Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on-demand, I am really grateful you are here. A programming note, President Biden will be speaking at 1:00 PM today to address the situation in Israel and Gaza. We will bring you those remarks live along with NPR'S analysis afterward, and stay with WNYC for continuing coverage. At 3:00 PM, we'll bring you the BBC Newshour, followed by All Things Considered at 4:00.

Coming up on our show today, we'll speak with journalist Jenna Flanagan about her new podcast After Broad and Market, which revisits the 2003 murder of a queer, Black 15-year-old girl. The plan is, pending the President's address, that we'll be joined by Dr. Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett, the authors of an excellent new book called This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained. That is in the future. Let's get this hour started with 100 years of the Museum of the City of New York.

Pop quiz. What do these things have in common: a giant wrench used to build the Brooklyn Bridge, a white suit that belonged to writer Tom Wolfe, a Christmas card from Zelda Fitzgerald, a cast of the right hand of Heavyweight World Champ Jack Johnson, circa 1909, and a prop from Cats, the musical? That eclectic group of objects are part of an upcoming exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. It's called People, Place, and Influence: The Collection at 100, and it marks the museum's centennial by highlighting some of the deeper cuts from the museum's collection, as well as some items that are new or haven't been displayed before. The exhibit opens this Friday, which is the start of the weekend celebration marking the museum's centennial.

Joining me now to talk about both of these things is MCNY curator, Lilly Tuttle. Lilly, welcome back to All Of It.

Lilly Tuttle: Hey, Alison.

Alison Stewart: And full disclosure, I love the Museum of the City of New York. I'm on their centennial committee. I also voice some of the audiobooks featured in the exhibition, This is New York. I'm very excited for this conversation. Tell us a little bit about the museum's origins for people who don't know.

Lilly Tuttle: Sure. The museum was founded in 1923, which was really a time of incredible change in New York. A lot of the Gilded Age mansions along Fifth Avenue were actually being torn down. People were downsizing, moving to apartments, moving out of the city. At the same time, the city had undergone tremendous demographic change in the previous decades due to record immigration through Ellis Island.

All of which is to say there was a lot of change afoot, and there were some few people who were interested in really documenting the city as they saw it changing around them. At the same time, there were some really notable families who were interested in getting rid of things as they downsized; hence, the origins of the museum's collection.

Alison Stewart: The museum itself, when you approach it, it's like a stately manor. It looks like it was a private home at one time.

Lilly Tuttle: It does indeed, and one of the things I enjoy telling people on tours is that it was not a private home. It was not a private home or a club. It was built to be the home of the Museum of the City of New York. It was designed by the architect Joseph Freedlander in sort of a neocolonial style. It has always been our home. We did a large-scale renovation and modernization that wrapped in 2016, but that building has always been the Museum of the City of New York.

Our first home was at Gracie Mansion, if you can believe it, which quickly proved to be an inhospitable place for a museum for a variety of reasons. In 1929, we broke ground. I wasn't there, but ground was broken for the new museum, which opened to the public in 1932.

Alison Stewart: The museum; it is a museum, but it's kind of this interesting mix. It's a museum, it's a little bit of a historical society, but it's not either of one of those independently. How do you describe the mission?

Lilly Tuttle: That's a great question. Really, it is our job to document New York City, to explain New York City and to help people understand New York City. You are indeed correct. We are not a historical society, nor are we an art museum. We sometimes say we are New York storytellers. We really try not to focus too much on celebrating the city, but really understanding and documenting this complex and ever-changing metropolis.

Alison Stewart: Hey, listeners, get in on this conversation. What items do you think represent New York City: people, place, and influence? What items do you want to see the Museum of the City of New York add to its collection? Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call in and join us on the air, or you can text to us at that number. Our Instagram and the site formerly known as Twitter, both available, @allofitwnyc. What items do you think represent New York City? My guest is Lilly Tuttle. We are talking about the Museum of the City of New York's People, Place, and Influence: The Collection at 100. It opens this Friday. It'll be up through April 2024.

