Greetings! Welcome to the WNYC Archives NEH Map
In 2015, we began work on a National Endowment for the Humanities grant project to digitize and provide access to some 600 hours of archival WNYC broadcasts from the 1930s to the 1970s, pulled from the New York City Municipal Archives' massive WNYC collection. That’s nearly two thousand programs, and thousands of people, silent for decades, now heard again today.
This map, inspired by A. G. Lorimer’s 1937 painting of our Greenpoint transmitter, plots some of the voices we’ve unearthed in our work on our two-year grant. Any place referred to and discussed in depth by the men and women who stood in front of WNYC microphones is pinpointed here: You can ride along with Robert Weinberg Around New York or linger and scan the evolution of Robert Moses’ grand plans for the Coliseum at Columbus Circle. You can hang with New York’s (2nd) hippest mayor, John Lindsay, on MacDougal St., head abroad to investigate the Tunguska Event in Siberia with Radio Moscow, or brush up on the 1950s rise of Pan-Africanism in Accra, Ghana. The choice is yours.
The Map
How the Map Works
You can search the map using three drop-down menus:
- By Show - we’ve got Invitation to Dance for those who want to cut a rug, Reader's Almanac if you’d rather spend your time curled up with a good book, or International Interview if you'd rather spend that time overseas. We also have a show for each of the mayors from La Guardia to Lindsay, Young American Composers (think Stokowski, not Bowie), and many more.
- By Subject - over the course of working on the NEH grant, we've noticed some themes pop up again and again. Some are broad—Arts, Culture, Music—others a little more narrow—Vietnam War—all of them in their own way revealing the tenor of the times.
- And by Decade - ranging from 1941 to 1968 as of this writing, and very likely to expand.
You can search using all three drop-down search options simultaneously if you like:
Searching the Show ‘Mayor John Lindsay’ - The Subject 'City planning’ - And the Decade ‘1960s’ - could very well put you at a 1967 Mayor’s Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii. There are worse places to be. Still, you’ll likely want to return each drop-down menu to the initial “All” setting if you want a fresh search.
It is the mission of New York Public Radio “to make the mind more curious, the heart more open, and the spirit more joyful through excellent audio programming that is deeply rooted in New York.” Those New York roots run deep indeed, but branch out across the globe, and with this map you can now you can limn the history of WNYC to your heart’s content.
The Original Lorimer Map
