Kenneth R. Cobb
The 1890 Police Census–Digitized
NYC Municipal Archives
It’s Presidents Day
Sarah Cuk
Digitizing the David N. Dinkins Mayoral ...
Kenneth Cobb
Displaced Persons
Pauline Toole
Historical Anniversaries

Open House New York

DORIS is pleased to participate in Open House New York again this year. We will be welcoming visitors to our headquarters in the beaux-arts Surrogate’s Courthouse at 31 Chambers Street, and we are also opening the doors to our storage and research facility at Industry City, Brooklyn. 

Open House New York tour group in the Surrogate’s Courthouse atrium, 2023. NYC Municipal Archives.

The first Open House New York (OHNY) took place in 2003 in the wake of 9/11 when increased security measures restricted access to many iconic City buildings. OHNY was founded “to engage New Yorkers in the city’s architecture, public space, and the future of urban life.” OHNY Weekend now includes more than 300 participating sites and offering 1,300 tours with an estimated 20,000 visitors and more than 1,000 registered volunteers.

Open House New York tour group in the Surrogate’s Courthouse lobby, 2023. NYC Municipal Archives.

For the OHNY tour of the Surrogate’s Courthouse this year Municipal Archives staff member Mr. Matt Minor will share his extensive knowledge of the building history, including the years-long approval process in the early 20th century. His fact-filled tour will provide information on the mosaic ceiling in the entry-way and the elaborate architectural details throughout the building.

Construction of the space in Industry City was completed in 2021. The $22 million state-of-the-art facility was the city's most significant investment in its Archives since the establishment of DORIS in 1977.  Visitors will be struck by the vast size of the space.  This is not surprising, given the Municipal Archives’ status as one of the largest repositories of government records in North America.  The tour will also feature many of the collections stored in the facility—Board of Education, Criminal Courts, and Vital Records to name just a few.

Entrance, Municipal Archives at Industry City, Brooklyn, 2021. NYC Municipal Archives.

Municipal Archives Reading Room, Industry City, Brooklyn, 2021. NYC Municipal Archives.

Municipal Archives storage area, Industry City, Brooklyn, 2024. NYC Municipal Archives.

Municipal Archives cold storage room, Industry City, Brooklyn, 2024. NYC Municipal Archives.

The tours at both facilities are “sold out.” The images in this blog will give readers a glimpse of what tour participants will see. And, we’ll participate in OHNY again next year.  

Documenting Indigenous Peoples  

In 1624, the sailing vessel Nieuw Nederland, sponsored by the Dutch West India Company, arrived at what is now Governor’s Island. The ship brought colonists who established a fur-trading post. In 1625, the settlers moved to what is now lower Manhattan along with an official akin to a sheriff, establishing the first government in the colony.  

This year, and continuing through 2025, programs and special events will mark founding of the Dutch colony and formation of a government, four hundred years ago. Cultural institutions around the city, as well as the New Amsterdam History Center and other organizations, many with support from the government of the Netherlands, are sponsoring commemorative activities.   

During previous milestone anniversaries, organizers mostly celebrated the city’s progress in transportation, health, housing, education, etc. as it grew to become one of the largest metropolitan regions in the world.   

An Indian Village of the Manhattans, Valentine’s Manual, 1858. NYC Municipal Library.

These achievements were certainly worthy of recognition, but the narratives generally did not address the impact of the European settlements on the indigenous population. According to historians William Burrows and Mike Wallace “By the time Europeans appeared on the scene . . .what is now New York City had as many as fifteen thousand inhabitants—estimates vary widely—with perhaps another thirty to fifty thousand in the adjacent parts of New Jersey, Connecticut, Westchester County, and Long Island.” The inhabitants of this region were the Lenape, also known as the Lenni Lenape, or Munsee, and later as the Delaware. (Gotham, 1993.)  