When these three topics-- people, place, and influence, why these three tent poles?

Lilly Tuttle: That's a great question. I'll say, it was really hard to take our vast collection and think about buckets in which to organize things that would make sense to the public, but looking at people, place, and influence as the three organizing categories, I think allows the visitor to understand the purpose and the intention behind the museum's collection.

Looking at place in particular, one of the early objectives of the museum's founders, early curators was to create a physical or a visual document of the city. As the city was changing so rapidly at this time, they really wanted a record of what the city looked like over time, so we have a very rich collection of prints and photographs and maps and all sorts of visual records of how the city looks.

Likewise, for people, we don't really collect people, but what we do collect is stories about people and the rich tapestry that is this city, our diverse communities, and just all of the interesting figures who have come to this city and made a new life for themselves, or some of the really amazing New Yorkers that have material in the collection who come from the worlds of theater or politics or all different sectors within the city.

Then influence is the biggest category in the exhibition. That's where we talk about the razzle-dazzle of New York, the magic of the city, and all of the ways in New York, it is in many different ways completely influential, perhaps the most influential American city, in art, culture, theater, design, fashion. It's really a way to talk about all the things that are made in New York and the way in which New York projects style.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. We are going to speak with, and I hope I pronounce your name correctly, Nzinga calling in from Brooklyn.

Nzinga: Yes.

Alison Stewart: You're on the air.

Nzinga: Yes. Hello?

Alison Stewart: Hi. Yes.

Nzinga: Hi. How are you doing? I just want to thank you for doing these segments. I listen to them every day going to work, and much-needed discussion. Yes, so I heard the question about what kinds of exhibitions we would be interested in seeing at the City Museum of New York. I'm an artist, I'm also Muslim, but I would love to see some more shows maybe on a little bit of a comprehensive historical look at the Black Muslim community in New York and its impact on popular culture, on art as well and [sound cut] [inaudible 00:08:31]

Alison Stewart: Oh, we're losing you, but I think we got the gist of your comment, Nzinga. Thank you for calling in. We got a text that says, "A protest placard, a shirtwaist, a baseball hat, a bagel, a token, and a Metro card." There's a lot to unpack in that text. How about, where is transportation represented in this show?

Lilly Tuttle: That's a great question. Transportation is represented in many different places, but I think in the category of place, and we have some great photography of infrastructure in New York City. One of the big- I would say, one of the biggest objects in the whole show that is related to transportation is a massive, massive wrench that was used in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Just looking at the scale of that wrench--

Alison Stewart: How big is that wrench?

Lilly Tuttle: That big. I'm holding up my arm, so this is not great for radio, but it's probably about six-feet long.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Lilly Tuttle: Yes, it is huge. I think it's one of those great objects that shows more than tells what a herculean effort it was to build the Brooklyn Bridge. Just seeing that wrench tells you an enormous amount.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's fascinating. A six-foot wrench. Let's talk about some other items. Joe Louis' mouthguard, and you have a cast of boxers' fists. I mentioned Jack Johnson. What is the significance of those, and specifically, to New York?

Lilly Tuttle: I should clarify, it's a cast of Joe Louis' mouthguard. I hope that doesn't freak people out more or less. [laughter] There was a dentist back in the day who made the casts for- he made the boxers' mouthguards. He was so fascinated by these boxers, I guess, making these mouthguards for them over and over again, that he was also very interested in their hands.

Alison Stewart: Interesting.

Lilly Tuttle: One of the weirder but more interesting things that we have in our collection are these casts of the fists of notable boxers. At the same time, we also have the cast that was used to make Joe Louis' mouthguard. Jack Johnson's fist and the cast of Joe Louis' mouthguard are on display next to each other. It's a great piece of boxing history, sports history in New York City, it is astonishing how big Jack Johnson's fist is, and it's a little essence of Joe Louis in the gallery.

Alison Stewart: Forgive me for not knowing this. Are these two men connected to New York, or is it just the New York City boxing scene?

