One of the great, and growing, strengths of the department’s collections is records of churches, benevolent societies, educational groups, and art unions that have reached out to New York’s neediest populations and fostered the cultural life of the city over many generations. Within the scope of these organizations are the New York Mariner’s Church, Broadway Tabernacle Church and Society, the Ladies’ Christian Union, the New York Manumission Society, the Colored Orphan Asylum, the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows, the Children’s Aid Society, the New York Foundling Hospital, the Leake & Watts Children’s Home, the Traveler’s Aid Society of New York, the Emergency Shelter, the New-York African Free School, the Public School Society, the Southern Famine Relief Commission, the Artists’ Fund Society, and the American Art Union.

The Klingenstein Library’s extensive collection of American dining menus—largely amassed by Chicago restaurateur Arnold Shircliffe (1880–1952) and donated to the New-York Historical Society in 1954—includes approximately 10,000 examples from honoree dinners, associational banquets, historical anniversaries, holidays, hotels, restaurants, ships, trains and planes. Descriptive information is available for each menu via an on-site database.