La Guardia and Wagner Archives
From ArchivesWiki
The La Guardia and Wagner Archives was established in 1982 to collect, preserve, and make available primary materials documenting the social and political history of New York City, with an emphasis on the mayoralty and the borough of Queens. The archives serves a broad array of researchers, journalists, students, scholars, exhibit planners, and policy makers examining the history of Greater New York. It produces public programs exploring that history, and its web site provides guidelines to the collections as well as over 24,000 digitized images.
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[edit] Address and Contact Info
Address: Fiorello H. La Guardia Community College, CUNY, 31-10 Thomson Ave., Rm. E-238, Long Island City, NY 11101-3007
Phone: (718) 482-5065
Fax: (718) 482-5069
E-mail: richardli@lagcc.cuny.edu
Web page: http://www.laguardiawagnerarchive.lagcc.cuny.edu
Director: Richard K. Lieberman
Online Finding Aid:
Archivists (principal contacts for advice on the collection):
[edit] Hours and usage restrictions
The La Guardia and Wagner Archives is located a five-minute walk from the 33rd Street/Rawson station on the #7 line, which can be boarded at the Times Square and Grand Central stations in Manhattan. Hours for researchers are Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Those interested in using the collections should call or e-mail for an appointment.
[edit] Collection Summary
This growing repository contains the papers of several mayors, the records of the New York City Council, the New York City Housing Authority, the piano maker Steinway & Sons, and a Queens History Collection.
Fiorello H. La Guardia Collection: As mayor during the turbulent period from 1934 to 1945, Fiorello H. La Guardia initiated major reforms that alleviated human suffering during the Great Depression and World War II. In 1982, the mayor’s widow, the late Marie La Guardia, donated her husband’s personal papers to La Guardia Community College. These documents, photographs, and personal artifacts chronicle Mayor La Guardia’s life and times, providing an invaluable record of New York City history.
The collection contains transcripts of La Guardia’s speeches, personal correspondence, and more than 3,000 photographs. It also has original sketches, scrapbooks, and records of his tenure as director general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration after World War II. The archives holds a microfilm copy of selected series of La Guardia’s mayoral papers housed at the New York City Municipal Archives. This includes the mayor’s scrapbooks, which record the media’s reaction to La Guardia and the issues of the time. The archives has available a microfilm copy of La Guardia’s congressional papers, which are housed at the New York Public Library. The collection contains more than 100 hours of audio and video tapes of and about La Guardia, including oral history interviews with the mayor’s friends and associates, La Guardia’s radio broadcasts, and newsreel footage.
Robert F. Wagner Collection: Mayor Robert F. Wagner was the second generation of the Wagner family to devote himself to public service. His father, U.S. Senator Robert F. Wagner, a major figure on the national scene in the New Deal era, sponsored landmark labor, civil rights, health, social security, and social welfare legislation. The mayor’s son, Robert F. Wagner Jr., served as a member of the New York City Council, chair of the New York City Planning Commission, deputy mayor for policy, and president of the New York City Board of Education. Mayor Robert F. Wagner served as chief executive of New York City for three terms. From 1954 to 1965, he oversaw the construction of housing, parks, roadways, and schools. He championed the growth and empowerment of municipal labor unions, and sponsored the creation of the City University of New York. He mobilized resources for the War on Poverty and ventured into new fields in income redistribution for the benefit of lower income groups and individuals. He used city government to combat housing bias and job discrimination.
All of these activities, programs, and concepts are reflected in the Wagner Collection, which consists of correspondence (including microfilm of materials held by the Municipal Archives), transcripts of 3,000 speeches, over 6,000 photographs, personal artifacts, and a 100-interview oral history collection. In addition, portions of Senator Robert F. Wagner’s papers, held by Georgetown University, are available on microfilm. In 1994, the archives received the personal papers of Robert F. Wagner Jr., documenting the third and final generation of the Wagner family to serve in a public role.
Abraham D. Beame Collection: Abraham Beame enjoyed a long and distinguished career in public service, including a term as mayor, 1974–77. The Beame Collection consists of 1,700 photographs, more than 100 artifacts, and an assortment of papers documenting key themes of the Beame years. These include the fiscal crisis of the 1970s and the bicentennial celebration. The Beame oral history project has gathered unique recollections of more than 30 associates and contemporaries of the mayor.
