All Collection Guides

Collection history, related resources and images from a variety of NYPL digitized collections.

Arts & Literature Cities & Buildings Culture & Society History & Geography Industry & Technology Nature & Science Printing & Graphics All Gallery Collections

500 Years of Italian Dance: Treasures from the Cia Fornaroli Collection

Hundreds of images from the Cia Fornaroli Collection illustrate the rich history of Italian dance. The collection includes designs, lithographs, ephemera, and more.

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Africana & Black History

Several thousand items ranging from historical documents and rare visual materials to contemporary photo-journalism, relating to the entirety of African American history from the 16th century to the present; selected in the course of developing the NYPL website "African American Migration Experience."

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After Columbus: Four-hundred Years of Native American Portraiture

369 prints and drawings by Simon van de Passe, George Catlin, and Karl Bodmer, dating from 1627 to the 1830s; 227 gelatin silver and platinum prints by photographers Edward S. Curtis, Karl E. Moon, and Frank A. Rinehart, and sculptor Frederic Allen Williams.

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American Popular Song Sheet Covers, 1890-1922

Thousands of examples of the covers of popular American sheet music from 1890-1922, the first decades of a much larger collection that stretches to the present.

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America's First Illustrator: Alexander Anderson

Sixteen scrapbooks containing close to 10,000 wood-engravings by 19th-century master illustrator Alexander Anderson, considered one of America's earliest and finest wood-engravers.

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"America's National Game:" The Albert G. Spalding Collection of Early Baseball Photographs

Photographs, prints, drawings, caricatures, and printed illustrations from the personal collection of materials related to baseball and other sports gathered by the early baseball player and sporting-goods tycoon A. G. Spalding.

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Art from the George Arents Collection on Tobacco

Hundreds of prints relating to tobacco, from an exceptional extra-illustrated copy of Fairholt's Tobacco: Its History and Lore (1859).

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Asia and the Pacific Rim in Early Prints and Photographs

Over 1,000 prints and photographs of East, Southeast and South Asia from the 18th century to the early 20th century, drawn from portfolios, photographic albums, photographically illustrated books and archival collections.

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At Home in Brooklyn: The Nooney Brooklyn Photographs, 1978-1979

Hundreds of black and white photographs by Dinanda H. Nooney (d. 2004) documenting almost 200 families or individuals in their Brooklyn homes.

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Authors: Photographs from the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature

Hundreds of portraits - prints and photographs - picturing more than 120 authors writing in English, primarily from the 1860s to the 1920s, and later, organized alphabetically by sitter.

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Before Victoria: Extraordinary Women of the British Romantic Era; A Selection of Images

Several dozen images, including book illustrations and print series, reflecting literary and cultural history and the role of women during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

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Books by Alvin Langdon Coburn

66 photogravure portraits of artists, writers, statesmen and other public figures, primarily American and English, in photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn's 1913 Men of Mark (from 1904 to 1913) and his 1922 More Men of Mark (from 1913 to 1922).

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Cabinet Card Portraits in the Collection of Radical Publisher Benjamin R. Tucker

260 portrait photographs, from about 1880-1900, chiefly albumen cabinet cards and cartes de visite, of radical figures, and a variety of statesmen, authors, artists, actresses and other notable, primarily European, cultural figures. The backs of these cards are also viewable.

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Changing New York: Photographs by Berenice Abbott, 1935-1938

Hundreds of black and white photographs of New York City by Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) from her Changing New York Works Progress Administration/ Federal Art Project, plus other work Abbott produced as a project employee.

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Charting North America: Maps from the Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection and Others

Thousands of maps of North America from the earliest printed portrayals to the close of the 19th century; multiple versions and editions allow for historical comparisons.

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Cigarette Cards: ABCs

Hundreds of series published from before 1900 to the mid-20th century, totaling tens of thousands of individual cards (viewable front and back). Arranged by letter of the alphabet, they cover an encyclopedic range of subjects, including film stars, sports, and military topics, plants, animals, and monuments of the world.