Today, anniversary organizers are endeavoring to weave the experience of indigenous peoples into programs and events. The lack of traditional documentary evidence makes this worthy effort a challenge. Eric W. Sanderson, author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, summarized the problem: “Much of what we can say about the Lenape on Manhattan comes from a composite of archeological evidence, historical anecdotes, folk etymologies, interview with modern Lenape, and inference from other places. Which is to say, what we know for certain is really very little.”  

The Municipal Archives’ Old Town, New Amsterdam and Common Council collections comprise some of these relatively few sources of information documenting the indigenous population of what would become New York City. It is important to note that these records, all created by the colonists, are inherently biased. Imperfect as they may be, however, they do provide some useful data and will continue to inform scholarship. 

For the Record previously highlighted the Old Town collection and references to indigenous peoples, in Indexing the Dutch Records of Kings County. This week’s article looks at the New Amsterdam and Common Council collection. The records for the time period 1647-1831 have been transcribed, printed, and indexed. Scanning the indexes reveals the mostly negative nature of interactions between the colonists and the indigenous peoples. Citations under the index term “Indians” from the Dutch era include: “inquiry into the massacre by; property lost in troubles with; fine for lodging; etc. For the English-colonial period, after 1664, there are citations such as “selling liquors to, prohibited; trading with, without license prohibited; penalty for harboring,” and so on. 

Turning to the first relevant entry in the English-translated version of the New Amsterdam records dates from July 1, 1647. It addresses what seems to have been a recurring theme in legislative action regarding indigenous peoples:  regulating liquor.   

Manuscript Minutes of the Common Council, 20 April 1680. NYC Municipal Archives.

“Whereas daily a great deal of strong liquor is sold to Indians, which before now has caused great difficulties to the country, and because it has become necessary to prevent a recurrent of these difficulties in time—therefore the Director General and Council of the New Netherland forbid all tapsters and other inhabitants henceforth to sell any wine, beer or strong liquors to the savages. . . .”.  

Moving ahead to the English colonial period, the entries continue in this fashion. They are readily accessible in the printed and published editions of the Minutes of the Common Council 1674-1776 and 1783-1831. Reproduced below are several entries from the original manuscript version of the Minutes preserved in the Municipal Archives. They have been selected primarily for legibility. Please note that language used in the 17th century may not conform with current values.

In 1680, the Council resolved that “All Indians here have always been and are free and not slaves, nor forced to be servants.  

In January 1681, the Council issued a proclamation renewing a former proclamation that prohibited trade with the Indians in their Towns and Plantations. 

Manuscript Minutes of the Common Council, 28 January 1681, page 1 of 2. NYC Municipal Archives.

Manuscript Minutes of the Common Council, 28 January 1681, page 2 of 2. NYC Municipal Archives.

In 1686, the Council again issued a proclamation about “Harbouring or trading with Indians.”   

Manuscript Minutes of the Common Council, 15 April 1886. NYC Municipal Archives.

Look for future For the Record posts to continue the story of the indigenous peoples of New York City.   

Moses v. Tweed

In 1979, the Municipal Archives learned that 23 Park Row, its home for the previous decade, had been sold and would have to be vacated—pronto. Although space in the Surrogate’s Courthouse at 31 Chambers Street had been secured for the Department of Records and Information Services, including the Archives, the necessary renovations were not completed. The solution: move the collections to the “Tweed” Courthouse. It took just a few days in July 1979 for movers to squeeze just about everything maintained at 23 Park Row—all the cartons, maps, ledgers, and the 8,000 Brooklyn Bridge drawings—into several former court rooms on the third floor at Tweed.  

Tweed Courthouse from City Hall Park, February 8, 1938. Department of Bridges/Plant & Structures collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Almost from the day it opened in 1878, there had been calls for demolition of the Tweed building. Detractors decried it as a too-visible monument to the legendary corrupt “Boss” Tweed or claimed that it overwhelmed the relatively diminutive City Hall. In 1974, only a few years before the Archives residency in the building, a mayoral task force recommended that Tweed be torn down and “replaced with a modest office structure of design compatible with City Hall.”    

