By the Numbers: New York in 101 Objects

Two years ago, Sam Roberts, urban affairs correspondent for The New York Times, wrote a column called “A History of New York in 50 Objects,” inspired by the British Museum’s and BBC Radio’s compilation “A History of the World in 100 Objects.” He invited readers to add to his list in the comments section, bringing responses from hundreds of people around the world.

The overwhelming reaction caused Roberts to expand his list of urban artifacts, twice. In the end, his collection not only met but exceeded the number used to define the world’s history: 101.

Why 101? Because “[The] 100-object cap proved too confining. Call it a conceit, but doing justice to the history of a city this big took 101,” Roberts writes with a wink in the introduction to his new book, A History of New York in 101 Objects (Simon & Schuster, $30.00), a compendium of the material things that define our city.

A native New Yorker and veteran city reporter, Roberts developed his own, strictly subjective criteria for the items on the list, which include a Tiffany & Co. sterling silver subway throttle and a door covered in graffiti. There could be no people—neither dead nor living (in other words, no Ed Koch)—and the objects, generally speaking, could not be “too much bigger than a breadbox” (so no Staten Island Ferry). They had to actually exist—to have survived to the present day “in some form.”

And no ephemera: These are things that are meant to endure, to have legs and be meaningful decades from now. Significantly, they had to be game-changers, “to have played some transformative role in New York City’s history or they had to be emblematic of some historic transformation,” Roberts writes in his introduction.

But the story doesn’t end with the book. Now through Nov. 30, there is a fascinating exhibit at the New-York Historical Society that brings the pages of the book to life. More than 30 of these 101 collectibles, all culled from the society’s holdings, are on display in a small, dimly lit room on the second floor, tangible proof of their existence.

The objects presented span some 500 years of the city’s history and, taken with the rest, constitute “a” history not “the” history of Gotham. Actually, “my” history, Roberts concedes. Each item evokes a person, an event, an idea or a movement that is part of the city’s collective memory and says something about the forces that shaped the metropolis as we know it today.

Some of the chosen emblems are quite familiar and ordinary, even kitschy, while others are less familiar and rather arcane. Some pertain to serious events and issues, while others are just fun. They range from a bagel, a subway token, and a black-and-white cookie to a Civil War draft lottery-wheel, shoes belonging to a three-year-old girl who perished in the 1904 General Slocum steamboat disaster, and a slice of transatlantic cable, first used by Queen Victoria to send an 88-word telegram.

NYC natives and transplants alike will revel in the parade of memorabilia, which was intended to be somewhat unconventional while at the same time revealing. The show begins with an arrowhead, an oyster shell, and an English-Low Dutch dictionary and concludes with a metal button from the Metropolitan Museum (retired in 2013), an AIDS “Act-Up” sticker, and, chillingly, a small jar of dust gathered by society curators in the aftermath of 9/11.

In between there is a pink “Spaldeen” and a mounted copy of the front page of Daily News, dated October 30, 1975, with the notorious headline: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” The price to readers: 15 cents. The price to Ford (who never used those precise words): a loss to Jimmy Carter in the presidential election the following year, the exhibit label gleefully explains, maintaining a correlation between Ford’s initial refusal to bail out the city when it was on the verge of bankruptcy and his subsequent political demise.

So wander over to the New-York Historical Society and brush up on your Big Apple history. But bear in mind: these objects represent more than a history of New York. Events and innovations here spilled over to the rest of the country. Roberts invokes E.B. White to make the point: “New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village—the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!”

“A Brief History of New York: Selections from A History of New York in 101 Objects” at the New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, at 77th Street. Now through November 30, 2015