Civil War Medical Care: Photographs from the United States Sanitary Commission Collection, 1861-1872

Over 200 photographs and drawings relating to the work, facilities and Civil War locales associated with the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC); forms Series XXXIII of the United States Sanitary Commission Records, 1861-1872.

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Claire Holt Collection of Indonesian Dance and Related Arts

Thousands of photographs of Indonesian costumes, theatrical performances, and dance movements taken by scholar Claire Holt and others, collected by her in travels through the region in the 1930s and later.

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"Classic 6:" New York City Apartment Building Living, 1880s-1910s

More than 1,300 digital images depict elevation views and floor plans for middle and upper class apartment buildings from New York City's pre-World War I residential building boom.

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Classic Illustrated Zoologies and Related Works, 1550-1900

Illustrated books from the 16th century to the early 20th depicting the animals of the world. Based on the scholarly bibliography of the same title by Miriam Gross, published in Biblion, The Bulletin of The New York Public Library in 1994.

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Customs and Costume: Surveys and Examples of National Studies to 1900

An assemblage of about two dozen (and growing) various and representative plate books, portfolios of paintings and prints, and illustrated surveys on costume and customs of people around the world, principally in the 19th century.

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Dance in Photographs and Prints

Scores of dance photographs feature specific dancers, and range from publicity stills to professional photographers' vintage prints.

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Detroit Publishing Company Postcards from the Leonard Lauder Postcard Collection

Thousands of postcards (photomechanical prints, primarily in color and on warm white stock, ca. 1898-1920s, featuring views of well-known streets, buildings, historic monuments, natural scenery, industry, transportation, and daily life.

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Dress and Fashion: Design and Manufacture

Several rare and unusual published resources of interest to students of western dress and fashion from the 19th to the early 20th century. Includes historical surveys as well as manufacturers' booklets and sample swatch catalogs.

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"Drugstore Photographs, Or, A Trip Along the Yangtze River, 1999;" Lower Manhattan Block-by-Block by Dylan Stone

26,000 color snapshot photographs taken in 1999, recording the streetscape, block by block, of Manhattan south of Canal Street, and arranged in an archive by neighborhood and block.

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Dust Jackets from American and European Books, 1926-1947

More than 2,000 original specimens of book jackets from trade books acquired routinely by the Research Libraries.

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Early Landscape Photography of the American West

Over 200 large albumen prints from the 1860s and 1870s of American Western landscape. The locations and photographers include views of Yosemite Valley by Carleton E. Watkins and Charles L. Weed, the route of the Union Pacific Railroad through the Rocky Mountains by A.J. Russell, and others.

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Early Real Estate Atlases of New York

Over 2,000 maps of New York City, including Manhattan and Brooklyn "fire insurance maps" from the 1850s-1860, showing streets, blocks, tax lots, natural and manmade features, buildings, neighborhoods, and more.

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Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan

More than 1,000 images encompassing 1,200 years of Japanese book art, including Buddhist sutras, painted manuscripts, portraits, landscapes, calligraphic verse, and photographic books, with related drawings and woodblock prints.

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Ellis Island Photographs from the Collection of William Williams, Commissioner of Immigration, 1902-1913

Photographs relating to Ellis Island and immigration into the United States in the early 20th century, ranging from portraits of individual immigrants by Augustus Francis Sherman to views of the Ellis Island facility and its grounds by Edwin Levick and others.

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Empire and Regency: Decoration in the Age of Napoleon

Twenty primary source illustrated pattern books, scrapbooks, and a set of original French goldsmith's drawings from the late 18th to early 20th-centuries featuring mainly interior decoration, furnishings, furniture patterns, and views relating to the Empire and Regency Styles.

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The Floating World: Japanese Color Woodcuts by Kitagawa Utamaro

Original prints by the Japanese painter and woodcut designer Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806).

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French 19th-Century Bindings in the Collection of William A. Spencer

Fine French book bindings of dozens of titles, some in multiple volumes, principally from the last third of the 19th century into the first decade of the 20th, offer a window into the original bequest by collector William Augustus Spencer (1855-1912) of more than 200 volumes.

