The New-York Historical Society

Profile

Following a three-year renovation completed in 2011, this museum dedicated to the history and intellectual life of New York City has the elegant aesthetic and technological trappings of a thoroughly modern space, despite having been founded more than two centuries ago and housing artifacts dating back even further. Its permanent collection in the Henry Luce Center contains a vast display of cultural items that vary from the busts and campaign buttons of New York political giants to the trade tools and dining sets of ordinary citizens—along with the 19th-century toys, figurines, and board games of those ordinary citizens’ children. Stand-alone exhibits make creative use of the museum’s art collection (numbering 1.6 million works) in conjunction with first-edition books, treatises, personal diaries, oral histories, dueling revolvers, excavated water lines, restaurant matchbooks, and seemingly every other recoverable item from the past. Scholars and other curious visitors can conduct research in the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, which boasts 3 million items ranging from books and broadsides to maps and music sheets. Children, meanwhile, can be simultaneously educated and entertained by roaming the large Dimenna Children’s History Museum. There, kids play history detectives as they interact with video games and installations that teach about things like the Brooklyn Dodgers and the spirited, hardscrabble life of New York’s newsies. — Kent Cherny

Docent-led tours begin in the entrance lobby at 2 p.m. daily and are free with admission. Reservations for other group tours must be made at least three weeks in advance.

Lectures and Programs
The New-York Historical Society hosts seasonal lecture series on historical and current affairs topics with scholars, commentators, and public leaders. Gallery tours, walking tours, and family programs are also offered periodically.