The New York Transit Museum: Education to Archives

In my past life, I was a museum educator. This can sound a bit loftier than it is, but essentially, I taught visiting school groups at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn, New York. I had the pleasure (and sometimes displeasure) of leading classes of elementary school children on and off our vintage subway cars in our decommissioned 1930s subway station turned museum. 

I loved hearing their “oohs” and “aahs” as we walked down the stairs to the platform level (because when does that ever happen when you’re racing to catch a train?) and their squeals of glee as we would touch the porcelain painted handholds and rattan seats of yore. 

It’s amazing how touching history can amaze even the tiniest kindergartener. 

My direction changed when I visited the museum’s archives on a project for the education department. I had never been to an archive before and I was filled with a sense of excitement as I took the elevator down to the basement of the MTA. The archivists brought me a few boxes, handed me some white gloves and let me have at it. Needless to say, I left that day with way more photocopies than I needed for my project and a new interest in archives. 

Now, as a first year archives student at UW Madison, I contacted Carey Stumm, the New York Transit Museum archivist, in honor of archives month and the 109th anniversary of the New York City Subway. 

Before coming to the New York Transit Museum in 2009, Carey worked as a librarian in the Digital Collection of the Experience Music Project and as a Research and Cataloging Associate at the Museum of the Moving Image. Her interest in archival material eventually drew Carey to the Transit Museum, “although I've worked with 3-D material, I've always been drawn to the photographs, maps, posters, ephemera and documents. The last museum I worked in I concentrated on a lot of their archival collections. When I saw the job posted for the position at NYTM of archivist I immediately applied.” 

At NYTM, Carey manages two archives spaces, one in Brooklyn and another in lower Manhattan, two archives technicians and several aids and interns. The archive sees between 60 and 70 researchers each month, both internal and external. Internal researches include museum staff as well as MTA contractors, in-house press and product development. The archive sees a diverse group of external researches as the archive boasts a specific, but high demand, collection. Television and film staff working on costume and set design come to the archives for the immense photo collection depicting historic New York, as well as authors, contractors, architects, community development groups and anyone else with an interest in historic New York. 

As for Carey’s favorite collection, she explains, “we received a large collection of 45,000 photographs of (mostly) Brooklyn trolleys a few years ago. It's a collection that I had heard about for years and nobody knew where it was. Tracking it down was an adventure and the organization and documentation of the collection taught us all quite a bit about the history of trolleys in New York. I just wish we had an actual trolley in the collection!” 

Trolley or no trolley, there is a special place in my dusty little archival heart for the New York Transit Museum as the institution that led me to pursue archives.  

-Mary Kate Kwasnik