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Gertrude Stein: Part of a Life in Pictures by Carl Van Vechten

More than 200 photographs by Carl Van Vechten: includes Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas at home in France; plus portraits of Stein in America and of performers associated with Stein's 1934 opera Four Saints in Three Acts.

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Henry George Collection: Illustrations and Photographs

109 page images presenting the contents of a scrapbook titled "The Single Tax," containing photographs and caricatures of Henry George (1839-1897), the founder of the 19th-century reform 'single tax' movement.

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Historical and Public Figures: A General Portrait File to the 1920s

Over 40,00 portraits of a wide-range of public figures, including political, religious, cultural, literary and artistic personalities, with an emphasis on the 16th through the 19th centuries. Includes some original prints, but consists principally of printed pictures.

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Icons and Images of Cultures: Plate Books from the Russian Empire, Early Soviet Russia, and Eastern Europe, 1730-1935

Thousands of images, reproducing, often in their entirety, important illustrated books published in Russia and adjacent areas. Most notably, includes the several series issued by 19th-century collector and scholar, Dimitrii Aleksandrovich Rovinskii.

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Illuminated Hebrew Manuscripts

Over 100 illuminations selected from the 1,156 extant pages of the Padua Ashkenazi Mahzor, a medieval Jewish festival prayer book; Hamburg Haggadah (1731); Ketubbot (1638); and Xanten Bible.

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Illustrated Classics of Engineering from the William Barclay Parsons Collection and Others

Several hundred images, from the 16th to the 20th century, draw upon a wide range of published engineering rarities and related original holdings. The selection highlights a diverse range of illustration primarily in civil and mechanical engineering.

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Joseph Muller Collection of Music and Other Portraits

Thousands of images dating from the 16th to the early 20th-centuries, mostly engravings and lithographs, with some drawings, predominantly of composers and musicians but also including portraits of actors, heads of state, music patrons, nobility, philosophers, poets, printers, theorists, and writers, among others, amassed by Joseph Muller, a private collector.

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Lewis Wickes Hine: Documentary Photographs, 1905-1938

More than 500 silver gelatin photographic prints depicting American social conditions and labor, including immigrants at Ellis Island and construction of the Empire State Building, Hine's principal subjects.

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Libri Amicorum: Friendship and Autographs

A single gem of a "friendship book" from the circle of Percy Byssche Shelley, created by Anne Wagner in the early 19th century. This collection will grow as additional similar items are identified in the Library's manuscript collections.

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The Luso-Hispanic New World in Early Prints and Photographs

Hundreds of photographs and prints, in albums and rare published volumes, present the territories and countries associated with Portugal and Spain in the New World, from Mexico to Argentina, and parts of the Caribbean.

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Marquees, 1997-2001: New York City Theatre Photographs by Christopher Frith

1,717 color photographs of Broadway theater marquees and theater facades from 1997 to 2001 by Christopher J. Frith.

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Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from Western Europe

More than 2,000 manuscript pages and associated illuminations dating from the 9th through the 16th centuries give vivid testimony to the creative impulses of the often nameless craftsmen who continually discovered new ways of animating the contents of hand-produced books.

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Metropolis: New York City Water and Transit Infrastructure in Photographs

Over 600 images, primarily original photographs, on the themes of traffic, transit and water. Includes mass transit proposals and projects, dating from 1867; the Catskill Aqueduct system that still supplies the city's water; and the pioneering Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River.

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The Middle East in Early Prints and Photographs

Several thousand prints and photographs contained in works from the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th century. These include books illustrated with prints or photographs, photograph albums, and archival compilations; the processes represented range from engravings to lithographs, and from salt prints to heliogravures.

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Miss Frank E. Buttolph American Menu Collection, 1851-1930

Thousands of menus beginning with the oldest items in the collection from 1851. The collection is strongest for the period between 1890 and 1910. Organization is primarily chronological by date or range of dates.

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Mountjoy Prison Portraits of Irish Independence: Photograph Albums in the Thomas A. Larcom Collection

150 salt and albumen print photographs in two albums, of prisoners confined in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, in August 1857 and November 1866.

