Primary Sources

4079 Albany Post Road, Hyde Park
FDR was the most important American politician of the twentieth century, and large parts of this collection have been digitized – over 800,000 documents.The archive includes FDR’s personal correspondence and official government papers, plus the papers of many of the administration’s top officials and ephemera from the Roosevelt era.

Digital library that provides access to primary sources from the collections of libraries, archives, museums and historical societies located in the following counties of New York State: Columbia, Greene, Dutchess, Ulster, Sullivan, Rockland, Orange, Putnam, and Westchester. Historical newspapers from the region can be found at their companion site: HRVH Historical Newspapers

Science Library, 3rd floor, Uptown Campus
Holds the New York State Modern Political Archive (NYSMPA) which documents the work of individuals and private interest groups concerned with New York State public policy issues.

"The collections in New York Heritage represent a broad range of historical, scholarly, and cultural materials held in libraries, museums, and archives throughout the state. Collection items include photographs, letters, diaries, directories, maps, books, and more."

Provides access to records of enslaved persons and slave holders in New York state from 1525 though the Civil War.

Cultural Education Center, Empire State Plaza
Contains material that document all operations of state government going back to the colonial era.

Focuses on upstate New York. The time period involved extends from the 18th century to the present, but the majority of the documentation is from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Cultural Education Center, Empire State Plaza
Includes archival collections of prominent New Yorkers, such as the Schuyler and Van Rennselaer families. The place to go for Albany’s Dutch past. The New Netherland Research Center has been translating Dutch colonial records for several decades.

"Provides free online access to a wide range of newspapers chosen to reflect New York's unique history."

15 Dayton Avenue, Sleepy Hollow
Papers of the Rockefeller Foundation, which funded an array of philanthropic activities and research foundations during the 20th century.

This site digitally recreates life in Harlem, the center of African American intellectual life between the world wars.

"This site presents selections from the New-York Historical Society Library’s holdings, grouped into six online collections, including photographs of New York City, American manuscripts, maps and broadsides from the Revolutionary War era, manuscripts relating to slavery and African American history, Civil War materials, and the New-York Historical Society Quarterly journal. The site is expanding as the library continues to digitize its primary source materials relating to the history of New York and the United States.The N-YHS digital collections are presented on this site through an open-source software platform, Islandora."

This New York City factory fire was one of the worst industrial accidents in U.S. history. 146 workers, mostly young, immigrant women, perished in this sadly preventable fire. The State of New York set up a Factory Investigating Committee to ensure that disasters like this never happened again. This site fully documents the fire and the resulting efforts to regulate workplace safety in New York State.