photographs by Bill Cunningham and digitized negatives by Robert L. Bracklow.

The New York Historical has been located at its present site on Central Park West between 76th and 77th Streets since 1908. The granite building was designed by the architectural firm York & Sawyer in a classic Roman Eclectic style. It is a New York City designated landmark and forms part of the Central Park West Historic District. The building features notable leaded glass windows in its first-floor library, including one depicting the arrival of Henry Hudson manufactured by Calvert of the Gorham Manufactory, and the Huguenot Memorial Window, formally titled The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, designed and signed by Mary E. Tillinghast in 1908. The museum expanded in the late 1930s. A major renovation completed in November 2011 made the building more accessible to the public, provided space for the interactive DiMenna Children's History Museum, and facilitated access to the collections. The fourth floor was further renovated in 2017, and plans for a new wing were announced in 2024.

The New York Historical is located at 170 Central Park West in Manhattan, facing the American Museum of Natural History and Central Park. It is open Tuesday through Thursday from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Friday from 11:00 AM to 8:00 PM, and Saturday and Sunday from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM, remaining closed on Mondays. General admission for adults is $22, with discounted rates available for seniors, educators, and active military at $17, students at $13, and children aged 5 to 13 at $6, while children under 5 are admitted free. Pay-as-you-wish admission is available on Fridays from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. The institution operates a website featuring digital exhibitions and collections, including digitized maps and photographs from its holdings.