Children's toys

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 2005 by Amy A. Weinstein

Toys are occasionally incorporated into exhibitions at the society when other museum collections fail to offer illustrative materials. An exhibition on the history of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) mounted on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the publication of the novel, for instance, used one of the few African American dolls in the collection to explore racism in American literature and popular culture. Derided in the twentieth century for its derogatory racial stereotyping, the Topsy-turvy doll (Pl. I), actually two cloth dolls joined at the waist, each with her face concealed by the other's wide skirts, enjoyed great popularity throughout the mid- and late nineteenth century. In the exhibition, the doll was employed not only to evoke the characters of Eva and Topsy, but also to explore new interpretations of their social significance.

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The recent gift of the seminal collection of approximately five hundred nineteenth-century American board and table games amassed by Ellen and Arthur L. Liman (1932-1997) significantly expanded the depth and breadth of the society's holdings and spurred new donations of modern-era games, including some that they inspired, such as Monopoly and Scrabble. (9) A rotating thematic selection of the Liman Collection games, many with illustrations of nineteenth-century America in vivid graphics and intense coloration made possible by the new technique of chromolithography, may be seen in the society's Henry Luce III Center for the Study of American Culture.

While toys and dolls are not currently a collecting priority, the society's wide-ranging interests in American history sometimes leads to new acquisitions of toys that add rich layers of meaning to significant events. The society's 2004 bicentennial coincided with the centennial of the deadly fire aboard the East River steamboat General Slocum, and the poignant bequest of two dolls cherished by its youngest survivor, Adella Liebenow Wotherspoon (1903-2004). At the age of twenty months, Adella lost both of her sisters when the pleasure boat sank; she kept their dolls, one with the painted face of a laughing toddler, the other of a little girl with a bisque head and shoulder-length hair, for the rest of her long life. The most recent gift to the toy collection is a French lady doll.

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From whirligigs to stereoscopes, from toy soldiers to toy kitchens, from horse-drawn fire engines to subway cars, the New-York Historical Society houses many toys illustrative of their day and the children who played with them.

(1) Before the development of commercial toy manufacturers, toys such as rag dolls and carved wooden figures were made at home. Beginning in the nineteenth century, European toys were imported into the United States in large numbers, with many importers based in New York City. Wholesalers, also based there, made toys and toy parts (such as ceramic doll heads, sold with and without doll bodies), available to the American public. American toy-makers, such as the game manufacturer McLoughlin Brothers (1854-1921), were also based in New York City. After the Civil War, makers of cast-iron and tin-plate toys established factories in New York State, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, and made metal toys until World War II.