Lilly Tuttle: It's really the New York City boxing scene. New York was-- through Madison Square Garden, New York was really a center of boxing, and fight night at the Garden was a major New York event of celebrity and spectacle.

Alison Stewart: Let's take another call. Mike is calling from East Rockaway. Hi, Mike. Thanks for calling All Of It. What would you want to see in a collection about the city of New York that says New York?

Mike: Thanks for taking my call. I love your program.

Alison Stewart: Thank you.

Mike: How about the clotheslines that they [unintelligible 00:11:45] a washboard, the buckets? Pictures of old apartments with the old TV?

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] I like the way [crosstalk]--

Mike: I'm going back to my--

Alison Stewart: Go ahead.

Mike: I'm going back to my grandparents' house that we used to visit. It was a railroad apartment. Bathtub in the kitchen, you would shower in the kitchen. The old TV. Grandpa climbing out the window to take care of his potted plants and his tomatoes.

Alison Stewart: Mike, you're painting a vivid image of a time in New York. I can hear Mike going back in his memory about his family. Listeners, what items do you think represent New York City, the people, the place, the influence of the city? What items would you like to see? If you could add something to this particular collection, what would you add? Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can join us on air, or you can text to us at that number. Also, social media is available to you, @allofitwnyc.

My guest is Lilly Tuttle. We are talking about People, Place, and Influence: The Collection at 100. The collection, of course, is the Museum of the City of New York, which is celebrating its centennial. How did you decide to group objects together?

Lilly Tuttle: Well, that's a great question, and this was definitely a daunting exhibition just because our collection is so vast. There were certain moments where we felt like, okay, we put, for example, Marian Anderson in people, even though we're showing a gorgeous concert gown that she wore in the 1940s. It's green taffeta, it's stunning, but it's not-- in that instance, for example, that's about Marian Anderson and her role as a path-breaking singer. She had previously lived down the street from the museum. That's a people story.

Whereas influence, we have fashion that is made by New Yorkers. People like Halston, or the gown worn by Patti LuPone in Act II of Evita. It's where you look at the object and you say, "What story does this tell about the city? What does this give us as we try to understand this complex metropolis over these 100 years?" Really thinking about different ways to understand these poles of people, place, and influence.

Alison Stewart: When you said the collection is vast, how big is the collection of the Museum of the City of New York?

Lilly Tuttle: The number that we cite is 750,000 objects-

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Lilly Tuttle: -which is pretty big. It's a really cool, idiosyncratic collection where we have photography and decorative arts, and theatrical costume and fashion. We have a huge theater collection. We have toys, we have dolls, we have dollhouses, we have a firetruck. One of the things we want people to come away from with this exhibition is an appreciation for what it means to collect around a city and a city like New York City.

Alison Stewart: Yes. I remember when I was working on a project, the definition of a collector versus somebody who just acquires things is it's with purpose. The 'with purpose,' sounds like it is the documenting of the city. What is the oldest piece, you think?

Lilly Tuttle: The oldest piece in the exhibition is a Dutch cabinet that was made in London by Dutch artisans in the 1680s and then brought over to New York during the colonial era around 1700. It is beautiful. It's in incredible condition. It's a wood cabinet with inlay, these vegetal/floral designs on it. I will say that when we were installing the cabinet, we opened it up and it had this incredible interior world of drawers, and just the craftsmanship from that time period is just extraordinary.

I'll also say, one of the objects I'm most excited about is one of the oldest things for the collection, meaning it was one of the first things to come into our collection. It came in in 1927, and it's a doll that was sold at the Brooklyn Sanitary Fair during the Civil War at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which was then on Montague and Court Streets in Brooklyn Heights. It was a major moment for the Union war effort during the Civil War. She's this beautiful little doll with a little hat and she's so elegant, and it just speaks to this Victorian craftsmanship. She has a really interesting story.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Ken from Brooklyn. Hi, Ken. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Ken: Hi, Alison. Can you hear me?

