New York Historical

The story

In 2005, New York's oldest museum mounted its largest thematic exhibition in 200 years on a subject it had never once addressed: slavery in New York. Founded in 1804, the institution spent two centuries looking elsewhere before finally turning toward that history. The granite York & Sawyer building on Central Park West has anchored this corner since 1908, and a 2011 renovation opened it further to the public, adding a children's museum inside. It dropped "Society" from its name only in 2024, a small signal of a longer reckoning with who history is actually for.