This Weeks New York History Web Highlights

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Each Friday afternoon New York History compiles for our readers a collection of the week’s top weblinks about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly round-ups here.

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Childhood Toys Highlight of New Albany Exhibit

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The Albany Institute of History & Art has opened a new exhibit, Kid Stuff: Great Toys from Our Childhood. This exhibition, based on the book by David Hoffman, was created by the Berkshire Museum and is on the last stop of its national tour.

From Slinky’s and Wooly Willy’s to Lionel Trains and Barbie Dolls, Kid Stuff takes visitors back to the age of tailfins and vinyl records with more than 40 toys from decades ago to see vintage toys with original packaging and promotional materials and have the opportunity to play and interact with contemporary versions. Additional displays such as photos of toy factory interiors, images of children at play, video presentations, and interpretive texts depict how toys work and their significance in American culture.

Enhancing the exhibition are ten interactive components that invite visitors to play with many of the classic toys they see on display. The hands-on stations include a LEGO construction site, Twister, a magnetic Mr. Potato Head (and friends) game, and more. The museum will host “Play for All” Saturdays throughout the run of the exhibition, which include additional interactive art stations as well as museum educators in the galleries to guide visitors through the hands-on components of the exhibition.

The exhibit will be on display through March 4, 2012.

Upcoming Museum of the City of New York Programs

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The Museum of the City of New York is offering members’ discount for readers of New York History for a number of upcoming events. The Museum has been undergoing a number of exciting changes recently, including an $85 million expansion and modernization of their outdated facility and new online access to over 50,000 images from the collections.

Reservations required for the following events. Call 917-492-3395 or e-mail [email protected]. The cost is $6 museum members- $8 seniors and students- $12 non-members- and $6 when you mention New York History.

Tuesday, October 11 at 6:30 PM
The “Lady’s Eye”: More than Walls and Beyond the Fringe

Between the two world wars, at the same time that pioneering female interior designers like Dorothy Draper and Elsie DeWolfe were making a name for themselves using a modernist aesthetic, another group of women active in design and preservation were promoting the Colonial Revival style as a hallmark of profession. Discover the influence of women like Bertha Benkard and Nancy McClelland, in a discussion with Pauline Metcalf, author of Syrie Maugham (Acanthus Press, 2010), and others as they explore the roles that women played in making the Colonial Revival and that the Colonial Revival played in creating the field of interior design. Reservations required.

Saturday, October 22 from 9:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Living With History:
Restoring, Redesigning, and Reviving New York’s Landmark Interiors

In the past decade the city has been the setting for some extraordinary projects aimed at bringing historic buildings back to life. This half-day symposium will showcase some of those projects, highlighting the various and sometimes controversial approaches to preserving the past while accommodating the needs of modern life. Presenters include architectural historian Matt Postal on New York’s landmark designation process- designer Jamie Drake on the ongoing preservation of Gracie Mansion- Cleary Larkin of Beyer Blinder Belle on the restoration of the Beacon Theater- Franklin D. Vagnone, Executive Director of the Historic House Trust, on the contrasting approaches to preserving Brooklyn’s Wyckoff Farmhouse and Lott House- designer Eric Cohler on his restoration of the iconic A. Conger Goodyear house by Edward Durrell Stone- and Frank Mahon, Senior Designer of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, on retrofitting the International Style Manufacturers Hanover Trust building on Fifth Avenue for retail use. Presented in partnership with the New York School of Interior Design. $25 Museum members, seniors, and students- $35 non-members.

Wednesday, October 26 at 6:30 PM
Eleanor Roosevelt’s Val-Kill

In 1926, then soon-to-be First Lady of New York State—and, eventually, the nation—Eleanor Roosevelt founded Val-Kill Industries, dedicated to crafting replicas of early American furniture, pewter, and weavings, as a way to provide jobs and training to local men and women. Val-Kill’s reproductions were carried by leading department stores and specialty shops in various American cities and were the subject of a 1927 exhibition and sale in Mrs. Roosevelt’s East Side townhouse. Maurine H. Beasley, professor and author of Eleanor Roosevelt: Transformative First Lady (University Press of Kansas, 2010), takes a closer look at the story of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Val-Kill and its cultural relevance then and now. Co-sponsored by the Roosevelt Institute. Reservations required.