Alison Stewart: You sound great.

Ken: Hi. Alison, I grew up, one of my first jobs was working on 42nd Street in the Brandt theaters. A lot of people don't know, they were live burlesque houses. The only one that's left, I think maybe three, the Empire, the Amsterdam, and maybe the Victoria. A lot of people don't know that all those theaters were owned by one family, the Brandt theaters. Also, all of the smutty stuff of Times Square. It's nice to talk about how it got cleaned up, what it looked like back then, and what it looks like now. That's my story. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Ken, love your story. Appreciate it. I love this from Instagram, "The classic blue and white coffee cup should definitely be in the museum."

Lilly Tuttle: Absolutely, yes, and that's one thing-- something like the coffee cup, or the previous caller who was talking about the apartment, remembering his grandparents' apartment, one of the big tensions that we try to highlight to our visitors in this exhibition is this balancing between the ordinary and the extraordinary, or the everyday and the elite. To be a city museum, that is actually one of the big challenges.

To be honest, a lot of our collection and our founding story is about people who were elites, who had mansions full of Tiffany silver and exquisite portraits and things related to the Founding Fathers that were brought into our collection, but it's always been part of the intention of the museum or since our early days to try to get into more storytelling around everyday people and the way people live, and what does it mean to be a New Yorker for the vast majority of people.

That's something that we really want our visitors to understand that tension a little bit, and it's certainly the direction that we have been going with our collection for a long time and want to continue to grow in for our next 100 years.

Alison Stewart: We'll take more of your calls after a quick break. What item do you think represents New York City: people, place, and influence? That's the name of the new exhibition opening at the Museum of the City of New York. We'll take more of your calls, 212-433-9692, and we'll have more with Lilly Tuttle after a quick break. This is All Of It.

This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest in studio is Lilly Tuttle from the Museum of the City of New York. We are talking about a fantastic new exhibition which is opening this Friday: People, Place, and Influence: The Collection at 100. The museum is celebrating its centennial. Let's talk about a couple other things that are on display, some things that have never been seen before. The white suit, a white suit, that belonged to Tom Wolfe. Tell us a little bit about-- can you tell me how you acquired the suit?

Lilly Tuttle: Absolutely. This had been a multiyear conversation with his family, with his wife who has been very generous and really welcoming to the museum. Tom Wolfe was just the preeminent New York author and documentarian, and just so associated with the Bonfire of the Vanities [crosstalk]--

Alison Stewart: Bonfire of the Vanities. Oh my gosh. Masters of the Universe.

Lilly Tuttle: He wore a white suit 12 months out of the year and was really known for his look and his style. When he passed, it was an opportunity for us to come together with his wife and think about whether we could take some of his wardrobe into our collection. We've been lucky enough to acquire a few of his suits, a hat, some glasses, a tuxedo.

There will be two different suits on view through the course of the exhibition. We'll rotate halfway through. For those of you who come now, you'll see a white suit with a hat, and then later on we'll have a tuxedo on view. There is a little audio guide stop that goes with it that was very graciously done by his son, talking about why his dad wore white suits and what it meant to him and the origin of that. It's a really cool piece that we've never had on view before.

Alison Stewart: There seems to be also a lot of clothing. A pair of evening pajamas that belonged to Lauren Bacall.

Lilly Tuttle: Yes. Lauren Bacall, who was born in the Bronx, she was a New Yorker, she worked a lot with a lot of designers, but she definitely worked a lot with Halston. Halston was one of those designers who really worked for a muse. Liza Minnelli is someone who's really associated with him, but Lauren Bacall was actually very close with him as well.

Lauren Bacall has a number of garments in our collection, including a bathing suit, which unfortunately we didn't make it into this show. Halston made a pair of black, spangled evening pajamas for Lauren Bacall, which are on display right next to the Tom Wolfe suit.

Alison Stewart: Very glamorous. It's a very glamorous part of the exhibition.

