New-York Historical Society Teen Historians

Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives.  Is there something wrong in this picture? Clearly there is. What’s an elaborately designed lamp doing in a tenement house? The contrast between the poor living conditions of immigrants in housing settlements versus luxuries afforded by the rich is startling. During the Gilded Age and as a result…

(Top picture) Young artists and members of the Broadway Boys and the Ebony Dukes on the East Tremont Avenue platform on the IRT number 5 line. This picture shows how young the graffitists were. (Middle row; first picture) Graffiti during its first years in New York City. Tags include, Franky 135, Dutch 135, tame 136,…

Researching the 1863 draft riots of New York City has made me become curious about the history of other draft riots and protests in America. I’ve been reading through Civil War books, browsing the N-YHS’s e-museum site for Civil War documents, and focusing on the lives of New Yorkers before and after the Civil War…

-Victoria Sadosky One of the biggest questions regarding the Tiffany Lamps is what exactly makes them so special. How are they different from other lamps with similar motifs? One of Tiffany’s goals was to bring beauty into the home, portraying the simplest experiences of nature’s magnificence through his lamps to such an extent that the…

From this “mockcumentary”, graffiti has profitted immensely in urban culture. This is evident from propaganda like Obey clothing with millions of Shepard Fairey’s artistic prints of vintage/historical pieces like Andre the Giant, communist propaganda, etc. Due to graffiti’s artistic importance in urban culture, young generations honor artistic geniuses like Banksy, Shepard Fairey and Space Invader,…

For the past week and a half, I’ve been studying the Howard Thain painting titled “The Great White Way.” The painting depicts the New York Times building on 42nd street that marks one of Manhattan’s cultural hubs: Times Square. Thain completed the portrait in 1925, the era of prohibition, ragtime, and the broadway revues. The…

Howard Thain is an artist whose work is featured throughout The New-York Historical Society. One of his most admired paintings is his painting of Grand Central Terminal, which my peers and I have selected as the basis of our group project. My individual topic within the group is the rise, decline and rebirth of Grand…

Murals of historic/artistic significance may seem like they have little to do with grimy/edgy graffiti, but these art forms of expression conceptually have similarities under the umbrella of “street art”. Murals often pay homage to treasured memories, historical landmarks or deceased people and often use similar paints to graffiti. However, murals tend to be more…

Last week I wanted to explore the absence of women on the graffiti door, and their struggle to fit in. Taking a quick glimpse through Graffiti Kings: New York City Mass Transit Art of the 1970s, I discovered that some of the female names on the graffiti door, like Yvonne, were tagged by males. It…