Fales Special Collections: Historic Washington Square Park Ephemera & Material Culture

Exploring the Fales Library Special Collections at New York University was insightful and inspiring material for my final project. Mr. Mike Kelly was enthusiastic and incorporated personal insight into the material he carefully selected from the Fales archives to present to our class. Mr. Kelly noted that the Fales Library Collection houses 200,000 books that span 10,000 linear feet of shelving and he explained that Mr. Fales’ intellectual and aesthetic motivations are ever present in every aspect of the humanities based collection of historical, literary and artistic movements in New York City. Mr. Fales was primarily concerned with collecting English novels and publications that pertained to Downtown New York City. He also secured the largest collection of cookbooks and purchased the most extensive group of Louis Carole prints in North America. I was most fascinated by the early and mid 19th century books and trading card advertisements that Mr. Kelly presented to our class. These ephemera seemed to tell a story few history books could match. The actual material culture: telephone books, fashion advertisements, union strike cards and first edition novels seemed to more earnestly convey what life was like in around the park. I am personally inspired by the study of Victorian era material culture (specifically fashion) in and around Washington Park that spans from the mid 19th century the beginning of the 20th. I question in what ways popular Victorian fashion might have been different and reflective of a more diverse grouping of people, culture in, and around early Greenwich Village. Mr. Kelly explained that the Fales rare books collection, houses a collection of two volumes of bound issues of a magazine called LE BON TON. These publications are filled with fashion news and have full color illustrations of the very latest fashions that were emerging from London and France during the 19th century. Mr. Kelly also explained that there is a profusion of historical subject matter at the New York Historical Society under the topics of “clothing and dress.” Other highlights of our visit to the Fales Library Special Collections include beautiful, vintage Washington Square Park ephemera. A 1843 post card of the Astor Place Opera House and a first edition copy of “On the Road” are just a few of the fascinating forms of history as objects that the Fales Collection houses at New York University to provide students with inspiration and historical frames of reference.