This week, For the Record looks at one of these periodic attempts to demolish the structure, this time from the powerful Robert Moses. Recently discovered correspondence in the Archives’ Department of Parks collection documents Moses’ actions in the late 1930s to make Tweed disappear.    

“City Hall Park, the Tweed Court House and the Tombs,” pamphlet, September 18, 1939. Department of Parks General Files. NYC Municipal Archives.

“Please prepare a letter to the Mayor and Board of Estimate on the matter of removing the County Courthouse from City Hall Park…,” wrote Parks Commissioner Robert Moses to George Spargo, one of his deputies, on June 6, 1939. Spargo, as instructed, dutifully drafted a letter, dated June 13, 1939. He got right to the point: “In preparing the 1940 Capital Outlay Budget, we are including a request for the completion of the work at City Hall Park, which brings up the question of the disposition of the Tweed Court House north of City Hall. It is obvious that this should be demolished and the land restored to park use.”  

“City Hall Park, the Tweed Court House and the Tombs,” pamphlet, September 18, 1939. Department of Parks General Files. NYC Municipal Archives.

It is not clear whether Moses sent the letter to Mayor LaGuardia. A penciled notation on the draft said “Hold for plan from Davison.” About a month later, on July 12, 1939, Spargo informed Moses in a memo that “…they won’t be able to start construction [of the new Criminal Courts Building at Foley Square] until 1941. This means that we won’t get the old building out of City Hall Park until 1942.”   

Moses decided he needed additional support for the plan to remove the Tweed building. Using his apparently unlimited budget for promotional materials he prepared an illustrated six-page pamphlet to plead his case. In the first two pages, Moses reproduced a letter to the Mayor. Dated September 18, 1939, it considerably embellished Spargo’s earlier draft. The first paragraph described his overall plan for City Hall Park: “With the completion of the southerly portion of City Hall Park formerly occupied by the old post office building and the removal of the fence around it, the first step will have been taken in restoring this park to the public and in providing an appropriate setting for one of the finest bits of architecture in New York City.” (A recent For the Record article described the saga of the Old Post Office, Bring the 5M With You--Two Eagles and a Post-Office.)  

Moses continued: “The only blot on the landscape which will remain at the end of 1940 if these funds are appropriated, will be the so-called “Tweed” court house. This ugly and obsolete building, a monument to Boss Tweed and Tammany became notorious because of the extravagance and graft linked with its construction. All those interested in the city and its parks are agreed that City Hall ought to be the only building in the park and the department’s plans have been drawn accordingly. The difficulty has always been finding a site for a new court house to take the place of the Tweed building.”  

Moses’ letter went on to describe how Foley Square would serve as the desired alternate site. The pamphlet included an artistic rendering, and a site plan of City Hall Park, minus Tweed. Moses directed Spargo to have 1,000 copies of the pamphlet printed “by the off-set process” for distribution to decision-makers and the press.  

“City Hall Park, the Tweed Court House and the Tombs,” pamphlet, September 18, 1939. Department of Parks General Files. NYC Municipal Archives.

Part of Moses’ plan did come to fruition—a new courthouse, the criminal courts building, opened in 1941 at Foley Square, but somehow Tweed remained. Moses did not give up. In May 1941, he wrote to Benjamin Spellman, a representative of the New York County Lawyers’ Association thanking him for his support for removal of Tweed: “From time to time I have discussed this matter with the Mayor because we are very anxious to get rid of the old Tweed Court House...”.  There was not further correspondence on the subject and apparently Moses abandoned his plan. 

The Municipal Archives remained in Tweed until renovations at 31 Chambers Street were completed in 1984. For the Record related the story of the Archives’ time at the infamous Courthouse in Farewell to Tweed. Although Tweed survived Moses’ attempt to pull it down, that was not  the last time it faced demolition. Look for future articles to continue the story of one of New York City’s most remarkable buildings.    

