Visitors to the Municipal Archives’ new exhibit: Feeding the City: The Unpublished WPA Federal Writers’ Project Manuscript, 1935-1942, will have the opportunity to view rare vintage recipes and photographs, bold and colorful advertising brochures, and excerpts from the manuscript. It’s all about food and New York City’s role in the global food marketplace, with fascinating materials drawn from the Archives’ collection of the NYC Unit of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Writers’ Project.
NYC: WORK AND WORKING - WPA PHOTOGRAPHS at PHOTOVILLE
This week’s blog features images from the Municipal Archives’ installation at the 2018 Photoville exposition at Brooklyn Bridge Park. The photographs in the exhibit were selected from the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) photograph collection. The FWP was one of the innovative Works Progress Administration (WPA) programs devised to alleviate mass unemployment caused by the Great Depression of the 1930s.
New Accession: Department of Sanitation Photographs
This week’s blog will show a few sample images from a recently acquired series of Department of Sanitation (DOS) photographs. The collection of approximately 32 cubic feet spanning 1900-2007, is comprised of glass plate and acetate negatives as well as prints. This series will is a great addition to the Municipal Archives’ comprehensive photographic documentation of New York City.
Find of the Week
An unsuccessful search in former Mayor John Pulroy Mitchel’s papers for documentation of World Pineapple Day (August 15, 1914) yielded an interesting folder titled the “Mayor’s Bill Board Advertising Commission.” And that folder of departmental correspondence provided a glimpse into City government circa 1914.
Find of the Week
Called the “Pallet Project,” it was one of the most satisfying experiences of my career at the Municipal Archives. The project originated about 30 years when the Archives was asked to take “old” records—mostly in the form of ledger books—that had been stored by City agencies in the basement of the Municipal Building. At the time, the Archives did not have the resources to go through all of the material to select which ledgers had historical value—they just piled everything on pallets and moved them into storage.