A bicentennial in New York City

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2005 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

As the cover lines of this issue announce, the editorial pages this month celebrate the 200th anniversary of New York City's oldest continuously operating art institution--the New-York Historical Society. As is detailed in the articles that follow, the collections of the society grew quickly and the institution was compelled to seek larger quarters seven times over the course of a century. In 1908 the society settled into its current building (see the frontispiece), a limestone structure designed specially for it on Central Park West and enlarged with the addition of flanking wings in 1939.

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Not surprisingly, given its age, the society's mission has changed in step with museum practices. Since its inception the society has sought out manuscripts, other important documents, and even bits of ephemera that chronicle the history of New York City and its environs. In its earliest incarnation members concerned themselves with forming a collection of curiosities, natural history specimens, art, and relics. Later they concentrated on the acquisition of fine and decorative arts made and used by Americans, and more particularly New Yorkers.

Every January for the last fifty years, New York City has been the traditional gathering place for collectors, antiquarians, designers, and museum professionals who share an abiding interest in American fine and decorative arts. The centerpiece of what is familiarly known as "Americana Week" is the Winter Antiques Show, which takes place at the Seventh Regiment Armory at Park Avenue and Sixty-seventh Street between January 21 and 30. A benefit for the East Side House Settlement in the South Bronx, this year the show features seventy-four American and international dealers in English, American, European, and Asian fine and decorative arts.

A more recent tradition is the loan exhibition installed squarely at the entrance to the antiques show. This year the show presents more than fifty of the New-York Historical Society's most important historical treasures and artworks. Designed by Stephen Saitas and sponsored by the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, the exhibition is entitled The New-York Historical Society Bicentennial: Celebrating Two Centuries of Collecting. Elegant pieces of colonial silver with impeccable provenances to generations of New Yorkers are accompanied by paintings by Hudson River school artists, furniture with historical associations, brilliantly colored glass lamps by Tiffany Studios, and folk art once owned by Elie Nadelman. Each day at 2:30 PM from January 24 through 28, curators and specialists affiliated with the historical society will deliver lectures on aspects of the collection, including Hudson River school paintings; silver; the work of John James Audubon; ceramics and glass; and Tiffany lamps. These lectures are free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis.

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For information about the antiques show, the benefit preview party on January 20, or to obtain a copy of the antiques show catalogue, telephone 718-292-7392 or consult the Web site (www.winterantiquesshow.com).

The bicentennial celebration continues on the west side of Central Park, where the historical society has organized a series of exhibitions to celebrate its anniversary. These are tightly focused shows that provide an illuminating look at the subject at hand while affording a fascinating window into the artistic and cultural life of New York City since the seventeenth century. A case in point is the exhibition on view through February 20 that is entitled Arriving in Style: Treasures of 18th-Century New York. It includes some sixty objects and documents related to a glorious coach purchased in 1771 by a scion of New York's mercantile elite, James Beekman (illustrated on p. 164, P1. V).

Like expensive automobiles today, horse-drawn coaches were status symbols in the eighteenth century, when only the richest could afford them. As is noted in the exhibition labels, a traveler to New York in 1716 saw only two coaches in the entire province, and by the late 1760s only twenty-six residents of New York City owned a coach. When Beekman purchased his coach from his agent in London, he was already the proud possessor of a chaise, a chariot, and a phaeton. The Beekman coach is all the more remarkable for the fact that it is one of only three known eighteenth-century examples to survive in the United States in such pristine condition. The coach owes its survival to the Beekman family, who preserved it with great care until it was donated to the society in 1911 by James Beekman's great-grandson Gerard Beekman. When James Beekman acquired the coach he paid extra to have the body painted, varnished, and decorated with the family coat of arms. The exhibition includes many pieces that bear the family's arms (from carvings to silver and a bookplate), for in the colonial period arms were symbols of one's aristocratic lineage.