New-York Historical Society to Reopen

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The New-York Historical Society will re-open its landmark building to the public at 11:00 a.m. on Veterans’ Day, Friday, November 11, 2011. A three-year, $65 million renovation of the Central Park West building has sensitively but thoroughly transformed the face of the institution — the first museum established in New York.

The Historical Society will remain open on November 11 until 11:00 p.m., offering free admission during that day to veterans and active service members and to children under 13, and free admission for all visitors after 6:00 p.m.

Entering the Historical Society, renovated by the firm of Platt Byard Dovell White Architects, visitors will encounter:

* an admissions area incorporating the ceiling from Keith Haring’s original “Pop Shop,” donated to the Historical Society by the Keith Haring Foundation

* a multi-media installation in the reconfigured Great Hall where the new Robert H. and Clarice Smith New York Gallery of American History introduces major themes of American history through stories and figures from New York’s past- to include a selection of objects from the Historical Society’s collection

* a new facility, the DiMenna Children’s History Museum and the Barbara K. Lipman Children’s History Library, designed especially to engage young visitors as History Detectives exploring the richness and wonder of America’s past

* the first major special history exhibition in the renovated building, Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn, an exploration of the interconnections among the American, French and Haitian revolutions

* an art exhibition drawn from works in the Historical Society’s collection: Making American Taste: Narrative Art for a New Democracy offers for the first time an in-depth look at the 19th-century paintings and sculpture collected by the New Yorkers who founded and built the Historical Society

* an Italian-themed dining facility operated by the Starr Restaurants group, offering a light menu throughout the day and full restaurant service at night

“I believe 11-11-11 – November 11th, 2011 – will be marked as the most important date for our Society since its founding 207 years ago,” stated Roger Hertog, Chairman of the Board of the New-York Historical Society in a prepared statement to the press.

“The world has long known that the New-York Historical Society holds unmatched collections in its museum and library,” stated Louise Mirrer, President and CEO. “More recently, people have also begun to know us for our vibrant special exhibitions, which bring complex historical themes to life. But we have never before opened ourselves up to the public with such light and transparency, or provided the kind of immediate access to our objects and ideas that we will offer when we re-open in November. It’s as if, at entry level, we are going from being a beautiful treasure house to a great showplace of the American experience.’”

Renovating a Landmark

On the exterior, the renovation project creates a wider main staircase and expanded main entrance on Central Park West- better sightlines into the building from the street- a redesigned 77th Street entrance with improved accessibility for school groups and visitors with disabilities, and illumination to highlight the architectural features at night.

Inside the building, the project creates the Historical Society’s first new gallery on the ground floor, the 3,400-square-foot Great Hall- renovates and improves the adjacent Robert H. Smith Auditorium- provides for the new restaurant, renovated Museum Store and Rotunda on the 77th Street side- and establishes the DiMenna Children’s History Museum and the Barbara K. Lipman Children’s History Library, designed separately by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership.

The building was designed and constructed in 1903-08 by York and Sawyer, a firm established by architects who had trained with McKim, Mead and White. York and Sawyer was also responsible for projects including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Bowery Savings Bank, New York Athletic Club and several of the buildings at Vassar College. In 1938, two new wings were completed at the Historical Society, designed by Walker and Gillette. The current renovation is the most ambitious construction project at the Historical Society since that 1938 expansion.

To increase the street presence gained through the renovation and heighten the building’s identity as a cultural destination, the Historical Society will install bronze statues of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass at the east and north stairways. The statues are fabricated by Studio EIS.

Creating the Great Hall Exhibition

For the first time, visitors coming into the Historical Society from Central Park West will immediately see into the heart of the building, thanks to a reconfiguration of the entrance space and the opening of a vista to the interior through a broad wall of glass. Visible at once through the glass will be the Great Hall— redesigned to house the Robert H. and Clarice Smith New York Gallery of American History. The Gallery is the first permanent installation at the Historical Society to illustrate the themes addressed by the institution, provide an overview of the priceless collection and orient visitors to the experiences they may encounter.