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Nature Illustrated: Flowers, Plants, and Trees, 1550-1900

Thousands of art and scientific prints, illustrating medicinal plants, spectacular garden flowers, exotic tropical blooms, trees and ferns. Includes many different printmaking techniques, from woodcuts to stipple engravings to color-printed lithographs.

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A New Nation: The Thomas Addis Emmet Collection of Illustrations Relating to the American Revolution and Early United States History

Several thousand original prints, drawings, watercolors, and printed book illustrations relating to early American history, primarily from the period leading to the American Revolution through the early years of the nation.

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Ocean Flowers: Anna Atkins's Cyanotypes of British Algae

Containing more than 200 images of algae specimens, Photographs of British Algae is a landmark in the histories both of photography and of publishing: it is the first photographic work by a woman, and the first book produced entirely by photographic means.

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On Stage and Screen: Photograph File of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection

Tens of thousands of photographs of actors and actresses, in character and as themselves, from the 19th century to recent years.

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Ornament and Pattern: Pre-Victorian to Art Deco

Several thousand images from nearly 100 volumes on decorative art and surface ornament, mainly portfolios of plates, pattern books, and scrapbook compilations.

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"The Pageant of America" Photograph Archive

Several thousand photographs from 1860s-1920s, curated for the 15-volume series The Pageant of America: A Pictorial History of the United States commemorating the nation's sesquicentennial in 1926.

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"Penny Plains" and "Two-pence Coloured:" English Theatrical Portraits 1799-1847 in the William Appleton Collection

306 toy theatre prints portraying plays and actors in character, from the early- to mid-19th century; these prints comprise the visual materials in the William Appleton collection.

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Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s

More than 54,000 New York City archival photographs (and their captioned versos) from the 1870s-1970s arranged by borough and street; the majority are exterior building views and neighborhood scenes from the 1910s-1940s.

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Photographs of General Motors Cars and Trucks, 1902-1938

More than 750 images from public relations materials, principally black and white photographs and accompanying press releases, for the automotive and truck lines of General Motors, during the years 1902-1938.

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The Picture Collection of The New York Public Library

Over 30,000 images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, created mostly before 1923 and selected from the over 1,000,000 images in the Mid-Manhattan Library's Picture Collection.

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Pictures of Science: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration

Hundreds of images from the 13th through the early 20th century, in the fields of astronomy, chemistry, geology, mathematics, medicine, and physics, as represented by manuscript illuminations, engravings, lithographs, and photographs.

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Picturing America, 1497-1899: Prints, Maps, and Drawings bearing on the New World Discoveries and on the Development of the Territory that is now the United States

Over 1,000 original prints, drawings, and maps, featuring views of American towns and cities, representations of historical events, scenes, places, and battles.

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Posters of the Russian Civil War, 1918-1922

213 posters, placards, and broadsides comprising one of the largest assemblages of such posters outside of Russia.

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Presenting The New York Public Library: Drawings, Photographs and Prints

Over 2,000 images of buildings, collections, and programs, including NYPL predecessor the New York Free Circulating Library. Includes views of the Astor and Lenox Library, Branch Libraries in the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island, and the construction of the Library's landmark Central Building.

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Publisher's Proofs and Related Work from L. Prang & Company

Thousands of chromolithographs of publisher proofs by Louis Prang & Company in seventeen scrapbooks, and advertising cards for Prang and other firms in six scrapbooks.

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"Queen of Off-Broadway:" Lucille Lortel Collection Photographs 1902-1998

An appreciative selected collection of eighteen memorabilia photographs from the papers of Lucille Lortel (1900-1999), the woman regarded as the founder of Off-Broadway, the second wave of little theatre in America.

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Russia and Eastern Europe in Rare Photographs, 1860- 1945

Thousands of original Russian and East European photographs from the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, in more than 150 albums.

