Words on Pictures

From the Annual Report of the NYPL Picture Collection, July 1948 thru June 30, 1949 "The gamut of subjects asked for at the Picture Collection is astounding, particularly as neither idle curiosity, nor hobby spurred the requests. Pictures on widely separate subjects were necessary for a Television broadcast to materialize, for men's ties to be manufactured, for an architect to landscape a cemetery, for a surgeon to give a paper on stumps." ... "Television with its requirements for rapidly organized productions began to use this collection heavily. Several hundred changes of costume are prepared weekly, research must be done quickly and since there is no other source from which pictures on the whole history of fashion may be borrowed, these files became indispensable." Excerpt From: Anthony T. Troncale. Words on Pictures: Romana Javitz and the New York Public Library's Picture Collection. Television programs - CBS  Toast of the Town  with (front row, l to r) ...

New York Times announces opening of the NYPL Picture Collection.   The New York Times was one of the first newspapers to announce the opening of the Picture Collection in 1916 and indeed it was an early user of its files. The New York Times was  famous for its pictorial supplements, published in rotogravure, the high point of photo illustration for its time. Shown here after the article is a page from one of the supplements celebrating Shakespeare's 300th Anniversary of his birth.  Following the article is a photograph of a rendering of Shakespeare, ca. 1870,  in the current Picture Collection files.  ~~~~~ Excerpts from  New York Times, June 4, 1916 “Pictures as well as books may now be borrowed from the New York Public Library which has just opened a circulating picture collection, the first of its kind in this city. The collection includes pictures from the Shakespearean Supplements recently published by The New York Times and also pictures from The...