Civil War Records, Orders for Relief of Soldier’s Families 

On April 29, 1864, under “Ordinance of the Common Council,” Mrs. Mary Connell, mother of William Connell, a soldier in the 39th Regiment of Company F, was entitled to receive one dollar and fifty cents, weekly, until otherwise ordered. Mrs. Connell resided at 121 Mulberry Street, rear, 3rd floor, in the Fourth Senatorial District within the Fourteenth Ward of Manhattan.   

Union Home & School for Soldier’s Children, lithograph, Valentine’s Manual, 1864. NYC Municipal Library.

The Civil War, the War Between the States, the War of Northern Aggression—whatever the label, the conflict had a profound impact on communities throughout the country. In New York City, numbers tell the story: 100,000 men joined the Union cause, more than from any other city and almost as many as any state.    

There are more than two dozen series in the Municipal Archives that document aspects of the Civil War, including The New York City Draft Riot Claims Collection featured in a recent For the Record post.    

This week’s article looks at another series, “Orders for Relief of Soldier’s Families.” Soon after soldier recruits departed for training and combat, City leaders recognized that military pay would not be sufficient to support family members. The Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen, available in the Municipal Library, records legislation introduced to address the hardship. Further research will be necessary to determine when the Board first proposed “Relief of Soldier’s Families,” but an entry from the Proceedings that took place on June 12, 1862, is a typical example. “An Ordinance” appropriating five hundred thousand dollars “for the purpose of aiding to support the families of the soldiers from this city who are now serving, or who may hereafter volunteer, or be ordered to serve, in the army of the United States engaged in defending the integrity of the National Union.”   

Sample Relief Cards, 17th Ward, 1865. Orders for Relief of Soldier’s Families Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

In sixteen sections, the Ordinance detailed how the money would be disbursed, amounts to be awarded, frequency of payments, how to verify dependent status, etc. It specified that a “Visitor” would be required to “ascertain by careful investigation,” all applicants at their residences. Subsequent Proceedings record amendments to the legislation, e.g. “No payments shall be made to or behalf of the families of commissioned officers, or of soldiers who have deserted.” (November 3, 1862.)   

Draft Ordinance for the Relief of Soldier’s Families, 1862, Approved Papers, Board of Aldermen Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

The scope of the aid effort and the City’s response is evident in a Department of Finance statement, dated May 5, 1862, incorporated into the Proceedings for May 12, 1862. Broken down by the twenty-two Wards in the City, disbursements totaled $138,574.50 provided to 31,954 adults and children.    

Other legislation addressed how the City financed the aid program by issuing bonds: “The Comptroller is hereby authorized to borrow on the credit of the Corporation of the City of New York . . . which shall be designated and known as Volunteer Family Aid Bonds . . . They shall bear interest at a rate not exceeding seven per cent, per annum, and shall be due and payable within three years.” (May 19, 1862.)  

Sample Relief Cards, 21st Ward, 1861. Orders for Relief of Soldier’s Families Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

In the 1970s, city archivists discovered the “Orders for Relief of Soldier’s Families” and other Civil War-related records in the basement of the Municipal Building. The series had been originally maintained by the Office of the Comptroller. The “Orders” consist of double-sided 3x5 cards. Information recorded on the cards includes the name of the soldier, the regiment and company, the name of the soldiers’ spouse and number of children, or other dependents, e.g. mother. It indicates their residence, and the amount and frequency of disbursement. The reverse of the card provides the name of the “visitor” certifying their entitlement. “Soldier deceased” is noted on several cards.   

The cards date from 1861 to 1865. They are arranged by Senate District within each Ward. Given the numbers of persons provided with aid (see above) it is apparent that the cards in this series, approximately 4,000 items, represent only a very small fraction of the original total. There is no indication of why these particular cards survived. They have not been processed or reformatted.    

Look for future For the Record articles to learn about other series in the Archives’ Civil War collection.   