Edward I. Koch Collection: The archives is acquiring the personal papers of Edward Koch. New York’s dynamic 105th mayor served three terms, 1978–89. This collection of postmayoral materials includes 1,300 photographs, videos, and a variety of documents. Included in the collection are materials donated by contemporaries and associates of the mayor, facilitating research on such issues as charter revision and economic development. Dozens of oral history transcripts offer insights into major public issues of the Koch years. A microfilm copy of the Koch Departmental Correspondence, held by the Municipal Archives, is available as well.
New York City Council: This collection represents an unparalleled snapshot of the legislative history of America’s biggest city from the 1930s and into the 21st century. It includes not only copies of the thousands of enacted laws and official publications, but also the records of public hearings and committee files on legislation under consideration and ad hoc investigations, thousands of photographs and negatives, maps, artifacts, scrapbooks, audio and videotapes, as well as the papers of dozens of individual council members, including former leaders Newbold Morris, Joseph Sharkey, Paul Screvane, and Peter Vallone, among others. Three one-time council members rose to the mayoralty of New York City: Fiorello La Guardia, Vincent Impellitteri, and Edward Koch. This collection gives a vivid picture of day-to-day life in the city, focusing on constituency issues close to ordinary people such as housing, drugs, crime, welfare, community development, health, and the environment. It also provides historians with a wider understanding of a local government that is frequently overshadowed in the media by the prominence of a powerful mayor. Legislative documents from 1955 to 1997 are viewable on the web site, which also contains more than 6,000 searchable photographs.
New York City Housing Authority: The archives is the repository of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Founded in 1934, NYCHA was the first housing authority in the United States. The authority manages 344 projects housing more than 413,000 people. The collection covers the period from the late 1920s to the early 1990s. It documents the construction of New York’s public housing projects and provides information about the lives of the residents. Most major themes in the social history of 20th-century New York can be studied through the records. The collection contains correspondence, reports, news clippings, testimony, and surveys of neighborhoods and tenant populations. It also has more than 50,000 images, including photos of city neighborhoods before the projects were built. About 4,700 can be viewed online. In addition, there is a special online presentation, “How Public Housing Transformed New York.” A small oral history collection preserves the thoughts and comments of NYCHA staff members.
Steinway & Sons: Henry Z. Steinway donated the papers of the Steinway & Sons piano company to the archives in 1985. The Steinway company figures prominently in American immigration, business, cultural, urban and labor history. The Steinways first made pianos in Germany. Migrating to America, the family founded a piano company in New York City in 1853. The Steinway piano has an international reputation for technical innovation and musical quality. In 1870, Steinway & Sons built a factory in Queens and constructed street railways and housing, contributing to the county’s growth and development. The Steinway & Sons Collection consists of family, business, and workers’ records from 1853 to 1973. The collection also contains nearly 4,000 photographs, including several signed prints by the famed photographer Margaret Bourke-White, and more than 50 hours of audio and videotapes. In 1995, the archives acquired a restored 1858 Steinway square piano, which is now part of the collection.
Queens History Collection: The archives houses a collection on the social history of Queens from the late 19th century to the late 20th century. This includes a 2,000-image photo collection. It contains views of transportation, leisure, work, and family life in New York’s largest borough. The history of Astoria, Long Island City, and Woodside are especially well documented in this collection. The images show the transformation from a rural county in the late 19th century to an urban borough by 1950. The collection also has more than 90 oral histories on everyday life in Queens. An additional aspect of this collection is the papers of two settlement houses located in Queens, Forest Hills Community House and Sunnyside Community Services. These collections shed light on a variety of important themes in the social history of post–World War II Queens, including race relations and demographic changes.
In the future, the archives will continue to strengthen its resources as a center for the study of modern New York City. In addition, the archives is working to acquire microfilm copies of the papers of all of the 20th-century mayors of New York City.
[edit] Usage Discussion
Suggestions for approaching the material:
Housing and getting by for less in the area:
