In 1977, the New York City Council established a new agency, the Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) with three distinct divisions: Records Management, Municipal Archives and the Municipal Reference and Research Center. The agency is responsible for setting records policies, preserving and making publicly available City government’s historical records, and operating a library to provide information about trends in government. Eugene Bockman, who previously headed the Municipal Reference and Research Center, was named commissioner.  

One item that became very important in preserving and providing access to archival records was a four- volume folio titled Birds of America. Its story is preserved in the collection of Commissioner Eugene Bockman.  

John James Audubon is renowned as an artist who created beautiful, detailed paintings of the birds and creatures of North America. The Double Elephant Folio, so called because the prints were enormous (26” x 40”) consisted of four volumes containing a total of 435 prints of American birds. The Birds of America was self-published in Scotland between 1826 and 1838. During that twelve-year span 87 different parts, consisting of five prints apiece, were published. In total, there were 200 copies produced and sold to subscribers. It was not possible to publish more editions because a fire destroyed the printing plates.

A copy came into the City’s possession via a resolution initiated by the Board of Assistant Aldermen in 1850. Why Assistant Aldermen? That is unclear. At this point, the City of New York consisted solely of Manhattan and its Common Council was bicameral. The Charter placed the legislative power of the City in “a Board of Aldermen and a Board of Assistant Aldermen, which two Boards shall together form the Common Council of the City, and that said two Boards shall have concurrent powers and a negative on each others’ proceedings.” The Assistants had the power of impeachment while the Board of Alderman held confirmation power for certain Mayoral appointees.

The President of the Board of Assistant Aldermen proposed that the City purchase, for the recently established City Library, a set of Birds of America from Audubon]s son in order to benefit Audubon who was “in his advanced and honored age, afflicted by the loss of sight—the sense by which his great achievements have been made.”

Naming the folio “an American work, written in America, by a native born American, upon American subject,” the resolution stated, “No bird spreads its airy pinions over any part of the American continent, from the grey wing of that national emblem, the American eagle, to the gem-like elegance of that winged flower, the bright humming-bird whose lineaments, in all their peculiar characteristic form, color, expression and attitude, aren’t impressed in glowing life upon these ample leaves.… These lovely tenants of the wood, can only be thus perpetuated, for many of them will disappear with the forests which are falling before our advancing population.”

In fact, Audubon was born in Haiti and the folio was published in Scotland.   

The Aldermen acknowledged that many copies of the folio were in European libraries, and one “to our honor reposes in the state collection at Albany. Let us have the other in the Library of the city of New York…. This is probably the only opportunity we shall ever have, at least in many years to grace the City Library with this celebrated book.”

The resolution passed in both chambers and was approved by Mayor Caleb S. Woodhall. The Folio then was deposited at the City Library which was within the Office of the City Clerk. 

By 1914, the Municipal Reference Branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL) was created. Located in the Municipal Building, it provided reference services to the public and government officials. The folio was transferred from the City Clerk to the Municipal Library. In 1919 the set was retrieved from a sale of duplicate library items by the sharp-eyed E. H. Anderson, Director of the NYPL, who recognized its value. 

In a letter to the City College librarian, Anderson explained that the City Clerk who maintained the City Library turned over its collection which contained “a great many things that had no place in such a library, and all such material was deposited here in our Central Building at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. The most notable thing in the collection which came up here was a not very perfect copy of the elephant folio edition of Audubon’s Birds.  Recently in offering for sale a lot of duplicates from our collections here, this work was inadvertently listed in the catalogue.” 

The NYPL held four sets of Audubon drawings. The founders (John Jacob Astor, James Lennox and former governor Samuel Tilden) each purchased a folio that were later made part of the library collection when the Lennox and Astor libraries combined to become the NYPL, thanks to Tilden’s bequest. Anderson withdrew the City’s folio from the sale, with the intention of offering it to another City institution to hold, in this case, the Library of the City College of New York. In making the offer, Anderson wrote, “It is City property, and we really have no title to it ourselves, and are therefore not in a position to pass title to the College of the City of New York. But if you would like to have it as an addition to your library, we should be very glad to transfer it, where you would hold it on deposit and make good use of it.”