Enjoying and Researching City Parks

As summer 2024 draws to a conclusion, many New Yorkers will spend time in parks and park facilities throughout the city. Located on more than 30,000 acres of land—14 percent of the city—and comprising beaches, gardens, athletic fields, playgrounds, public pools, golf courses and historic house museums—the parks and related facilities are an integral and indispensable part of city life.    

Drawing no. 2009, City Hall Park, City Hall Park Fountain, Details of Bronze Candelabra and Finial, Bronze Contract, elevations and plan, January 12, 1871, Jacob Wrey Mould. Department of Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Historical and contemporary records in the Municipal Archives and Library that document this vast infrastructure have been the subject of previous For the Record articles. Drives, Rides, and-Walks--Horses in Central Park and Conserving Central Park and Brooklyn Bridge Plans are two examples. Indeed, the more than 1,800 original drawings of Central Park are among the most beautiful items in the Municipal Archives. They have been loaned for exhibitions around the country, used for countless illustrations in books and other publications, and most recently, in 2019, featured in The Central Park: Original Designs for New York’s Greatest Treasure, authored by Municipal Archives conservator Cynthia Brenwall.    

What is less well known or acknowledged is that the Central Park drawings account for only about two-thirds of the Parks Drawings Collection. There are more than 1,500 items documenting fifty-six other parks, including Marine, Morningside, Forest, Fort Tryon, Riverside, Washington Square, Van Cortland and others throughout the city. Combined with the extensive correspondence files and photographs in the Department of Parks Record collection, particularly during the period when Robert Moses served as Parks Commissioner from 1934 to 1960, parks and park facilities are some of the most well-documented of all city infrastructure.     

This week, For the Record highlights several drawings of other parks. The collection includes design, presentation and working drawings; plans, elevations, perspectives and full-scale details, often in color, as well as bridges, roads, monuments, buildings and other structures located within the parks. The items in the collection represent a variety of mediums and supports including tracing paper, linen, and paper blueprints. Like the Central Park drawings, many date from the 1850s to the 1870s, and are of exhibit quality. 

Drawing no. 2209, Greeley Square, Outline Design of Pedestal for Horace Greeley Statue, August 25, 1891, Alexander Doyle. Department of Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Drawing no. 2315, Morningside Park, revised general plan for park showing topography, landscaping, paths, and steps, September 28, 1887, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Department of Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Drawing no. 2640, Stuyvesant Square Park, Proposed Sketch for Improvement of Stuyvesant Square, layout showing walks, trees, fountains, and enlarged park area, 1871. Department of Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Drawing no. 2705, Washington Square Park, Horse Trough for New York City, November 8, 1888, Walker Romaine & Augustus Tanner. Department of Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Drawing no. 2832, Astoria Park, Proposed Plan Showing Improvement of Astoria Park, plan of athletic fields and courts, pool, beach, walks, and trees, August 1, 1914, Carl F. Pilat. Department of Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Drawing no. 2898, Drinking fountains for public parks, elevation and plan, July 25, 1870, Jacob Wrey Mould. Department of Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

For the Record readers are encouraged to consult the Department of Parks and Recreation website  to learn about activities in the parks. And perhaps when they return home, Record readers will take a few minutes to explore what historical information is available in the Municipal Archives and Library Library Collection Guides. 

Herman Melville’s New York

Map bounded by Bowling Green Row, Marketfield Street, Beaver Street, William Street, Old Slip, South Street, Whitehall Street, State Street, Plate 1, 1852. William Perris, civil engineer and surveyor. Courtesy New York Public Library.

The name Herman Melville may conjure visions of adventures on the high seas, the “watery part of the world” in the author’s parlance, but Melville was very much a New Yorker for most of his life. He was born Herman Melvill in 1819 in a rooming house at 6 Pearl Street, the third of eight children. The house is long gone, but an illustration of Pearl Street found in D.T. Valentine’s manuals shows the house in 1858. His mother, Maria Gansevoort, had him baptized in the Calvinist Dutch Reformed church she attended. The Gansevoorts were a long-established Dutch family and Maria’s father, Peter Gansevoort, had been a decorated colonel in the Continental Army. In 1777, Peter Gansevoort at the age of only 28, took command of Fort Stanwix and led it through a siege by British forces. It was the only American fort not to surrender to the British during the American Revolution. In 1812, a new fort was named in honor of him, at the foot of today’s Gansevoort Street.

