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Happy holidays!
Photo, above: Honorary trustee Margaret Palmer last Thursday at the NLMS Winter Celebration.
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Photo, above: NLMS educator & president Christina Corcoran teaches our third-grade Local History & Landmarks program in the NL Public Schools.
Student Art Show/
Open House
Today SUNDAY, December 18, 11 AM -5 PM, at the Custom House
Come see artworks from Harbor, Winthrop, and Nathan Hale third-grade students in the NLMS Local History & Landmarks program -- it's our 13th year. Refreshments! It's FREE! Support the kids, meet NLMS educator Christina Corcoran, & learn more about the program!
See you there.
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What's Up at the
Custom House
December 18, 2022
The museum is open 10 AM to 5 PM Wed., 1 to 5 PM Thurs. & Fri., 10 AM to 5 PM Sat., & 1 to 5 PM Sunday.
~ The museum takes a holiday break from December 24 through January 10, 2023 ~
Wednesday is the Winter Solstice: the shortest day & the longest night!
Photo, above: NL HarborCam Image from Dec 17, 2022 at 4:44 PM Clear Skies, Temp: 43F (feels like: 39F), RH: 53% Dew Point: 27F, Wind: 6.9mph WNW, Gust: ... Pressure: 29.7in, PCPN: hr 0in / day 0.03in.
Please contribute to our ANNUAL FUND.
Become a member sign up online.
We thank all our sponsors - ARPA - Bodenwein Foundation - Astor Place - Chelsea Groton Foundation - Community Foundation of Eastern CT - CT Humanities - CT Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts - Eleven+ - Frank Loomis Palmer Fund - Maco Family Fund - New London Cultural District - Robinson+Cole - State of CT - SVOG U.S. Small Business Administration - Veolia / NL Water Authority.
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New London waterfront, undated, ca. 1905, Frank L. McGuire Maritime Library of the New London Maritime Society, accessed December 16, 2022. | |
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Since its founding in 1983, the New London Maritime Society has built an eclectic collection of photographs related to local maritime history, some added by gift and some by purchase, called the Small Photographs Collection for lack of a better name. Some of the photographs were originally gathered, identified and organized by the late historian Harold J. Cone and include his extensive notes and labels.
Over the years the photographs have provided a valuable visual resource for many historians and journalists writing about the period when New London, a hub of maritime commerce since colonial times, including an important whaling fleet, was transformed industrially by steam, diesel and nuclear power. They record the vanished history of the city, including views of the harbor, waterfront activity, ships at anchor, regattas and scenes from the industrial past.
Today, as New London experiences further industrial transformation to support wind energy technology with the State Pier Project, and the construction of the Coast Guard Museum on the waterfront, these historic photographs are even more important to planners, researchers and local history fans.
Several months ago we applied for a grant to preserve some of our photographs. We did not get the grant but it inspired us to look again at the photographs collection as a whole. The result was a physical exhibition of actual photographs in the Custom House as well as this digital exhibition of some of the images. The online show will continue as we add more images from the collection in the future.
For this exhibition we have scanned some of the photographs. Many of the images appear as thumbnails. To enlarge to full-size, click on an image and zoom in to examine the details.
--Laurie M. Deredita, Librarian
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Opening January 11, 2023
The Small Photographs Collection
a new in-person exhibition
Photo: former NLMS head docent Bill LaRoue, ca. 1942, in a US Coast Guard uniform sewn for him by his mother. Bill's dad was a USCG engineer, who at this time taught at the Officers Training School at Ft Trumbull. Part of the NLMS Kids Ahoy collection.
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Help us fund a
The New London Maritime Society has commissioned a Preservation Plan for New London Ledge Lighthouse.
At $3,000+, we're 3.333% of the way there. Won't you help us preserve this beloved historic landmark?
Photo: the architects at Ledge Lighthouse.
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Saturdays & Sundays at 11 & 11:45 or by appointment
Visit Inside New London Harbor Lighthouse!
We give tours year-round!
Meet at the lighthouse, then climb 116 steps to the lantern room -- all the while learning the 262-year history of Harbor Light, one of the oldest lights in the country, and the tallest on Long Island Sound. The 1865 4th-order fresnel lens remains in the lantern room. Views at the top are spectacular!
