Hotel Association of New York City scrapbooks
Call Number
Date
Creator
Extent
Language of Materials
Abstract
The collection holds 28 scrapbooks containing newspaper clippings, press releases, newsletters, and advertisements relating to the Hotel Association of New York City, its annual trade show, the National Hotel Exposition, and other events and issues concerning the Association and the New York hotel industry generally.
Biographical / Historical
The Hotel Association of New York City was founded in 1878 as an advocate for the city's hotel industry and as a resource for the professionalization of hotel management. In 1915, the Association inaugurated an annual trade show, the National Hotel Exposition (also referred to as the National Hotel Show); the exposition was held at Manhattan's Grand Central Palace throughout the period covered by this collection. In 1924, the Association established a Publicity and Press Bureau that generated press releases about the Association and hotel interests, and engaged clipping services to monitor the press for related articles; several of the scrapbooks in this collection are a product of the organization's publicity activities. The Hotel Association of New York City still exists and remains active.
Arrangement
The collection is presented in the container list with the Hotel Association's general clippings and Exposition scrapbooks first, in rough chronological order. These are followed by other, subject specific scrapbooks, also in chronological order. The actual scrapbooks are of various sizes and so are boxed accordingly in no particular order.
Each album was given a unique identifier (e.g., SN-1, SN-2) by the processing archivists. These are intended only to facilitate reference and are not indicative of any overall numbering scheme found in the collection itself.
Scope and Contents
The collection holds 28 scrapbooks compiled by the Hotel Association of New York City from 1916 to 1944, with gaps in coverage. 19 of these scrapbooks hold documents, primarily clippings, concerning the Association's activities; organizational matters; positions on state and city legislation, regulations and other public policy issues; and matters of relevance to New York's hotel industry. The other 9 scrapbooks include documents on particular topics relevant to the Hotel Association. Clippings from newspapers and trade journals and newsletters are the dominant format in the scrapbooks, yet there are also press releases and other publicity materials in them.
Beginning in 1915, the Association held a trade show, the National Hotel Exposition, in New York. These shows are particularly well-represented in the scrapbooks. References to specific exhibits and featured products, Women's Day events, the concurrent New York State Hotel Association convention, and other matters related to the trade show are found here. Other events held by the Association, such as golf tournaments, dinners, charity benefits, etc. are documented in the scrapbooks.
The container list inventory attempts to identify some of the more significant themes that appear in the scrapbooks of general subjects. These include the hotel industry's relationship with the 1924 Democratic National Convention, the 1939 World's Fair, the impact of World War I and World War II, enforcement of liquor prohibition laws, and others. Organizational administrative matters also are a subject of the scrapbooks, such as elections of officers. The New York Association's deep involvement in the administration and financial management of the American Hotel Association around 1924-25 can be seen in the scrapbooks.
9 scrapbooks center on particular topics, including labor strikes (4 volumes), attempted criminal mob infiltration of union leadership (1937), a 1926 compilation of menus, the American Hotel Association trip to Europe in 1926, creation of a hotel engineering course at New York University (1923), and a volume of various hotel-related issues compiled for the Association by W. Johnson Quinn in 1925-28.
Subjects
Organizations
Access Restrictions
Materials in this collection are stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.
Use Restrictions
Taking images of documents from the library collections for reference purposes by using hand-held cameras and in accordance with the library's photography guidelines is encouraged. As an alternative, patrons may request up to 20 images per day from staff.
Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.
Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions
Preferred Citation
The collection should be cited as: Hotel Association of New York City scrapbooks, MS 3190, New-York Historical Society.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of the Hotel Association of New York City, September 9, 1949
About this Guide
Processing Information
The collection was initially surveyed with volumes flagged and a preliminary description prepared by project archivist Elise Winks in 2019. Archivist Larry Weimer completed the inventory and boxing of the scrapbooks for storage in March 2022.