Jacob Morris, an independent scholar and educational consultant whose fields of interest include research into the Underground Railroad and work on a book currently titled Cold Fire: Exploring the Lives of Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, Malcolm X and Abraham Lincoln, was active in efforts to persuade New York City to rename a section of Chambers Street in honor of Frederick Douglass and his passage to freedom. Born a slave on a plantation in Maryland, Douglass succeeded in escaping from slavery in September 1838 after previous attempts had failed. Although his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, reveals how Douglass felt upon arriving and living in New York, it is intentionally silent about the details of his journey along the Underground Railroad and his place of landing. It has been determined, however, that after traveling by train and boat he arrived at the Chambers Street Dock, an area now comprised of landfill and the site of Stuyvesant High School. Working with residents of Battery Park City and Community Board #1, supporters of the street re-naming succeeded in their efforts when Mayor Bloomberg signed enabling legislation changing the names of forty-five streets and other public places on May 9, 2005. Frederick Douglass Landing street signs were posted on September 22, 2005.

Irma Rappaport (born 1914), a Hunter College graduate working as a secretary during the depression years, acquired this World's Fair bookmark while she was employed by the Exposition Souvenir Company. Acquiring the exclusive right to sell "novelties" on the fair grounds at Flushing Meadows, the company maintained eighty stands there and employed 325 workers, each day selling about $7,000 worth of merchandise, ranging from penny (three for five) postcards to $5.00 clocks. Mrs. Rappaport served as executive secretary to Mr. I. B. Ury, w ho ran the day-to-affairs of the business, which was owned by her uncle, Louis Katz. A veteran of the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition held in Chicago, Mr. Ury relied upon Mrs. Rappaport for composing his correspondence, handling telephone communications, and other activities that called for skills that differed from his merchandising expertise in the company's corporate offices at Forty-third Avenue and Ninety-seventh Place in Corona.

Irma Rappaport (born 1914), a Hunter College graduate working as a secretary during the depression years, gave this watch fob or key chain to her husband Bernard Rappaport (1914-1994) while she was employed by the Exposition Souvenir Company. Acquiring the exclusive right to sell "novelties" on the fair grounds at Flushing Meadows, the company maintained eighty stands there and employed 325 workers, each day selling about $7,000 worth of merchandise, ranging from penny (three for five) postcards to $5.00 clocks. Mrs. Rappaport served as executive secretary to Mr. I. B. Ury, w ho ran the day-to-affairs of the business, which was owned by her uncle, Louis Katz. A veteran of the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition held in Chicago, Mr. Ury relied upon Mrs. Rappaport for composing his correspondence, handling telephone communications, and other activities that called for skills that differed from his merchandising expertise in the company's corporate offices at Forty-third Avenue and Ninety-seventh Place in Corona. The key chain features three-dimensional surface decoration of the Trylon and Perisphere, two iconic symbols of the fair, and the year 1939. According to a New York Times article commenting on the history of souvenirs, 900 vendors were offering 12,000 designs and 26,000 different products as souvenirs of the fair, ranging from "lollipops to pianos."

Irma Rappaport (born 1914), a Hunter College graduate working as a secretary during the depression years, gave these cufflinks to her husband Bernard Rappaport (1914-1994) while she was employed by the Exposition Souvenir Company. Acquiring the exclusive right to sell "novelties" on the fair grounds at Flushing Meadows, the company maintained eighty stands there and employed 325 workers, each day selling about $7,000 worth of merchandise, ranging from penny (three for five) postcards to $5.00 clocks. Mrs. Rappaport served as executive secretary to Mr. I. B. Ury, who ran the day-to-affairs of the business, which was owned by her uncle, Louis Katz. A veteran of the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition held in Chicago, Mr. Ury relied upon Mrs. Rappaport for composing his correspondence, handling telephone communications, and other activities that called for skills that differed from his merchandising expertise in the company's corporate offices at Forty-third Avenue and Ninety-seventh Place in Corona. The cufflinks and key chain feature three-dimensional surface decoration of the Trylon and Perisphere, two iconic symbols of the fair, and the year 1939. According to a New York Times article commenting on the history of souvenirs, 900 vendors were offering 12,000 designs and 26,000 different products as souvenirs of the fair, ranging from "lollipops to pianos."

The donor, who visited the 1939 World's Fair as a child, recalls that her mother, Catherine Pichelmann Hill (1907-1991), purchased this ashtray at a Woolworth's in the Bronx as a souvenir of the fair.

The donor, who visited the 1939 World's Fair as a child, recalls that her mother, Catherine Pichelmann Hill (1907-1991) of the Bronx, purchased this fabric at a Manhattan department store with the intention of sewing kitchen curtains with it.

Located at 3 East 53rd Street, the Stork Club opened in 1929 as a speakeasy and soon came to typify the glamour of New York City and the cult of celebrity, a mystique it retained until it closed in the mid-1960s. Included among its guests and habitués were Walter Winchell; Joe Dimaggio and Marilyn Monroe; JFK and Jackie; Ernest Hemingway; J. Edgar Hoover; Frank Sinatra; and an array of actors, millionaires, mobsters, and others who sought and lent cachet to the nightclub. Club owner (and former bootlegger and convict) Sherman Billingsley's successful formula came to include showering favored guests with luxurious gifts, and he eventually marketed the club more broadly with signature items including perfume, cologne, and lipstick for women and shaving cream, cigars, and ashtrays for men, all imprinted with the club's signature image, a stork in top hot.