New York City Municipal Archives Digital Galleries

The Department of Records & Information Services preserves and provides public access to historical and contemporary records and information about NYC government. The Municipal Library & Archives are open by appointment only.


Celebrating the Erie Canal Bicentennial 1825-2025


Get Involved: Transcription at the Municipal Archives

The Municipal Archives currently has nine volumes of digitized records from towns in Brooklyn, Queens, and Westchester counties, dating from 1660 to 1838, containing documents of children born to enslaved women and manumission records. The volumes range from 200 to 500 pages, including both original documents and hand-written original transcriptions of records. Using From the Page — a platform designed for transcription — volunteers will enter information from each volume into a form that DORIS will then add to a searchable database. The transcribed data will be easily searchable and will help researchers and the general public locate and view records of thousands of formerly enslaved New Yorkers who lived in New York City that would otherwise be difficult to trace. Click here for more information.


Illustration of the lower Manhattan shoreline during the Dutch colonial period of new Amsterdam.

NEW AMSTERDAM STORIES

New Amsterdam Stories is a shared cultural heritage partnership seeking to bring 17-century archival collections to wider audiences and to establish opportunities for greater research, knowledge-sharing, and storytelling. On April 8th, 2019 the New York City Department of Records and Information Services welcomed Femke Halsema, the Mayor of the City of Amsterdam, to celebrate the shared cultural heritage of two great cities—Amsterdam and New York City. Learn more about the first citizens of New Amsterdam in our new gallery.


31 Chambers Street, ca. 1940.

The NYC Municipal Archives added over 720,000 photographs from the 1940s Tax Photograph collection to their digital collections. The collection consists of photographs of every building in the 5 boroughs, ca. 1940, taken for tax assessment purposes. Read about how we did it in this blog, and go behind the scenes with the 1940s photographers in this blog.

In 2019 the New York Times published a story about the 1980s Tax Photograph collection. See more of those photographs in our online digital collections.


Exhibits

Currently on view at 31 Chambers St. (Monday - Friday, 9:30am-4:30pm, except holidays):

Visitors at gallery exhibit.

New Visions of Old New York

From January 23 throughout 2025, New Visions of Old New York is a collaborative exhibit by the NYC Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) and the New Amsterdam History Center. Featuring an interactive 3-D map from the NAHC’s Mapping Early New York project alongside 17th-century records from the Municipal Archives and Library, this dynamic exhibit examines the lives of women, enslaved people, and Native Americans and how they shaped the culture of the Dutch West India Company settlement that eventually became New York City.

People dancing in front of the 1964 World's Fair Unisphere.

Revisiting the World of Tomorrow: The 1964-65 World's Fair

Explore the first-floor alcove at 31 Chambers Street to discover a captivating display on the 1964-1965 World’s Fair, featuring images from the Municipal Library and Archives’ collections. The exhibit showcases three key areas of the Fair—transportation, religion, and commerce—through original brochures and ephemera, offering visitors a nostalgic journey back to childhood memories.


FROM THE VAULTS

Explore highlights from our collections.