Museum Open

This exhibition covers the pioneering history of the African American basketball teams that existed in New York City and elsewhere from the early 1900s through 1950, the year the National Basketball Association became racially integrated. Just after the game of basketball was invented in 1891, teams were often called “fives” in reference to their five starting players. Teams made up entirely of African American players were referred to as “colored fives,” “Negro fives,” or black fives—the period became known as the Black Fives Era. 

To accompany AIDS in New York: The First Five Years, the New-York Historical Society will curate a visual arts exhibition and gallery show, featuring twenty breathtaking black and white photographs by noted photographer and social realist Claire Yaffa from her collection “The Changing Face of Children with AIDS.”

Since the 1970s Camilo Vergara has been traveling across the United States photographing and thus documenting hand-painted murals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as they appeared on the walls of establishments such as car repair shops, barbershops, and fast food restaurants in city streets and alley ways. The folk art portraits have expressed how the inner-city residents saw the slain civil rights leader—at times a statesman, a hero, a visionary, or a martyr. Vergara also discovered that these images were often based on iconic photographs of Dr. King but that, depending upon the neighborhood where they were created, the portraits could take on the likeness of Latinos, Native Americans, or Asians.

This exhibition is based on David Dunlap's eponymous guide to 1,079 houses of worship, (Columbia University Press, 2004). From Abyssinian to Zion features sanctuaries off the beaten path that would count as major attractions in any other city or setting: St. Aloysius Church, a bristling work of Lombard architecture on West 132nd Street; All Saints Church, a virtual cathedral known with good reason as the St. Patrick's of Harlem (it is arguably a more inventive work of Gothic design); the Church of the Crucifixion, a powerful work of modern concrete sculpture on West 149th Street that evokes Le Corbusier; the elegantly neo-Classical Mount Olivet Baptist Church on Malcolm X Boulevard, built as Temple Israel, which used it as a synagogue for only 13 years; St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral, under whose onion domes on East 97th Street bitter and sometimes violent battles have been waged for the soul of the Russian church since the Revolution; the abandoned Pike Street shul where the Young Israel movement was born, now serving as the Sung Tak Buddhist temple; St. Augustine's Church on Henry Street, which has what it says is the only remaining slave gallery of any church on the island; and the greatest single house of worship built in Manhattan in the last 60 years: the mosque of the Islamic Cultural Center.

On October 27, 1904, New York City's subway system officially opened, but talks to build an underground rail system began soon after London opened its subway in 1863. It wasn't until 1894 that a referendum was put on the ballot to generate financial support from the city and create the Rapid Transit Board, which was in charge of planning the route. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) was awarded the contract to build the first subway line. The Rapid Transit Board planned one original route, stretching from City Hall to 96th Street, which then split into two more routes from Broadway to 242nd Street and another that ran under the Harlem River into the Bronx. Bids were then solicited and construction began in 1900.

An exhibition that honors one of the most influential arts colonies in the United States is on view at the New-York Historical Society from March 15- May 15, 2005. Produced by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, the exhibition tells the story about this remarkable community that was founded in 1902 and still operates today.

The New-York Historical Society is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Remembering The Forgotten Ones: The Photographs of Milton Rogovin, which will be on view from June 17, 2003–October 12, 2005.

Cass Gilbert is perhaps best remembered as the architect of the Woolworth Building, for years the tallest building in the world. Yet his work also included such monumental public buildings as the U.S. Custom House in Lower Manhattan and many state capitols. He created ornate Classical buildings but was also a pioneer of the modern skyscraper. This small exhibition in the library showcases material from the Cass Gilbert Collection from New-York Historical's Library collection. It features early 20th century photographs, drawings, letters, brochures and ephemera from Gilbert's extensive collection of personal and professional papers.