The principal components of the Great Hall exhibition will be:

Liberty/Liberte

Created by the New York-based artist Fred Wilson (who represented the United States at the 2003 Venice Biennale), this sculptural installation takes objects from the Historical Society’s collection and arranges them into a complex and engaging environment, where the possible meanings of the artifacts seem to shift as the visitor walks through the space. Originally conceived for the Historical Society’s 2006 exhibition Legacies: Contemporary Artists Reflect on Slavery, the work incorporates items ranging from a section of wrought iron balustrade from the original Federal Hall, where George Washington took the oath of office as President, to slave shackles and an anonymous tobacco shop figurine of an African American man.

Through the Lens of New York

A dozen large-scale, high-definition digital screens affixed to the columns in the Great Hall will present a continuous, thematic slideshow of hundreds of treasures from the Historical Society’s collections. On the other side of the columns, touch-screen stations will allow visitors to investigate large themes that represent points of intersection between the histories of New York City and the United States: slavery, capitalism and commerce, toleration for dissent, immigration and diversity, expansion and westward movement, and the development of America’s low and high culture.

Monumental Treasures

A ten-foot-high display case beyond the columns will showcase large-scale maps, architectural drawings, documents and other works on paper, which previously could not be exhibited because of their size and light sensitivity. In its first version, this changing installation will include the 8-foot-square Popple map (1733) of British possessions in North America, flanked by the Montresor map of New York City (1776) and the Battle of Long Island Map (August 27, 1776).

Founding New Yorkers

The centerpiece of the Great Hall will be an installation about New York’s critical role in United States history during the early Federal period, from around 1776 through 1804, the year of the Historical Society’s founding. A contemporary reinterpretation of a nineteenth-century salon-style art installation, the wall will feature a dense hanging of paintings, documents, artifacts and video monitors, divided into fiv
e sections: The American Revolution in New York- Mercantile New York City, Coffee House Culture and the Expansion of Urban Space- The Inauguration of George Washington and New York City as the First Capital- The Hamilton-Burr Duel and the Political and Banking System- and The Founding of the New-York Historical Society and the Forging of an American Culture. A dynamic concept developed by the David Small Design Firm (Cambridge, MA) will allow visitors to learn about the web of relationships among the events, ideas and people depicted on the wall by using touch-screen monitors only a few feet from the objects themselves.

Here is New York

Facing Founding New Yorkers will be Here is New York, a display of approximately 1,500 photographs taken by the people of New York City on September 11, 2001, and immediately afterward. These images by 790 contributors were first collected in an almost impromptu exhibition in SoHo soon after 9/11. Accompanying the photography installation will be a large fragment of a fire truck destroyed during the 9/11 attack.

The Dying Chief Contemplating the Progress of Civilization

At the opposite end of the Great Hall from Founding New Yorkers and Here is New York will be an installation of Thomas Crawford’s sculpture The Dying Chief Contemplating the Progress of Civilization (ca. 1856). A version of this important work is installed in the sculptural pediment over the U.S. Capitol’s east front.

History Manholes and History At Your Feet: Floor Cases of Urban Archaeology

In 1918, the New-York Historical Society founded the Field Exploration Committee, headed by the amateur archaeologists William Calver and Reginald P. Bolton, to explore and document historic sites in New York City and State and to recover and catalogue their artifacts. This work made the Historical Society a pioneer in the field of urban archaeology years before it became a professional discipline. Twelve manhole-like, circular exhibition cases, installed flush to the floor, will be dispersed throughout the Great Hall, showcasing relics such as arrowheads, military buttons, a colossal oyster shell excavated at an extant nineteenth-century tavern and a clock from the World Trade Center debris. The manholes will be part of a lively history-themed, educational scavenger hunt for visitors called, “History At Your Feet.” Through these objects, visitors of all ages will be introduced to the notion that history is all around us, even underfoot, in the modern city.

Keith Haring’s “Pop Shop” Ceiling Fragment

The ceiling over the admissions desk will be adorned with a fragment from Keith Haring’s “Pop Shop,” a store in the SoHo area of lower Manhattan that sold the artist’s graffiti-inspired t-shirts and souvenirs until after his death in 1990.

Bringing History to Life for Children

Located in a 4,000-square-foot vaulted space on the building’s lower level is the new DiMenna Children’s History Museum and the Barbara K. Lipman Children’s History Library, both designed to engage families.

The DiMenna Children’s History Museum, designed by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership, invites children to become History Detectives, learning about the past through the use of historical artifacts and replicas, illustrations and interactive elements. The core of the experience is a series of three-dimensional pavilions, where children can identify with figures whose enterprise and creativity changed the course of our history. These biographical pavilions will introduce children to:

o Cornelia van Varick (ca. 1692-1733), daughter of Margrieta Van Varick, textile merchant in 17th century New York

o Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), the orphaned immigrant from the West Indies who became a Founder of the United States

o James McCune Smith (1813-65), the son of an enslaved woman who became the country’s first university-trained African American physician-

o Esteban Bellan (1850-1932), a Cuban youngster who became the first Latino to play professional baseball in the United States

o an Orphan Train girl (ca. 1890), one of the many New York City children transported by the Children’s Aid Society to new homes in the Midwest- and

o a New York “newsie” (ca. 1890), one of the children who eked out a living selling newspapers on the street

In other interactive experiences, young visitors will be able to go to the polls at the Cast Your Vote pavilion- deliver a presidential address at the First President kiosk, featuring a representation of Federal Hall- use the Historical Viewfinder display to see how selected sites in New York City have changed over time- and add their voices to the Children’s History Museum at the installation You Are An American Dreamer, Too.

At the Barbara K. Lipman Children’s History Library, young visitors and their families will find an area to sit and read children’s books, and to use interactive displays to explore rare books, manuscripts and maps from the Historical Society’s collection. Surrounding these interactive elements will be artifacts related to the volumes on display.

The development of Children’s History Museum and Library educational materials is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Tracing the Course of Revolution

The New-York Historical Society was born in 1804 in the aftermath of revolutions—in America, France and Haiti—that reverberated like rolling thunder back and forth across the Atlantic, with consequences that are still felt today. To mark its re-opening in 2011, the Historical Society will present Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn, the first exhibition to relate the American, French and Haitian struggles as a single global narrative.

Spanning decades of enormous political and cultural changes, from the triumph of British imperial power in 1763 to the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, Revolution! traces how an ideal of popular sovereignty, introduced through the American fight for independence, soon sparked more radical calls for a recognition of universal human rights, and set off attacks on both sides of the Atlantic against hereditary privilege and slavery. Among the astonishing, unforeseen outcomes was an insurrection on the French possession of Saint-Domingue, leading to the world’s only successful slave revolt and the establishment in 1804 of the first nation founded on the principles of full freedom and equality for all, regardless of color.

Richard Rabinowitz, founder and president of American History Workshop, serves as chief exhibition curator. Thomas Bender of New York University and Laurent Dubois of Duke University have served as the co-chief historians for Revolution!, drawing on the scholarship of an advisory committee of distinguished historians and specialists.

Following its presentation at the New-York Historical Society (November 11, 2011 – April 15, 2012), Revolution! will travel to venues in the U.K., France, and elsewhere in the United States. Educational materials and programs will be distributed internationally, including in Haiti.

New York Photo League Exhibit Slated

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Drawing on the depth of two great Photo League museum collections, The Jewish Museum in New York City and the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio are collaborating on an exhibition of over 140 vintage photographs. The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951, a formidable survey of the group’s history, its artistic significance, and its cultural, social and political milieu, will premiere at The Jewish Museum from November 4, 2011 through March 25, 2012. The Radical Camera exhibition will then travel to the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH (April 19 &#8211 September 9, 2012)- the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA (October 11, 2012 &#8211 January 21, 2013)- and Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL (February 9 &#8211 April 21, 2013).

Artists in the Photo League were known for capturing sharply revealing, compelling moments from everyday life. Their focus centered on New York City and its vibrant streets &#8211 a shoeshine boy, a brass band on a bustling corner, a crowded beach at Coney Island. Many of the images are beautiful, yet harbor strong social commentary on issues of class, child labor, and opportunity. The Radical Camera exhibition explores the fascinating blend of aesthetics and social activism at the heart of the Photo League.

The innovative contributions of the Photo League during its 15-year existence (1936-1951) were significant. As it grew, the League would mirror monumental shifts in the world starting with the Depression, through World War II and ending with the Red Scare. Born of the worker’s movement, the Photo League was an organization of young, idealistic photographers who believed in documentary photography as an expressive medium and powerful tool for exposing social problems. It was also a school with teachers such as Sid Grossman, who encouraged students to take their cameras to the streets and discover the meaning of their work as well as their relationship to it. The League had a darkroom for printing, published an acclaimed newsletter called Photo Notes, offered exhibition space, and was a place to socialize, especially among first-generation Jewish-Americans.

