The National Archives in New York City is Moving!

According to the National Archives website:

The National Archives at New York City is pleased to announce that within the next two years we will move our office to the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House at One Bowling Green in New York City. Our new home will be located in the same building as the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian. The building is currently known as the Custom House building, designed by Cass Gilbert in the Beaux Arts style and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

We have just started the design phase of for our new space. After extensive renovation, our new space will be ready in the late fall of 2011. We will announce the exact dates of the move as soon as possible.

At One Bowling Green our patrons will continue to receive the same great service they have come to expect from the experienced National Archives staff. We will continue to provide access to all of our holdings. An increase in our public and outreach programs, and our new proximity to other important New York cultural institutions including the Museum of the American Indian and Ellis Island, will enable us to reach a wider audience.

At One Bowling Green we will:

Occupy space on the 3rd and 4th floor of this historic building.


Store our most used original records and most popular microfilm holdings.


Provide access to all of our records (including records stored offsite).


Continue to provide certified copies of National Archives holdings.


Increase the number of public access computers so that patrons can access online resources.


Continue to make available online subscription services including Ancestry, Footnote, Heritage Quest, ProQuest, free of charge.


Provide additional outreach programs to increase awareness of National Archives resources in New York, the Northeast Region, and nationwide.

We are moving for several reasons. Our new location will provide state-of-the-art storage facilities for our original records. We must provide a secure preservation environment so that current and future generations of researchers can use the holdings. The new location will also be more patron friendly, and will allow greater accessibility to our programs and services. It is a historic building fit to house the holdings of the National Archives.

It will be necessary to close and/or limit some services when we make the physical move. We will do everything possible to keep any disruption in service at a minimum.

At One Bowling Green we will have more space than we currently do to accommodate researchers, staff, volunteers, teachers, and students. We are just beginning the design phase. Our space at One Bowling Green will have the same functions as our current space including a research room, computer search room, and a reference library.

If you would like to read the full amount of information about the move, as well as the "frequently asked questions," please click here.

The Synagogues of Egypt

For those of you who would like to see a small number of black and white photographs of three Cairo synagogues and one in Alexandria, Egypt, you may now do so within one of the Museum's synagogue exhibitions.

The synagogues in question are the Eliyahu HaNavi synagogue in Alexandria; the Haim Cappoussi Synagogue, the Ben Ezra Synagogue and the Sha'ar Hashamayim Synagogoue in Cairo. Also featured with these photos is a photo of a synagogue in Mozambique.

Within the Museum of Family History's Synagogue photo collection you may see many photographs of synagogues, both past and present, from Europe, Asia and Africa.

If you have other synagogue photographs from outside North America and would like to send them to the Museum for inclusion, please send them to postmaster@museumoffamilyhistory.com .

The Displaced Persons Camps Post-World War II

The Museum is now preparing many new online exhibitions for the coming year. The topic of one of these exhibitions will be many of the D.P. (Displaced Persons) camps that sprouted in Europe after the end of World War II, which housed thousands of refugees, survivors of the Holocaust.

The Museum wishes all who are fans and followers of the Museum to consider contributing material to any of the forthcoming exhibitions (watch for the announcement of new 2011 exhibitions coming soon.)

If you have any family photos that were taken in any of the D.P. camps, as well as any written accounts of life there or audio or video interviews of same, please consider sending copies to the Museum for inclusion in this forthcoming exhibition.

Already the Museum has filled one "wall" of this exhibition room with nearly forty photographs taken from the memorial album produced for the D.P. camp in Hof, Germany. As the Museum of Family History is a virtual (Internet-only) Museum, the walls will always have room for material that may be of interest to other Museum "visitors."

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me, Steven Lasky, at steve@museumoffamilyhistory.com .