Tours take 40 minutes. Book a tour for up-to five people: click to sign up online, or email to schedule a tour during the week. Tickets are $35, $30 for NLMS members, $25 youth through age 18. Sign up today!
Photo, above: earlier this year at Harbor Light. Christina Corcoran.
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SHOP at the MUSEUM
10% OFF of everything in the SHOP through December 23!
NLMS members always receive an additional 10% discount = 20%!
When you purchase a gift from the museum store, you help to sustain the museum’s service to the community and the public. Through December, for every $50 spent in the Shop, you will receive one dark chocolate sardine!
Photo, above: some of the great books available in the museum gift SHOP!
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Keep Up with What's Up
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Photo, below: Linda Heinz's piano-student recital was held Saturday evening at the Custom House. We'll have clips on facebook!
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This week at the Custom House...
The end of the year is always a time of reflection and for putting the house in order. Thanks to CT Humanities, we now have collections manager Denise Davies officially at work -- i.e. paid -- albeit for a little over one day per week and for a limited number of months. Denise is getting a handle on what has been the extraordinary growth of the museum collections. Across-the-board holdings have grown in fits and starts, with 40 years of donations from the community, objects amassed for specific exhibitions (like Kids Ahoy and the lighthouses), gifts of special collections (Thames Tow Boat, for example), and the purchase of individual items of particular importance to New London's maritime history. We're hoping for fruitful cross-connections as Denise posts the NLMS material to the state-wide CT Collections site. We will see as things develop.
As Laurie wrote, we did not fully realize what we had in terms of photographs until we paused to apply for a photo preservation grant; as we looked we discovered them everywhere! The core of our 'Small Photographs' collection comes from Harold Cone's files: an amalgam of NL shipping news, newspaper articles, photo files, and also topics of special interest to Mr. Cone such as the construction of the state pier (the subject of an earlier online exhibition by Brian Rogers), the railroads, etc. Added to that, people have donated vintage photo albums and snapshots. We've purchased press photos off of ebay, and Denise has discovered photographs stashed away in collection binders. Unidentified baggies of black & white photos have been left at the museum desk; we've got them, too. In the New Year, we'll be setting up a volunteer project asking our local historians to help identify exactly what is in those baggies. We know you're up to the challenge!
If you'd like to see some of these finds for yourself, opening January 11 is an exhibition drawn from the 'Small Photograph Collection'. The examples on view are not all what you'd describe as typical photographs, and some are not at all small! The exhibition will be at Custom House.
--Susan Tamulevich
PS: please save the date: in the bleak midwinter just following the holidays we are hosting a Wine Tasting at the Custom House! It will be Friday, January 13.
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We're online & on facebook!
Watch New London HarborCam, our 24/7 eye on the harbor. We've had over 3.4 million viewers! Photo, above: NL HarborCam - Image from Dec 17, 2022 at 7:31 AM Broken Sky, Temp: 43F (feels like: 36F), RH: 71% Dew Point: 34F, Wind: 15mph WNW, Gust: 23mph
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View Online Exhibitions of New London Maritime History from the Custom House Maritime Museum's Frank L. McGuire Library.
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Facebook the Custom House SHOP for gifts with an extra feel good factor -- when you shop with us your purchases support our exhibitions, & educational programs.
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Photo: Just sent to us by Chandler Saint, of the Documenting Venture Smith Project, facsimile booklets of A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture Smith. They're now available in the Shop. Chandler wrote: We have been doing a lot of research, and now understand how the "Life and Adventures of Venture ..." published in 1798 came to be. Venture Smith was the first African American who had the skill, ability, and resources to write and publish his own literary work. His 1798 autobiography is an American masterpiece. It is the story of Venture Smith’s personal and the American public’s fight for freedom. In 1798 Venture defined the meaning of freedom for himself and the new nation, and the responsibilities that come with it when he wrote and published for the first time “freedom is a privilege which nothing else can equal.” The importance of what Venture said and its ability to heal our society today has been recognized by members of Congress. For Black History Month 2022 several are giving copies of our hand sewn deluxe edition of Venture Smith’s 1798 Narrative to every member of the House and the Senate.
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Facebook Race Rock Lighthouse T.A. Scott built this lighthouse in the middle of the Race. Find links to the film & architects' report.
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We're on Instagram! @nlmaritime.
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Photo, below: We Celebrated Winter last Thursday! | | | | |