The first museum exhibition in three decades to comprehensively look at the Photo League, The Radical Camera reveals that the League encouraged a surprisingly broad spectrum of work throughout extraordinarily turbulent times. The organization’s members included some of the most noted photographers of the mid-20th century &#8211 W. Eugene Smith, Weegee, Lisette Model, Berenice Abbott and Aaron Siskind, to name a few. The Photo League helped validate photography as a fine art, presenting student work and guest exhibitions by established photographers like Eugene Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Edward Weston, among others.

These affecting black and white photographs show life as it was lived mostly on the streets, sidewalks and subways of New York. Joy, playfulness and caprice as well as poverty and hardship are in evidence. In addition to their urban focus, Leaguers photographed in rural America, and during World War II, in Latin America and Europe. The exhibition also addresses the active participation of women who found rare access and recognition at the League.

The Radical Camera presents the League within a critical, historical context. Developments in photojournalism were catalyzing a new information era in which photo essays were appearing for the first time in magazines such as Life and Look. As time went on, its social documentary roots evolved toward a more experimental approach, laying the foundation for the next generation of street photographers. One of the principal themes of the exhibition is how the League fostered a multifaceted and changing identity of documentary photography. &#8220A mixture of passion and disillusionment characterizes the Photo League’s growth, which led photographers away from objective documentary images and toward more subjective, poetic readings of life,&#8221 said Mason Klein, exhibition co-curator and a curator at The Jewish Museum. &#8220The tenets of truth in documentary photography laid down by League members were also challenged by them and ultimately upended by members of the New York School,&#8221 he added. Catherine Evans, exhibition co-curator and a curator of photography at the Columbus Museum of Art, observed that &#8220This museum partnership is an extraordinary opportunity to showcase two in-depth collections. Because the images continue to have relevance today, it is especially important that the exhibition will be seen in four U.S. cities, reaching as broad an audience as possible.&#8221

In 1947, the League came under the pall of McCarthyism and was blacklisted for its alleged involvement with the Communist Party. Ironically, the Photo League had just begun a national campaign to broaden its base as a &#8220Center for American Photography.&#8221 Despite the support of Ansel Adams, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, Paul Strand and many other national figures, this vision of a national photography center could not overcome the Red Scare. As paranoia and fear spread, the Photo League was forced to disband in 1951.

The exhibition has been organized by Mason Klein, Curator of Fine Arts, The Jewish Museum, and Catherine Evans, William and Sarah Ross Soter Curator of Photography, Columbus Museum of Art.

Photo: Sid Grossman, Coney Island, c. 1947, gelatin silver print. The Jewish Museum, New York. Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery.

New Contributor:North Country Historian Lawrence Gooley

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Please join me in welcoming New York History&#8216-s newest contributor, Lawrence Gooley of Clinton County. Gooley is an award-winning author who has hiked, bushwhacked, climbed, bicycled, explored, and canoed in the Adirondack Mountains for 40 years. With a lifetime love of research, writing, and history, he has authored eight books and several articles on the region’s past, and in 2009 organized the North Country Authors in the Plattsburgh area. His book Oliver’s War: An Adirondack Rebel Battles the Rockefeller Fortune won the Adirondack Literary Award for Best Book of Nonfiction in 2008. His most recent effort is Terror in the Adirondacks: The True Story of Serial Killer Robert F. Garrow.

Gooley’s fascination with area history serves his readers well and he’s not afraid to get away from his desk an onto the ground where that history happened. He once researched a brief history of each bay on the Lake Champlain shoreline for example, prepared it in a binder with protective plastic sheets, laid it open on the bench seat of his canoe, and “lived history” for a week while paddling from Whitehall to Plattsburgh.

Gooley is a strong supporter of the Lyon Mountain Mining & Railroad Museum, where a 6-foot-long wall plaque hangs with the names of 162 men who died in accidents in Lyon Mountain’s iron mines. The plaque is based on information from his book Out of the Darkness.

