Welcome to the Museum of the City of New York's Collections Portal

Launched in December 2010, the Collections Portal is the public side of a digitization project that enables Web visitors to discover ever-larger portions of the Museum's collections. We currently offer nearly 100,000 images of New York City, thousands of which have never been available for public viewing. And this is just a start - more material will be added to the portal as imaging and cataloging work is completed. Be sure to use the magnifying glass icon below each picture to explore the images with the zoom feature - we captured the objects at an exceedingly high resolution, enabling you to investigate even the smallest details of these historic images.

We are constantly working to improve this site and continually updating the cataloging. If you notice any errors, or have additional information about an image, please let us know by emailing collections@mcny.org. We would also be happy to hear from you if you have any observations or suggestions for the site itself and how it works.

Students and educators are invited to view the Collections Portal Educator Guide. This instructional guide provides tools to explore these resources and inspire students investigation of New York City. The Portal provides incredible documentation of how the city has changed over time, and allows users to study the sources in precise detail.

Visit our Rights & Reproductions page if you're interested in using one of the images you find here, or would like to purchase a print. And keep checking back to see what new images we've added.

The generosity of our donors has enabled us to proceed with the digitization of the collections and the creation of this site. We are very grateful to them for making possible this huge institutional step forward.

If you would like to help pave the way for our continued progress, please send a check in any amount made out to the Museum of the City of New York to the attention of Polly Rua, Vice President, Institutional Advancement, Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10029.

Major support for the digitization project has been provided by:

Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation

Leon Levy Foundation

Bloomberg Philanthropies

Charina Endowment Fund

Additional support has been provided by:

National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Humanities

Institute of Museum and Library Services

The Henry Luce Foundation

Thomas A. & Georgina T. Russo Family Foundation

The Coby Foundation

The David Berg Foundation, Inc.

Winston Foundation

James G. Dinan and Elizabeth R. Miller

Verizon Foundation

The William E. Weiss Foundation/Daryl Brown Uber

Hon. Melissa Mark-Viverito, New York City Council, District 8

Martin J. McLaughlin

Robert A. and Elizabeth R. Jeffe Foundation

Hon. Daniel R. Garodnick, New York City Council, District 4

Bruno A. and Mary Ann Quinson

The Bay and Paul Foundations

The Museum is also grateful for the support of:

Ira M. Resnick Foundation

David and Frances Eberhart Foundation

Frederick Loewe Foundation

Lemberg Foundation

The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Ann Ffolliott

Kevin Oram

Rita and Daniel I. Paul

Cynthia Wainwright

Wolfensohn Family Foundation

The Malkin Fund, Inc.

Charles Rosenblum

Fan Association of North America (FANA)

Atran Foundation, Inc.

Collections Available

How This Site Works

Ordering Reproductions

Collections Portal Educator Guide

Acknowledgments