Lilly Tuttle: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Jean calling in from Ulster County. Hi, Jean. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Jean: Hi. Thanks for having me. Okay, so I'm going to go to the mundane, having grown up in the city in the 1950s, and I think you have to have an elevator because New York is a city of sprawling up rather than out, the way LA is. You have to have a fire escape because all of the buildings that were built back in the day had fire escapes in order for you to get out, and that's how I used to get out of my house when I was grounded. Also, a tar roof because that was Tar Beach and that's where we went to hang clothes up on the roof. To me, that's just New York.

Alison Stewart: Jean, thank you for calling in. Place, where people live, that's a really huge part of being a New Yorker and what we talk about a lot. Where is how we live in the exhibition?

Lilly Tuttle: We have things related to children's play. For example, we have a stickball bat on view, which is part of our toy collection, but really reflects the way New York City kids have traditionally played on the sidewalk in streets. We don't tend to have backyards and playground- jungle gyms in our backyard, and so stickball is such a emblematic sport of New York City. We have pictures of kids playing in the streets. We have a bat on view to represent childhood in New York and playing in the streets.

Alison Stewart: That's great. Let's talk to Kathleen calling in from Montclair, New Jersey. Hi, Kathleen. Thank you for calling All Of It.

Kathleen: Well, thank you for having me. I want to tell you, I'm a born-and-raised South Floridian, and I used to come up to New York every year and go to the Met museum, and I used to love to collect the pins, the little clip-on metal pins. I have a whole collection of all different colors, and then when they changed from one style to another. I would love to see where they started from, like what kinds of things.

I was very disappointed when they went to stickers, I have to admit, but I understood it. That doesn't mean I had to like it, [chuckles] but that's what I would like. Because that's a good memory. My daughter is 48. When she was two, I brought her up here, and she's sleeping outside the Met, and I have one of the pins attached to her little pants. I have that framed in my living room now that I live up north in Montclair.

Alison Stewart: Kathleen, thank you for calling in. We've gotten a couple of these, the Horn & Hardart cafeteria. Representative of that-- can I tell you a story? I am friends with Marcy Hardart. As her wedding gift from her husband-- now she's Dr. Hardart. She's a pediatrician. He got a piece of the Horn & Hardart from the automat, and then they had it actually put in their kitchen when they renovated their kitchen. How cool is that?

Lilly Tuttle: How cool is that? I know. I know. We do have actually in our collection a coffee urn from Horn & Hardart and some signage from the automat. It's not on view in this exhibition, but we have shown it recently at the museum, so we hear you on the automat. I love the automat.

Alison Stewart: How about signage? Is there signage represented in this show at all?

Lilly Tuttle: I'm trying to think. I don't know that we have any big signage on view. The biggest things we have on view are the wrench. In terms of big things, we have a giant stained-glass window that was designed by Richard Morris Hunt who, your previous call will appreciate, designed the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. He also designed some stained-glass windows for a home in New York City because that's what people did back then. When that home was torn down, we took the stained glass into our collection, and we have this beautiful piece right when you walk into the gallery flanking the doorway.

Alison Stewart: Is recent history represented in this show?

Lilly Tuttle: Yes. Well, one of the most recent pieces we have in the show is a jacket by Supreme, which seems like a pretty trendy brand these days.

Alison Stewart: That's funny.

Lilly Tuttle: It's a Supreme jacket from 2018 and actually features- printed on it is a drawing by the graffiti artist Lee Quiñones known as Lee. It was a sketch for a mural that was shown at a gallery in 1981, but starting in the '90s, Supreme started collaborating with graffiti artists to make clothing that reflected their work. What's really cool is that we have the Supreme jacket. We also have the sketch that Lee did that's printed on the jacket, so we have the sketch and the jacket.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's excellent. Let's talk to Paul calling in from Washington Heights on line five. Hi, Paul. Thank you for calling in.

Paul: Oh, hi. Thank you. Well, I think one of the ways to tell the story of New York would be through restaurant menus from the high and mighty, like the original Russian Tea Room, to your local diner. I wonder if that's represented in the collection.

