Fireworks off the Bridge, 1883. Artist unknown; drawn for the Unexcelled Fireworks Company. NYC Municipal Archives. Well, …not always. Many of our most remarkable and iconic collections made circuitous and uncertain voyages to the Archives. The story of the Brooklyn Bridge drawings is a good example of the precarious journey of government records as they evolve from the “working” records of a city agency, to historically important archival documents. It also allows us to reflect on the origins of the Archives, now one of the largest repositories of historical government records in North America, and the challenges we face in caring for our world-class collections. The Brooklyn Bridge drawings, long-acknowledged as one of the jewels in the crown of the Archives collections, document the original construction and subsequent alterations of the 1,596-foot steel suspension bridge connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn. At the time of its completion in 1883, the bridge was the longest in the world and was an important technological achievement. The 8,706 drawings in the Bridge collection span from 1867 to 1938. They were produced by architects and engineers who developed techniques for bridge construction that were unknown or considered unproven among their profession at that time. Many of the drawings in the collection are the work of the most celebrated American engineers and architects of the nineteenth century, such as John and Washington Roebling, George McNulty, and Wilhelm Hildebrand. The largest of these drawings measures more than 34 feet in length.

Wilhelm Hildenbrand and Washington A. Roebling, New York Tower of the Brooklyn Bridge, 1873. NYC Municipal Archives. As obvious as their value and importance seems to us today, that was not always the case. Author David McCullough recounted the saga of the Brooklyn Bridge drawings in a lengthy magazine article in the December 1979 issue of American Heritage. He began the story in 1969, when City engineer Francis P. Valentine was dispatched to a carpentry shop in a building on Kent Avenue underneath the Williamsburg Bridge in search of a drawing to repair a “trunnion” on the Brooklyn Bridge. There, Valentine found ten thousand original blueprints and drawings, packed into dozens of huge wooden file drawers, covered in dust and dirt. Hundreds were signed by renowned bridge engineer Washington Roebling.

Washington A. Roebling, Caisson in Position, Brooklyn Side, 1869. NYC Municipal Archives. In 1976, according to McCullough, the Municipal Archives and Brooklyn Museum had learned of the collection, each asserting a claim, with the Museum arguing they were better equipped to care for them. The logical question here is why was there a debate about which institution should take possession? As City-government records, was not the Municipal Archives their proper home? In theory, yes, but in the 1970s, the Municipal Archives was not the institution that it is today.

William Vanderbosch, Borings for the Foundation of the New York Tower. Undated. NYC Municipal Archives. A short detour into the history of the Archives might help answer this query. Records had been created in the course of conducting city business from the day the first European colonists stepped off the boat in New Amsterdam in the early 1600s. Over subsequent centuries, countless clerks and other civil servants squirreled away municipal records in filing cabinets and basements all over the city, mostly without regard to whether or not they needed to be preserved. The hero of this part of the story is Rebecca Rankin. Soon after her appointment as Municipal Reference Librarian in 1920, she observed historically important records haphazardly stored in municipal offices and determined to improve record-keeping practices. When Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia took office in 1934, Rankin persuaded him of the benefits of a records program. In 1939, he appointed her chair of a Municipal Archives Committee. After several years of work, the Committee recommended that the city develop a records management system, modeled on state and federal programs also being developed at that time.

Municipal Reference Librarian (at left) with Mayor Fioello LaGuardia and Latin-American scholarship students, ca. 1940. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia Photograph Collection. NYC Municipal Archives. Finally, on June 20, 1952, the day Rebecca Rankin retired from City service, the Municipal Archives and Records Center (MARC) officially opened. Rankin had already saved early mayoral and legislative records, and over the next twenty years the Archives continued to grow its collections of world-class historical materials. However, by 1973, the City’s finances were headed to a crisis. Half of the Archives’ staff had been laid off, leaving five people to care for a collection that measured in the tens of thousands of cubic feet. By the late 1970s, there was a general recognition that the chronically underfunded MARC was inadequate to the task of managing the City’s records—both contemporary and historical. Finally, in 1977, pushed by Municipal Librarian Eugene Bockman and City Council President Paul O’Dwyer, the City Council amended the City Charter to create the Department of Records & Information Services (DORIS). Along with establishing the agency, capital funding was allocated to renovate the City’s Hall of Records at 31 Chambers Street for the Archives. The new facility included conservation and microfilm laboratories and climate-controlled storage rooms.

The Surrogate’s Court, 31 Chambers Street, color transparency, 1939. Department of Public Works Collection. NYC Municipal Archives Although the Brooklyn Bridge drawing was transferred to Municipal Archives in 1976 just prior to the creation of the Department, the new amended Charter gave the Municipal Archives the explicit authority to “receive” archival city records, ending any future debate about the disposition of the City’s historical records. The story of the Brooklyn Bridge drawings does not end with the transfer to the Municipal Archives. In a way, that was just the prelude to the more challenging work of preserving and making the drawings available to the public. Beginning in the 1980s, with a series of grant-funded projects, the Archives cataloged, microfilmed, and performed basic conservation treatments on thousands of drawings.

Assistant Architect Wilhelm Hildenbrand included some delightful details in his 1877 plans for the Brooklyn Bridge. Municipal Archives Conservators working on the drawing spotted these two almost microscopic figures enjoying themselves on the bridge. A gentleman in a top hat appears to be serenading a lady holding a parasol. More recently, in 2019, the New York State Library awarded the Municipal Archives a grant to perform much-needed treatments on some of the largest drawings of the Brooklyn Bridge. The work includes mending and lining fragile items, stabilizing media, washing to remove harmful degradation products, reducing stains from mold, as well as creating new housings for long-term storage.

Municipal Archives Conservator Sara Bone photographs an oversize Brooklyn Bridge drawing, February 2020. NYC Municipal Archives. To supplement the grant funding, the Municipal Archives recently launched an “adoption” program inviting interested persons to donate funds to support these needed treatments of the Bridge drawings as well as other items from the collection. The program is administered by the Archives’ affiliated 501 c.3 organization, the New York Archival Society. For more information.