Thank you, Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation!

Thanks to a generous grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, Friends of the New York Transit Museum will catalog and digitize the extensive and historically significant archival material in the New York Transit Museum collection that inextricably links the role of transportation to the history and development of Long Island – including documents, photographs, maps, postcards, timetables, ephemera, employee memorabilia, and more. Phase 1 of this three-year project will encompass cataloging and digitizing documents recently received from the Long Island Rail Road, including hand-drawn 19th-c maps that trace the acquisition of land for the rails, and creating a finding aid for that collection. Phase 2 will encompass surveying 10 unprocessed or partially-processed collections in the Archive that we believe contain Long Island material, identifying any material of interest to researchers or appropriate for exhibition, then processing, cataloging, and digitizing it. The grant will fund contracting a trained archivist to undertake the project, and the purchase of a flatbed scanner that is large enough to accommodate fragile oversize documents (like the land maps mentioned above) without exposing them to the risk of damage posed by a roll scanner. The digitized material will be added to our Digital Collections, available to anyone free of charge at nytransitmuseum.org/collections, and will be available for use in the Museum’s school and public programs. This project will make these items easily accessible to the public, and to the Museum, for the first time.

Object Spotlights: Long Island Rail Road Collections

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suffolk County Map, 1868; New York Transit Museum Collection.

Correspondence regarding the Bay Ridge Transfer Bridge from Steele & Condict, Inc., dated October 4, 1916.

Architectural drawing of Long Island Railroad Jamaica Terminal Improvement, Guilford Street Bridge…”, dated December 18, 1911.

Land deed between The Stuyvesant Real Estate Company and the Village of Greenport, dated November 10, 1916 (first page)

“The L.I.R.R. Co. Jamaica Station Building” (Fourth Floor) Drawing No. 02637, May 15, 1955.

 

 

“Bay Ridge Improvement Long Island Railroad: Specifications for Operating Machinery and Electrical Equipment for Four Transfer Bridges at Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, N.Y. June 13, 1916.”\

Architectural drawing of Jamaica Station and Office Building for the Long Island R.R. Company: Interior Details

Architectural drawing of Long Island Railroad Jamaica Terminal Improvement, Rockaway Road Bridge…”, dated October 8, 1912.