View of Pearl Street looking from State Street, 1858. A. Weingartner’s Lithography, for D.T. Valentine's Manual of 1859. NYC Municipal Library. Herman Melville was born in a rooming house at 6 Pearl Street in 1819, the third of eight children. It still stood in 1858, the 2nd house from the right.

Meville’s father, Alvin Melvill (the family added the “e” after Alvin’s death), was a merchant in the bustling New York-to-Europe trade boom following the War of 1812. Mercantile New York offered great rewards and great risk, and the family fortunes soon rose and fell. Alvin borrowed money heavily from the Gansevoorts for his trading ventures and to raise the family’s standard of living. In quick succession he moved his family to their own house at 55 Cortlandt Street in 1821, then to 33 Bleecker Street in 1824, and then to the fashionable address of 675 Broadway in 1828. There is scant record of this house, but it probably resembled the Merchant’s House Museum, which still stands nearby on East 4th Street. It is hard to over-estimate the exclusiveness of the neighborhood at this time, centered around Lafayette Street, one block over. Their neighbors in the 9th Ward would have included Stuyvesants, Astors, Roosevelts, Delanos, and Vanderbilts.

Record of Assessments, 9th Ward, 1829. NYC Municipal Archives. This assessment (which incorrectly has Allen instead of Alvin Melvill) shows that Alvin did not own his house at 675 Broadway, it was his personal estate that was valued at $4,000. Alvin was living above his means to be close to New York’s gentry.

Melvill was very devoted to his children and especially concerned with giving the boys a good education, but he was financially over-extended—the household was lavish, and they employed many servants. In 1825 Herman attended the New York Male High School and then in 1829 he transferred to the more prestigious Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School. After the last of Herman’s seven siblings was born in 1830, the Gansevoorts cut off Melvill financially. He quickly went bankrupt and was briefly placed in a debtor’s prison. Going into the fur business, he relocated the family to Albany. Enrolled in the Albany Academy, Herman was praised as a bright scholar, but he withdrew in the fall of 1831, perhaps because of the family finances.

South from Maiden Lane, 1828. George Hayward lithographer, for D.T. Valentine’s Manual of 1854. NYC Municipal Library. 

“Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer in Broad-street. And of winter evenings in New York, by the well-remembered sea-coal fire in old Greenwich-street, he used to tell my brother and me of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of the masts bending like twigs...”
— Herman Melville, Redburn

In December 1831, Alvin fell ill with a high fever after traveling in an open carriage during a winter storm and died on January 28, 1832. His death again threw the family into a desperate situation. Oldest son Gansevoort Melvill took over the fur business and Herman, age 14, found a job as a bank clerk. In 1834, Gansevoort took him from the bank to run his fur store, as he could not afford staff, but by 1835 Herman was again able to return to his studies of the classics. The Panic of 1837 shattered the family’s fortunes once again, and Gansevoort filed for bankruptcy. He moved back to New York City to study law and Herman took a job as a schoolteacher for a semester. By 1839, Herman, always entranced by his father’s tales of Europe and stories from relatives who had taken to the sea, decided to ship out. He signed on to the St. Lawrence, a merchant ship out of New York, as a “boy” (an untrained hand) for a voyage to Liverpool and back. This brief introduction to the sea and the experience of the slums of 19th-century England would become the basis of his fourth novel, Redburn: His First Voyage.

