![]() ![]() Next is an Alphabetical List of Nurses (might one of these nurses have delivered your ancestor? Or be your ancestor?). Want to know the price of a stamp? How many people lived in New York in 18? Who the various members of city government were? The names of the railroad companies? Packet steamer destinations? Where to catch a bus? It's all here. This is a useful index for finding the names and addresses of asylums, banks, churches and burial grounds, courts, foreign consuls, hotels, newspapers, police stations, post offices, schools, and more besides. Next is the Index to the Appendix (the Appendix was later expanded and renamed the City Register, a classified listing made up of business card-style advertisements). New York City’s population in 1850 was around 696,000. Doggett’s New York City Directory for 1850-51, cost $2 (a princely sum), and recorded the names and addresses of some 80, 290 New Yorkers living or doing business as far North as 42nd Street. I recommend this because this option allows you to use the Scroll Wheel Zoom, to zoom right in on the text. Once you have found the page you want, I recommend clicking the individual page link at the top of the browser, above the corresponding page, to look at that page on its own. You can scoot ahead lots of pages by opening the drop down “Jump to” menu and clicking the page you want, or by dragging the pointer at the bottom of the page, from left to right. Click each page to turn to the next, until you find the page you want. Tip: it’s the icon to the left of the image that looks like an open book. To browse the directory like a book, click the “View as Book” icon. Eventually around 175,000 pages of information, featuring the names of millions of New Yorkers, will be online. So what do we have now? Initially the city directories can be accessed and browsed through Digital Collections. Expect to hear more on these datasets, and their implications for the Library's NYC Space/Time Directory soon. Where, for instance, were theaters on Broadway located overtime? Where did people live and work? Can we see in datasets derived from the information in the directories a history of commuting? Where were cemeteries located in New York? What types of business were most prevalent? What were the different types of family names listed in New York City? How many people were listed in the directories? Where did our ancestors live in the city during the years covered? The potential for new knowledge creation is limitless. ![]() For instance, and I'm speaking theoretically here, researchers might be able to track addresses across directories. The directories will eventually be text searchable, enabling researchers to create new datasets. Initially the city directories will be browseable, through NYPL Digital Collections, but the Library wants to make the directories work harder, to integrate them with other digital collections: maps, deeds, census records, family histories, prints, photographs, and so on. Now anyone and everyone will be able to access the directories free of charge, online. The Library has, where possible, scanned the directories, presenting them as hi-res, color surrogates of the original print copies. In many instances, the directories were reproduced from microfilm only. One or two could be found on the Internet, but coverage there was patchy. what we now might call Manhattan) were available only in the Library, either on microfilm, or via subscription databases, the original print directories now being too delicate to be regularly served to patrons. Previously the directories for New York City (i.e. Directories record the city's built and commercial history. In addition to textual information, city directories feature many images, including maps, illustrations of buildings, and advertisements, occasionally printed on colored or decorative paper. Not for nothing were the early directories often referred to as almanacs. They record the price of travel and postage, the kinds of occupations undertaken in the city, the layout of streets, and at what time the sun was predicted to rise and set. City directories contain much more than lists of names and addresses. ![]()
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