Decorative Art Collection

Due to the Museum’s ongoing modernization of its landmark building, the Fifth Floor galleries, including the Rockefeller Rooms are closed as of Tuesday January 15. The last day of public access is Sunday January 13, 2008.

The Museum of the City of New York's Decorative Arts Collection had its origins in the earliest days of the Museum, born in a movement to preserve interiors of great New York homes that were being torn down to make way for new development in the 1920s. Today, the Collection has extensive holdings of furniture, domestic objects, and original interiors that shed light on the daily lives of New Yorkers from different eras.

Holdings include:

• Elements from rooms belonging to Stephen Whitney (ca. 1827), H. E. Pierrepont (ca. 1856), and H. H. Flagler (1906-1907).

• An outstanding collection of some 1400 pieces of New York silver

• Furniture documented to New York cabinet shops and warerooms, ranging from a dressing bureau made by Samuel Prince of New York, ca. 1770, to mid-20th-century dining furniture sold through a New York interior designer for a Queens model apartment.

• Chinese export porcelain owned by New Yorkers and stoneware vessels from the Crolius Pottery of lower Manhattan.

• Needlework created by New York women and schoolgirls, and household textiles of the 19th and 20th centuries.

• New York made and/or owned musical instruments, clocks, precious jewelry and watches, ceramics and glass, lighting devices, utensils, architectural elements and building materials, craft tools, sports equipment, traveling gear, and medical and scientific apparatus, dating from the 17th to the 20th century.

For more information about the Decorative Arts Collection, please contact Collections Access at research@mcny.org or call 212-534-1672 extension 3399.

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