With his partner, Jill McKee, Gooley founded Bloated Toe Enterprises in 2004 and have recently begun to expand their services and publishing work. They especially enjoy helping organizations and new authors navigate all the pitfalls of getting their work published, and seeing authors earn profits from their books. Besides Bloated Toe Publishing, they also operate an online store to support the work of other regional folks. The North Country Store features more than 100 book titles and 60 CDs and DVDs, along with a variety of other area products.

Lawrence Gooley: Lincolns Avengers

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There is a historical connection between a group of North Country men and the Abraham Lincoln story. On the downside, the men in question are linked to a dark subject, the aftermath of Lincoln’s death. On the upside, they played a positive role in the hunt for the president’s assassin. With admiration, they have been referred to as Lincoln’s Avengers.

Several men from Clinton, Essex, St. Lawrence, and Warren counties belonged to the Sixteenth New York Cavalry. Shortly after Lincoln’s death, the troop was among the military escort at the president’s funeral. An honor, surely, but not the event that would bring them a measure of fame.

In the days following the assassination, multiple search missions were conducted in Washington and elsewhere in the hopes of finding John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices. After several false alarms, important new information was uncovered, requiring a swift response.

On April 24, five days after Lincoln’s funeral, headquarters in Washington ordered Lieutenant Edward Doherty to gather 25 men of the Sixteenth New York Cavalry and report to Colonel L. C. (Lafayette) Baker, Special Agent for the War Department. Among those to step forward and answer the call were ten men from the Adirondack region.

Doherty met with his captain and later reported: “He informed me that he had reliable information that the assassin Booth and his accomplice were somewhere between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. He gave me several photographs of Booth and introduced me to Mr. Conger and Mr. Baker, and said they would accompany me.

“He directed me to scour the section of the country indicated thoroughly, to make my own disposition of the men in my command, and to forage upon the country, giving receipts for what was taken from loyal parties.” In other words, move now. There was no time to prepare. Food and other needs would have to be secured from sympathetic US citizens, who would later be reimbursed.

For two days the troop pursued leads almost without pause, finally ending up at the now infamous Garrett farm in Caroline County, Virginia. Inside the barn was perhaps the most wanted man in American history, Booth, and one of his conspirators, David Herold.

The men of the Sixteenth surrounded the barn while negotiations and threats were passed back and forth between Booth and Lieutenant Doherty. Booth refused to leave the barn despite warnings he would be burned out. He even offered to shoot it out with Doherty’s men if they would pull back a certain distance from the barn.

Realizing he faced almost certain death, David Herold decided to surrender. After leaving the barn, he was tied to a tree and questioned. He verified for Doherty that it was indeed Booth inside the barn. The original plan, he said, was to kidnap Lincoln, but Booth instead killed him, and then threatened to do the same to Herold if he didn’t help Booth escape.

Doherty again turned his attention to the barn and its lone desperate occupant, who refused to come out. Finally, Everton Conger, one of Lafayette Baker’s detectives who accompanied the troops, set fire to the barn around 3 am. The idea was to force their quarry out, but things didn’t go as planned.

Due to the rapidly spreading blaze, Booth could be seen moving about inside the barn, and one of the men, Boston Corbett, decided to act. Claiming he could see that Booth was about to shoot at Doherty, Corbett fired. His shot hit Booth in the neck, coincidentally only an inch or two from where Booth’s own bullet had struck Lincoln.

Their captive was dragged from the barn, still alive, but he died about three hours later. Shortly after, his body and the prisoner, Herold, were taken to Washington. The most famous manhunt in American history was over.

Within several months, the men of the Sixteenth were discharged, carrying with them the pride (and the attending glory) for delivering what many felt was justice. Most of them returned to humble lives, sharing their story with family and friends over the years.

Six of the ten North Country men who participated lived at one time or another in the Saranac area. They had connections to many regional communities, having been born, lived in, or died in: Bangor, Beekmantown, Brushton, Cadyville, Chester (Chestertown), Elizabethtown, Minerva, Norfolk, Olmstedville, Plattsburgh, and Schuyler Falls.

As often happens, the spelling of names varies widely in census records, military records, and newspapers. This admired group of North Country heroes included: David Baker, William Byrne, Godfrey Phillip Hoyt, Martin Kelly, Oliver Lonkey (or Lompay), Franklin McDaniels (or Frank McDonald), John Millington, Emory Parady, Lewis Savage, and Abram Snay (Abraham, Senay, Genay).

