So you want to go the New-York Historical Society? Well, maybe not, but really, you should. Why? Because you want a good grade on the paper you’re writing, and going to this museum is going to be an enormous help in achieving that goal. We didn’t know this place even existed when we were sent there for this guidebook, but once we arrived we were blown away. While there are only three floors of museum space, there is more information in those three floors than you can … (insert silly colloquialism here).The New-York Historical Society has a wealth of resources for any subject on early American and New York history.

Here are two exhibits that will give you an idea of the kind of things you can expect to find here. Of particular interest to us was an exhibit on the culture of New York City rooftops and one about visual interpretations of music. People do some insane things on their rooftops, and the New-York Historical Society had pictures! They grow gardens, have cookouts, and sleep (yeah, sleep…). The pictures about music ranged from portraits of musicians done with fingerprints to dancing notes to abstract interpretations of a piece of music (some of whose colors were as loud as the music that inspired them!). So, while this is hardly the most famous museum in the city, it is certainly one of the most interesting.

The New-York Historical Society has three main things to offer: the Luce Center on the top floor; the galleries on the ground floor, which houses exhibits both specific to New York and pertinent to the entire nation; and the library in between. The Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture [http://www.nyhistory.org/collections.html] holds the Society’s permanent collection of American artifacts. This newly constructed and visually pleasing space allows the museum new freedom in displaying a greater portion of its vast collection. It promotes “object-based” learning: that is to say, there is very little text accompanying the displays so that viewers may form their own opinions on the pieces that they see. While first impressions are useful, since you are coming here because, presumably, you are not yet an expert on the objects you will be viewing, you should consider using an “acoustiguide.”

The items in the Luce Center are grouped into seven different categories: paintings, sculpture, furniture, decorative objects, tools for home and trade, Tiffany lamps, and the “Mezzanine” collection (small archaeological artifacts). The majority of this art is American, from the 1600s to the present. The sculpture collection includes portraits, death masks, still-life art, and even tombstones. In addition, there are over 500 pieces of furniture, including George Washington’s inaugural armchair and Valley Forge bed and the desk on which Clement Clark Moore wrote “A Visit From Saint Nicholas.”

The decorative arts collection contains more than 8,000 objects made from silver, ceramic, metal, pewter, and glass, dating from the 18th century to the present. They include everything from locally made stoneware to a 381-piece silver dinner service that Commodore Perry received for negotiating open trade with Japan. The “Tools for Home and Trade” section includes thousands of objects from homes, shops, and farms from the Dutch colonial period to the early 20th century. The Luce Center also has 132 beautiful Tiffany lamps on display, one of the best collections worldwide. Badges, medals, firefighting and police equipment, jewelry, military gear, weapons, souvenirs, textiles, needlework, toys, games, and dolls are just some of the many small objects in the Mezzanine collection.

Unique to the New-York Historical Society are some of its more bizarre and arcane collections. You may have collected something like bottle caps, baseball cards, dolls, or stickers. Well, some of the Society’s collections—usually donated by some individuals with some very interesting interests (perhaps even obsessions)—consist only of different variations on one single, probably in the annals of history museums, usually overlooked item – like apple peelers. But other collections such as display buttons (think politics and advertising) may be of more use to you.

So what else besides apple peelers and campaign buttons can you expect to see? Well, how do cartoons, examinations of a well-known character from an important historical fiction book, the history of women in the workplace, rare maps, and kids’ games sound?

Want to use kids’ games for a research project in American history? A previous exhibition, “The Games We Played: Victorian Games from the Liman Collection” allows you to do just that. Sounds almost too good to be true, but kids’ games are made by adults and you’d be surprised at how much they tend to reflect the political thought of the period in which they were made. One thing is for sure: many of these games were anything but innocent. Examples from the Civil War era were often unabashedly racist, such as “Jim Crow Ten Pins.”

Also, you may not think that war games are that unusual for kids to play—after all, we’ve all probably come into contact with a GI Joe at some point in our formative years. However, we’re not talking fake punches and pows with exclamations such as “Take that, you evil blah-blah-blah!” We’re talking maps and countries here—full-out strategized global war. In these games the spirit of imperialism isn’t too hard to find. In “Mimic War,” for example, the player wins the game by taking over the most foreign nations. The values of the Industrial Revolution and Gilded Age show through in this exhibit, and it is interesting to see how certain societal trends are present in even the most basic forms of entertainment.

Interested in exploring the contributions women have made to American history? “Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business”, which ran in the spring of 2003, documented the contributions women have made to the economy, World War II, women’s rights, labor laws, family life—really, this exhibit supported any topic having to do with the role of women in society and how that role has changed.

The Society posts information about all exhibitions online, past [http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitsold.html], current [http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibits.html], future [http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitsExt.html], and touring [http://www.nyhistory.org/touring.html]. If you cannot make it to the museum, but are intrigued by some of the themes they have covered in the past, you might consider browsing their online exhibit information for ideas.

The Society has recently completed a database of information on all of the objects on display. This means you can research most of the objects you see from the computers in the Luce Center or from home [http://luceweb.nyhistory.org/luceweb/]. The library is truly meant to be used by scholars, however, as a high school student, you will need a really compelling reason for requesting access to primary sources and other library materials. This library is not where you start your research or even where you would do the bulk of it. You will only be considered for access to the library if you can not find what you want anywhere else.

For example, at the library [http://www.nyhistory.org/library/libfacts.html] you could see Lincoln’s Civil War letters, Washington’s military plans from 1781, and a fine collection of pre-1820 newspapers. One of sixteen members of the Independent Research Library Association, the library is non-circulating and its stacks are closed, but its contents can be searched online using NYU’s “Bobcat” system. Even if you're not granted access to the library, you should still look up its contents online through Bobcat to find out if there are any documents that you could use in your paper. You can request that photocopies of original documents be sent to you by mail.

To find out about public programs [http://www.nyhistory.org/programs.html], including those aimed at high school students [http://www.nyhistory.org/education/middle.html], you can call the Education Department at (212) 873-3400 ext. 293. The staff is very knowledgeable and will be happy to help you.