City College accepted the offer, and in 1919 contacted Anderson about making repairs which were estimated to cost $100 to put the folio “in better shape.” He replied, “I suppose that there is very little chance of the City’s ever asking for their return. If under these conditions you are willing to spend $100 in putting them into better shape, I can see no objection to your so doing.”

In 1940, City College finally added the Audubon folio to their catalogue cards. Between 1940 and 1944, City College librarians purchased replacements for six missing plates, making purchases from Charles Scribners’ Sons and the Old Print Shop (just recently moved online from its longtime location in the East 20s). Prices for the replacements ranged from $40 to $550. Somehow, they bought two plates of no.125, the brown-headed nuthatch.  

The 1969 sale of a first edition of the Birds of America in London fetched the highest price for a printed work up to that time—$216,000, bringing a new interest in the folio. Financially strapped by the City’s fiscal crisis, the City College considered selling the folio in 1975. This triggered a review of ownership. Chief Librarian Virginia N. Cesario wrote the author of a book on Audubon, “the City University is suffering severely from the financial difficulties fo (sic) the City of New York. Partly for this reason and partly because City College does not have suitable facilities for displaying this treasure, the College administration has seriously considered selling our copy of the Birds. In order to do so it was necessary to clarify the question of ownership. To make a long story short, it now appears that the City as personified in Mr Eugene Bockman is very much interested in reclaiming the set.” 

The transfer was made by the City College President to Mayor Abraham Beame in the Blue Room at City Hall on December 13, 1976. The news release for the transfer stated that it was being returned in better shape than when the college received it and cited the Ephebic Oath, taken each year at commencement exercises by City College graduates, which pledges them to “strive to transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better, and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”  

The release also said that the College planned to borrow the collection for future displays, as agreed to by the director of the Municipal Research and Reference Center, Eugene Bockman. That was not to be. Bockman arranged to transfer the volumes to safe, archival storage at the New York State Library where they remained until 1985.  

As it happens, 1985 marked the 200th anniversary of Audubon’s birth. Several events were scheduled, including an exhibit of personal items and paintings at the Museum of Natural History, a musical performance “Choral Music of Birds and Bees and Bugs,” also at the museum, the display of all known watercolors painted for the Birds of America study at the New York Historical Society, lectures and the unveiling of a commemorative stamp honoring him. And, on October 18 and 19, Sotheby’s scheduled the auction of City government’s copy of The Birds of America. The justification for the sale was that five cultural institutions in the City also had sets of the folio and that the folio was not representative of City government’s history.

Proceeds from a successful 1984 DORIS auction of ephemera were deposited in the City’s general fund.  The agency’s goal of using the auction proceeds to preserve archival records was thwarted.  With a goal of holding additional sales, the agency proposed creating a special fund that would receive proceeds of further sales. The City Council established the Municipal Archives Reference and Research Fund (MARRF), in April, 1985. Funds raised from the current sale of “Gifts to the City” will be deposited in the MARRF and will support the work of the Archives.

Soon after the MARRF was founded contract negotiations with auction houses began. The folio was retrieved from storage. A professional book binder took the sets apart so the 435 prints could be sold individually. Mayor Ed Koch announced the Sotheby’s sale at a City Hall press conference in August.

The proposed sale generated controversy, much of which was spelled out in letters to The New York Times. The president of Lathrop C. Harper, an antiquarian book dealer, wrote that selling the folio was “poor stewardship.”  Even more problematic was the plan to sell the prints separately, “The city has been extremely ill advised by Sotheby’s to embark on a course of destruction of historical and bibliographical evidence.”    

Commissioner Bockman responded in the Times that the merits of selling the folio had “long been discussed.“ Among the primary considerations was that seven other sets were accessible in public institutions in the metropolitan area.  Security was another consideration: in recent years, because of the set’s escalating value, it remained unseen and unused in a vault in the New York State Library in Albany.” 