Coffee House Slip and New York Coffee House. George Hayward, lithographer for D.T. Valentine’s Manual of 1856. NYC Municipal Library. “...somewhere near ranges of grim-looking warehouses, with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and chain-cables piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffee-houses, also, much abound in that neighborhood, with sun-burnt sea-captains going in and out, smoking cigars, and talking about Havana, London, and Calcutta.” -Herman Melville, Redburn

Upon his return, Herman again tried teaching but left when the school failed to pay his salary. His eyes turned to the sea once more. Gansevoort suggested he try his hand on a whaler and took him to New Bedford. There they found a whaling boat, the Acushnet, that would take him on as a green hand. They set sail on January 3, 1841, for what could be a four-year voyage. It was not entirely unusual for a young middle-class American man to go to sea and Melville might have been inspired by the memoir Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, which was published in 1840. After hunting whales in the Bahamas and docking in Rio de Janeiro, they rounded Cape Horn and explored the South Pacific. Off the coast of Chile, they met up with a boat from Nantucket, where William Henry Chase gave Melville a copy of his father Owen’s account of the sinking of the ship Essex by a sperm whale.

Peck Slip, New York, 1850. George Hayward lithographer, for D.T. Valentine’s Manual of 1857. NYC Municipal Library. 

““Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see? – Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep.” ”
— Herman Melville, Moby Dick

By the summer of 1842, Melville had tired of the whaling life, and he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. For four weeks he lived with a tribe in the Typee Valley on the island of Nukahiva just as it was falling under French rule. The Nuka Hiva still practiced cannibalism, but they treated Melville warmly and he was fascinated by their customs including communal ownership of property. Melville left the island on another whaling boat out of Australia but was thrown in jail in Tahiti for his role in a mutiny. He escaped in short order and wandered the Tahitian islands as a beachcomber until climbing aboard another whaler for a six-month cruise that ended in the Hawaii Islands. There he signed onto a US Navy ship that rounded the Horn again and returned him to Boston in 1844.

He came home bubbling with stories and a changed man. An educated young man from New York’s genteel classes, he had lived and worked amongst common seamen, from all races and parts of the globe, had lived amongst the people of Polynesia and had seen what colonization was doing to their cultures. At the urging of his family, he started writing. He stretched his month on Nukahiva into Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. Although presented as a true memoir, in his romantic retelling the narrator spends four months amongst the cannibals. Gansevoort Melville, by this time a successful orator and lawyer, was on his way to London in the diplomatic service. On the advice of a literary agent, he took Herman’s manuscript to London and arranged for the publication of simultaneous English and American editions of the book in early 1846. Herman Melville became an overnight literary sensation, but his success was soured by the sudden death of Gansevoort in London. Their brother Allen, who had worked with Gansevoort in their firm at 16 Pine Street, now took over as his literary agent.

Record of Assessments, 17th Ward, 1848. NYC Municipal Archives. Herman Melville was able to purchase his and Lizzie’s first house at 103 Fourth Avenue with the proceeds from his first two books. 

In 1847, Melville published a sequel, Omoo, which did well enough that he felt confident to marry Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of a prominent Massachusetts Judge, Lemuel Shaw. They started their marriage in New York City, in a house he purchased at 103 Fourth Avenue, valued at $6,000. But after a series of literary gatherings in Pittsfield, Massachusetts with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes, amongst others, they borrowed money from Judge Shaw in 1850 to build their own house there, Arrowhead. By 1850, Melville was already at work on his magnum opus Moby Dick, which he finished at Arrowhead and published in 1851. Hawthorne thought the book showed depths to Melville’s writing not previously displayed, but most reviewers were unkind, and the book was a commercial failure. After his next book Pierre again left reviewers perplexed, some began to question his sanity. After more commercial and critical failures, he published his final book, The Confidence-Man, in 1857 and took off for a tour of Europe and the Holy Land. On his return he tried the lecture circuit and started writing poetry. Finally, in 1863 he swapped his Pittsfield house for his brother’s house at 104 East 26th Street and the Melvilles returned to New York for good.