In 1865, Congress voted reward money to those involved in the capture of many individuals. Among those so honored were the men of the Sixteenth New York Cavalry, the envy of all others for killing the man who himself had murdered a legend.

Photo Top: Actor and assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Photo Middle: Conspirators at the ends of their ropes. Hanging, from left to right: Mary Surratt, David Herold, Lewis Powell, and George Atzerodt at Washington, DC, on July 7, 1865.

Photo Bottom: Congressional award list for Lincoln’s Avengers. The North Country men received the modern equivalent of $28,000 each.

Lawrence Gooley has authored ten books and dozens of articles on the North Country’s past. He and his partner, Jill McKee, founded Bloated Toe Enterprises in 2004. Expanding their services in 2008, they have produced 19 titles to date, and are now offering web design. For information on book publishing, visit Bloated Toe Publishing.

Cayuga Museum Names Carriage House Theater

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Cayuga MuseumThe Cayuga Museum has announced the name of the carriage house theater currently undergoing restoration. When the theater re-opens in Spring 2012, it will be named Theater Mack in honor of the Maciulewicz family and their business, Mack Studios.

The Cayuga Museum has enjoyed a long association with Mack Studios. Casimir or Chuck Maciulewicz, founder of Mack Studios, was a long-time supporter and President of the Cayuga Museum Board of Trustees. Peter Maciulewicz, present owner and CEO of Mack Studios, has served on the Museum Board of Trustees for 12 years, and is currently President.

Mack Studios, now an internationally famed design company, has long donated all of the exhibit furniture and display work at the Cayuga Museum. Peter and Carol Maciulewicz have been the largest private donors to the carriage house restoration project. Since the Museum Board of Trustees decided to save the building in the 1990’s, the Museum has spent more close to $400,000 on rehabilitating the carriage house.

The carriage house, known for many years as the Cayuga Museum Annex, was a vital part of the cultural life of Auburn for decades. Installed through a collaboration between the Museum and the Auburn Community Players in 1941, the carriage house stage was home to plays, musicals, dance recitals, and more for more than 30 years. The company that is today the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse started in the carriage house in the 1960’s. The Cayuga Museum believes that the restored carriage house, Theater Mack, will once again become a vibrant community asset in Auburn.

“Carol and I are pleased to be able to help bring this project to fruition,” said Peter Mack. “We can remember coming to the carriage house for shows when we were kids. We are committed to seeing it brought back to life.”

Drivers on Washington Street will have noticed the vibrant exterior paint job that let passers-by know that something exciting was happening at the carriage house. The first phase of this renovation project, the restoration of the 1850 carriage doors, replacement of all 28 windows, and new stairways and exits was completed in 2010.

The Cayuga Museum will use Theater Mack for its own programming &#8212- lectures, slideshows, special events and more. The annual Theodore Case Film Festival, which has been held at both Cayuga Community College and the Auburn Public Theater, will come home to the Case property. And the Museum will rent Theater Mack to other organizations, creating revenue to support Museum operations. Theater Mack is one of the venues for the new Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival set to begin in Spring 2012.

New York Archives Month in New York City

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Hundreds of organizations in the archives community across New York State will celebrate New York Archives Month in October with special commemorative activities across the state. New York Archives Week is an annual celebration aimed at informing the general public of the diverse array of archival materials available in New York State.

Among the many activities free and open to the public will be open houses, exhibitions, lectures, workshops and behind-the-scenes tours of archives throughout the state. These special events are designed to celebrate the importance of historical records, and to familiarize interested organizations and the public with a wealth of fascinating archival materials illuminating centuries of New York history and culture.

Among those participating in the event are local government agencies, historical societies, universities, libraries, and cultural organizations. Highlights in New York City include tours of the archives at the Museum of the City of New York, the Girl Scout National Historic Preservation Center, and the New York Transit Museum- a workshop on preserving family papers at the National Archives at New York City- and open house presentations at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc.

A complete list of Archives Week events and schedules in New York City can be found on the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York’s website. Please note that pre-registration for some events is required.

Photo: Lockport and the Erie Canal, Courtesy the NYS Archives.