BROOKLYN, March 28, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The NYU Tandon School of Engineering today announced it has been awarded a highly competitive $260,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize the City Record. No other city of New York’s size and importance provides a comparable historical database.
“The City Record is one of New York City’s oldest continuously published newspapers available every weekday, except for legal holidays, without fail since June 24, 1873.
“We are pleased to acknowledge the National Endowment for the Humanities continuing support for preservation of the nation’s historical documents and applaud NYU Professor Jonathan Soffer’s commitment to making information about New York City government available. Successful completion of the project to digitize the City Record and make it available online via the City’s government publications portal will provide limitless opportunities for research into a little-known, but rich resource for the study of New York City,” said Pauline Toole, Commissioner, New York City Department of Records & Information Services.
“The enormous corpus of data produced by this project, thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities, represents a major contribution to the community of researchers studying the history of New York City’s built environment. meeting minutes of the City Council and the Board of Estimate
contracts, payments, and bids for water, sewers, and streets
weekly reports on mortality and health and meteorological data
the disposition of law suits against the city,
documents on the construction of major historic buildings, such as the New York Public Library at 42d Street and the American Museum of Natural History,
thousands of documents that touch on the fabric of everyday life in New York City, such as the 1873 regulations for driving cattle through the streets of Manhattan, even the very first traffic code for automobiles (1901). In addition to programs at its main campus in downtown Brooklyn, it is closely connected to engineering programs in NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai, and it operates business incubators in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn.