Fort Gansevoort or old White Fort. George Hayward lithographer, for D.T. Valentine’s Manual of 1850. NYC Municipal Library. Fort Gansevoort, named after Melville’s maternal grand-father Peter Gansevoort, was located by the Hudson River where the Whitney Museum now sits.

In 1866 he found a government job as a customs inspector. Stationed at a dock at the end of Gansevoort Street, he stayed for 19 years, perhaps protected in his position by an admirer of his writing, future president Chester A. Arthur, then a customs official. Melville was honest in his job but suffered from both physical and mental ailments. He had nervous breakdowns, drank heavily, and may have been abusive to his wife Lizzie. In May 1867, Lizzie’s brother arranged for her to leave Melville, but she refused. In September, their son Malcolm, aged 18, went to his bedroom after quarreling with his father and shot himself in the head. Although some contemporaneous accounts reported the death as accidental, the coroner inquest ruled it a suicide. The Melvilles somehow moved on.

Death certificate for Malcolm Melville, 1867. NYC Municipal Archives.

Herman Melville outlived all but one of his siblings. His brother Allan died in 1872, but he would visit with his youngest brother Thomas, a retired ship captain who was now the Governor of the Seaman’s Snug Harbor in Staten Island. Thomas died in 1884, their sister Frances the following year. Around this time, Lizzie received enough of an inheritance that Herman was able finally to retire in 1886. That same year, their remaining son Stanwix died of tuberculosis in San Francisco.

1890 Police Census, 104 E. 26th Street, 11th AD, First ED. NYC Municipal Archives. Herman Melville is shown living with his daughter Elizabeth “Bessie” Melville, wife Elizabeth (curiously called here Emilie although she was known by Lizzie), and presumably an Irish maid, Mary Brennan. Even more curious are the ages given of the occupants, in 1890 Melville would have been 71, not 59 and the rest of the ages of the Melville household all seem to be from ca. 1880 too.

Melville may have found some kind of peace in his final years. He collected artwork, an interest since childhood, visited book shops and joined the New York Society Library. He remained somewhat detached from the world. He apparently never voted, there being no record of him in voter registration books in the Municipal Archives. He showed up in the 1890 census living at home with his wife and their daughter Elizabeth (Bessie), and a single maid. In July 1891, he saw a doctor for trouble with his heart. He died of a heart attack on September 28, 1891, and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. His wife was buried beside him in 1905.

Contrary to some popular belief, the New York Times obituary did not misspell his name, it misspelled the name of what became his most famous book. It reads in its entirety: “Herman Melville died yesterday at his residence, 104 East Twenty-sixth Street, this city, of heart failure, aged seventy-two. He was the author of Typee, Omoo, Mobie Dick, and other sea-faring tales, written in earlier years. He leaves a wife and two daughters, Mrs. M. B. Thomas and Miss Melville.” As embarrassingly brief as this September 29th notice was, it was followed up on October 2nd with a more appreciative article: “There has died and been buried in this city, during the current week, at an advanced age, a man who is so little known, even by name, to the generation now in the vigor of life that only one newspaper contained an obituary account of him, and this was but of three or four lines. Yet forty years ago the appearance of a new book by Herman Melville was esteemed a literary event, not only throughout his own country, but so far as the English-speaking race extended.”

Death certificate for Herman Melville, September 28, 1891. NYC Municipal Archives. He was 72 years old, and was listed as being a resident for 28 years at 104 E. 26th Street. Although for most of that time he made his living as a customs inspector, he retired in 1885 and returned to writing, his occupation was given as “Author.”

A century after his birth Melville’s works were rediscovered and in the 1920s a new work, Billy Budd, was published from a manuscript Lizzie had saved in a breadbox. By the 1930s he was part of the American literary canon. So much so that, in 1938, the WPA Federal Writers’ Project book New York Panorama called him a giant along with Walt Whitman: “These men—Whitman and Melville—were of another breed, another stature; and they proclaimed themselves men of Manhattan. They came from the same Dutch-English Stock, bred by that Empire State.... they were archetypes of the city’s character-to-be.”