Municipal Archives

Last week one of my classes met at the NYC Municipal Archives. We got a tour of the conservation facilities and archive rooms. The volume of records and historic documents stored there is amazing. There are property photos, marriage records, mayoral records among others. The woman who runs the archive told us that they have over 160,000 square cubic feet of material. Some of the items they pulled for us included 19th century mug shots and police evidence including a statement rolled up with a knife point that was extracted from the victim. Going in to one of the basement storage rooms was like the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they wheel the crate into the warehouse.