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Samuel Putnam Avery Print Collection and Related Works

Nearly 3,000 etchings, lithographs, and some drawings, by prominent 19th-century printmakers such as of Félix Bracquemond, Félix Buhot, Francisco Goya, Charles Jacque, Edouard Manet, Charles Méryon, and Camille Pissarro.

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Sporting Sketches by Henry Thomas Alken

Selected images of hunting, sporting scenes, and related subjects in prints and drawings by the noted British artist Henry Alken (1785-1851), the best-known English sporting artist of his day and still one of the most popular.

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Staten Island in Vintage Postcards

More than 700 postcards depicting the buildings, scenery, and daily life of Staten Island from the late 19th-century until well into the 20th-century.

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Streetscape and Townscape of Metropolitan New York City, 1860-1942

Over 1,000 prints and photographs from a wide range of image collections and illustrated monographs: Hudson River mansions, including Washington Irving's home (1860s); street views by Alice Austen (1896); a panorama of Fifth Avenue (1911); Wurts Brothers' photographs (early to mid 20th-century); and more.

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Taking the Wheel: Manufacturers' Catalogs from the First Decade of American Automobiles

Several hundred photomechanical reproductions from motor vehicle manufacturers' catalogs from 1909. Primarily monochrome, interspersed with surprisingly lavish color plates, the images include parts diagrams, engine works, and model inventory.

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Theatre Productions and Players, 1900-1957: Vandamm Studio Photographs

The thousands of items in this digital presentation are a sampling of an archive of more than 75,000 images of theatrical personalities and productions. Images in the current presentation represent glass plate and acetate negatives primarily.

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Turn of the Century Posters

Over 1,000 American and European posters printed from 1893 through the first years of the 20th-century. The collection represents the inception and heyday of magazine, book, and newspaper posters of the last decade of the 19th-century, and well into the 20th-century.

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Uniforms and Regimental Regalia: The Vinkhuijzen Collection of Military Costume Illustration

Over 20,000 prints, drawings, watercolors, and printed book and magazine illustrations of military costume as well as military medals, regalia, insignia, coats of arms, and regimental flags, from most times and places except the United States.

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United States in Stereo: In the Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views

Stereoscopic views, or stereographs, were as varied and popular in the 19th century as television continues to be in our time. This presentation will eventually include all the United States stereoscopic views in the Dennis Collection (more than 40,000 items), front and back, organized by State or Subject Series.

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Vintage Holiday Postcards

More than 1,800 vintage holiday postcards from the New York Public Library's Picture Collection themed around national celebrations of the United States: Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, Valentine's Day, Washington's Birthday, among others.

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Walt Whitman Manuscripts

Over 1,000 items, including manuscripts, printed works, and portraits of Walt Whitman (1819-1892), the leading American poet of the 19th century.

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William Blake: Illustrated Books

Three original books in "relief etching" by William Blake, who composed the texts, designed the texts and decorations, and printed the pages: America: A Prophecy(1793 [1794?]), Europe: A Prophecy (1794), and Milton(1804 [i.e. 1808?]).

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Woman Suffrage and Feminism Photographs in the Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection

Hundreds of images documenting the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congresses held from 1906-1913 at Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Budapest, and others. Featured are associates of Rosika Schwimmer such as Jane Addams, Anita Augspurg, Carrie Chapman Catt, Vilma Glucklich, and Lida Gustava Heymann.

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Wonders: Images of the Ancient World

Over 1,700 images of the civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and other ancient Mediterranean cultures as conceived and depicted by artists and travelers from the 18th to the early 20th century, as represented in book and periodical illustrations, engravings, lithographs and photographs. A wide range of subjects includes arms and armor, architecture, furniture, pottery, mythology, religion, theater and the Seven Wonders of the World.

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World War I Photograph Albums and Postcards

Nearly 400 images reproducing two amateur albums of drawings and photographs by Americans serving in France; a series of German photographic postcards; and a French automaker's published album.

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Yiddish Theatre Placards: Buenos Aires and New York

Placards from the two leading centers of Yiddish theater in their respective heydays: New York, 1890s-1910s, and Buenos Aires, 1930s-1940s

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