Bockman wasn’t the only one who championed the sale of the folio.  Then-Comptroller Harrison “Jay” Golden wrote to Mayor Koch in 1981 noting the folio “is a very special asset, one with an unusual potential to enrich and beautify our City.” Noting that it was worth $1 million, he suggested that the City seek pro-bono auction services from Sotheby’s Parke-Bernet or Christies. Proceeds would be deposited in a trust fund and the income would finance an annual “world-wide competition for an outstanding sculpture.” In conclusion, he wrote “that all New Yorkers” would “benefit in a special way from the wise $1,000 investment in the folio made back in 1850.”

City College Associate Professor Jean L. Benson also took issue. She termed the folio a “showpiece much admired by faculty, students, alumni and visiting scholars” and laid claim to the six prints purchased by the Library. “Francis Goodrich, the college’s scholarly chief librarian and an authority on rare books, bought—with college funds—six prints to fill the gaps in the set. Three skilled City College cataloguers were then assigned to catalog the entire set, an effort that involved extensive research and several hundred hours of work.” She questioned the Department of Records’ authority to sell the set and asserted “the six added prints are the property of the City College Library. They should be excluded from the sale and returned to the library, so that they may continue to be enjoyed by the City College and University community.”

Sotheby’s was alarmed and asked the City to “research the issue to be certain as to whether the city has title to these 6 prints.” This triggered a new review. At the behest of the Office of the Corporation Counsel, an attorney for the City University of New York’s wrote that “the University waives any objections it may have to the auction taking place as announced.” Although the letter also indicated that City College and the City would pursue an “equitable adjustment as to the six prints at issue.” A subsequent memo from the Law Department showed that the City College did not allocate funds to purchase the prints.  

A New York Times column previewing the auction reported on how the drawings were created.  “Audubon, who had insisted on reproducing the birds in life-size began his sketches in 1820 when, in order to follow the migrating birds to the Gulf Coast, he became a working passenger on a flatboat traveling down the Ohio and the Mississippi. The Mississippi River Basin had long served as a corridor for birds traveling from the Arctic to Patagonia. On this trip and over the next four years, Audubon came to know, among other specimens, whooping cranes, parakeets, woodpeckers, passenger pigeons, starlings and hermit thrushes and to capture their reality in his extraordinary drawings.”

The week before the auction was to begin, councilmembers Herbert Berman and Ruth Messinger sent a telegram to Commissioner Bockman, urging him to reconsider the sale and suggesting that the Council, as the original purchaser, should review the proposed sale.

In response, Bockman expressed surprise because the councilmembers had supported the creation of the MARRF. He attached his testimony from the Council hearing in which he explicitly discussed the possible sale of the Audubon folio “…the Department is holding certain materials which are both non-archival and non-essential for governmental research. Of perhaps greatest value is a complete Double Elephant Folio edition of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America. These materials have substantial potential interest to collectors. In no way would the integrity of the collections in either the Municipal Archives, the Municipal Records Center or in the Municipal Reference and Research Center be marred by the disposal of such materials.” 

Berman withdrew his objections. Messinger did not. The sale went forward.  Three days after the auction concluded, Messinger reiterated her views, contending that the City Council should have been consulted.  

The auction yielded $1.441 million which was deposited in the MARRF. Over the years, the Fund has supported critical work in the Archives including salaries for conservators to preserve delicate records, reference archivists to help the public locate records and several special projects that have preserved significant archival collections.

The Bockman collection contains a memo that reveals a new mystery.  With his son, Audubon produced a volume containing pictures of the four-footed mammals residing in North America: Quadrupeds of North America.  The City of New York purchased two volumes, one as a gift to the City of Paris in 1850 and another in 1855, to be placed in the City Library. “Is it possible,” the memo author queried “that the Quadrupeds, purchased in 1854, is at large?”