When the New-York Historical Society's enlarged building opened in April 1939,
the first floor exhibition galleries were almost completely devoted to maritime
history. Immediately to the right, inside the Society's front door on Central Park
West, was the Naval History Room, with a display of swords, engravings of naval
skirmishes and portraits of naval officers, manuscripts, ships’ logs, and athree-
dimensional half-model of the Uss Monitor. To the left of the front door, and filling
as well the entire south side of the building, there were three rooms devoted to the
Port of New York and the city’s shipping industry. Rope ran down the length of the
long gallery walls to lead visitors up to a life-size model of a ship’'s prow, complete
with a lookout deck. On display were ship models and ships’ wheels, globes, prints,
paintings, and many other nautical relics. 4@ The large amount of floor space devot-
ed tothe Port of New York was partly due to the harbor's primacy in the city’s history:
the port became the busiest and most important in the United States by 1810 and the
most important in the world by the time of the Civil War. The items in the exhibit
addressed New York's nineteenth-century maritime history in the context of its great
importance to the city's economic, cultural, occupational, and political life. 4@ The
objects in the Naval History galleries originally were in the collection of the Naval History
Society, formed in 1909 by a group of maritime history enthusiasts including Colonel
John Sanford Barnes (1836-1911), Admiral Caspar F. Goodrich (1847-1925), and Franklin
D. Roosevelt (1882-1945). The society was incorporated in 1912, but by the early 1920s,
a proposal arose to merge the both the collections and the members of the Naval
History Society, Ship Model Society, and New York Port Society into those of the
New-York Historical Society, which could then double as a national Naval and
Maritime Museum. The concept seemed viable enough for Roosevelt, who had been
assistant secretary of the Navy from 1913-20, to become involved in talks with the
Historical Society’'s Executive Board; the plan eventually was deemed unfeasible.
Nevertheless, Colonel James Barnes (1866-1938), president of the Naval His-
tory Society and son of its founder, realized that his organization could no longer take
proper care of its collections, which were then housed in a room in midtown Manhat-
tan. Barnes arranged for their donation and transfer to the New-York Historical
Society in July1925, and that fall the Naval History Society members became associate
members of the Historical Society. Part of the agreement required the Society to
exhibit the Naval History Society’s objects in the newly expanded building. 4@ While
not always on view today, the Naval History Society’s rich visual, textual, and manu-
script collections, in addition to other interesting materials documenting New York's
maritime past, remain a valuable part of the New-York Historical Society’s library

and museum holdings—on deck and available for use by new generations of mari-
time and naval historians.

A History of Maritime History

AT THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY

JENNY GOTWALS