Alphabetical Listing of Archival Finding Aids for the  Department of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections at the New-York Historical Society

Finding Aids are detailed guides to the scope and content of archival collections. The finding aids posted here are ordered alphabetically; additional finding aids are available for consultation in the Reading Room. For further assistance contact the reference librarian for these collections.

Some collections have been catalogued at the item level; where available, a link to that item level database is provided.

View the full collection

This online collection includes over 2,000 items from 12 collections that highlight the New-York Historical Society's Civil War holdings in the Library's Manuscript Department, the Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, and the Museum Division. They include manuscript correspondence, photographs, stereographs, drawings and sketches, prints, patriotic stationery, and recruiting posters.

Click here to view the full collection.

Card catalogs available in the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library's reading room provide access to portions of the manuscript collections not yet included in the Klingenstein Library's online catalog. Separate card catalogs also exist for the newspaper and sheet music collections. Also available on-site are non-electronic finding aids, a published guide to the manuscript collection, and printed inventories of circus ephemera, church records and extensive vertical files.

The extensive photograph collections are particularly strong in portraits and documentary images of New York-area buildings and street scenes from 1839 to 1945, although contemporary photography continues to be collected. The bulk of these images are arranged by location, or, for portraits, by sitter. Both professional and amateur photographers (many unidentified) are represented.

The Print Collections include engravings, woodcuts, etchings, lithographs and images produced by a variety of other printing processes. Items range in date from a 1546 set of playing cards to views of New York by living artists, but the emphasis is on American historical prints between 1710 and 1860. The collections are particularly strong in views of New York City. There are also a significant number of views of other American and foreign locations, and portraits of prominent figures from New York and elsewhere. Other subjects include historical and commemorative prints, newspaper and periodical illustrations, political caricatures and naval prints. Rather than constituting a fine art print collection, they are a research collection of significance to historians and to students of American printmaking.