Lilly Tuttle: Thank you for that question. Not only is it represented in the collection, it's represented in the exhibition. Because outside the gallery where-- I should say, we have a space outside the gallery where we talk about the founding of the museum. We talk about who were some of the really early influential curators, and we talk about some of the weird and wonderful things as a city museum that we collect. Did you know that we collect children's shoes? You can learn a little bit about that out in the hallway.

We also collect things like menus, postcards and invitations. They're not the actual menus, but we have a whole drawer of facsimiles of menus that you can explore. Because we have a huge collection of things just representing the day-to-day in New York City, business cards, shopping bags, subway maps, because that's really what it means to document the city.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Anna from Queens. Hi, Anna. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Anna: Hi, how are you? Well, for me it's representing, I'll say a sewing machine because this is what I remember back of my grandmother. She migrated from Ecuador and late 50s, so now- her age, she was in her late 50s. She came here, and I'm talking here already like about 60 years ago, so you figure it out, so many, many decades ago.

A sewing machine represents, I will say, so much of an evolution because it's New York City, it's these people making these clothes and languages and pieces of garments. Also, from what I remember, she didn't speak the language, and now in these places, having that desire of collaborate, do something, and actually needles, buttons. I feel very strong that, that will be a lot of pieces of that that represent the city. That's my opinion.

Alison Stewart: Anna, thank you so much for calling in. I think we have time for one more call. Rick is calling in from Princeton, New Jersey. Hi, Rick. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Rick: Thanks for taking my call. I'd like to bring up a piece that I hope is not left out, which is 52nd Street, which was the jazz era. The jazz era in New York City was the greatest era of indigenous jazz, created right here in the United States in New York City. Count Basie and Duke Ellington. At my age, we used to be able to come in on a weekend and hear the greatest bands that you could possibly think of. It was like the Weimar Republic being in New York City because New York City is the greatest city in the world with all of its problems.

Alison Stewart: Rick, thank you for calling in. Rick is my segue to the weekend activities. What's happening this weekend?

Lilly Tuttle: Oh, boy. A lot is happening this weekend. Yes, we're kicking off our centennial celebration weekend at the museum. Everything starts on Friday. This coming Friday, which is the 13th of October, we have a Tin Pan Alley concert. It's called Tin Pan Alley Hits of the 1920s. Plus, the Uptown Jazz Speakeasy. It's kind of a Roaring Twenties theme party, a nod to the decade that the museum was founded. We, of course, want people to put on their best 1920s attire, grab your dancing shoes, and it's going to be just a really fun jazz-age party with a modern twist.

Then Saturday, we are hosting our annual Keys to the City Scavenger Hunt, which is a nod to movies set in Central Park. The scavenger hunt will be in scavenger hunt, out and about on the streets of New York, and really with these cinematic clues around the museum's centennial exhibition, which is called This is New York. It's a really great outing for the whole family. Then also on Saturday, and this really you got to get there for this, we will be giving out free Amy's Bread cupcakes to the first 100 people who arrive to the museum every hour. I will say it again-

Alison Stewart: Every hour?

Lilly Tuttle: -free cupcakes.

Alison Stewart: [chuckles] Wow. That's enough to get me up there [crosstalk]--

Lilly Tuttle: They're really good.

Alison Stewart: Aside from the museum being awesome.

Lilly Tuttle: Yes.

Alison Stewart: You know I love the museum.

Lilly Tuttle: Then on Sunday, we are having a family day celebration, which is, again, more fun for the whole family. A silent disco party, a story time, arts and crafts, hopscotch double dutch. It's really going to be a super-fun weekend of scavenger hunt, family time, and free cupcakes.

Alison Stewart: It all kicks off this Friday, October 13th, People, Place, and Influence: The Collection at 100. My guest, even my guest callers, thank you so much to everybody who called in and texted, as well as Lilly Tuttle. Have a great weekend opening.

Lilly Tuttle: Thank you, Alison.

 

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