The Museum of the City of New York's Toy Collection documents the social history of childhood in New York City, through everyday patterns of play and the history of consumption. The collection contains over 10,000 toys and amusements used by New Yorkers from the Colonial Period to the present day.

Holdings include:

• The Stettheimer Doll House of the 1920s, with its miniature art gallery of original paintings and sculptures by New York's foremost avant-garde artists of the period.

• Doll houses and their furnishings, including Ann Anthony's Pavilion (1769); the Shelton-Taylor house (1835); the Brett house (1838); the Goelet house (1845); the Elder house (1865); and Altadena's house (1895) -- made for and used by their families for generations.

• Antique dolls; toys, games and puzzles; soldiers, trains and boats; children's books; puppets and toy theaters; optical and transformation toys; banks; animals; cast-iron and tin toys; toy china and silver; and printed and handmade paper dolls and toys.

• A small but growing group of toys that were manufactured in the city and which reflect New York City's former prominence as a toy production center and its present role as the business center of the toy trade. In this category are the 400 sample toys and related archives from Clare Creations, a New York City company that was a leader in the soft toy industry between 1940 and 1985.

For more information about the Toy Collection, please contact Collections Access at research@mcny.org or call 212-534-1672 extension 3399. For more information on the Museum's research policies, click here

For information about reproducing material from the collection, please visit Rights & Reproductions