New York is host to many famous museums, but also a lot of little ones. When I visit, I often try to find one I never knew of before.
The City Reliquary, a tiny storefront museum in two main rooms, a lobby, and a rear courtyard, is crammed with NYC memorabilia: artifacts from the 1939 and 1964-65 World’s Fairs, baseball items from the scrappy teams—the Dodgers and the Mets—but not the Yankees or Giants, lots of subway items from tokens (including one very rare one where a NYC comptroller had sneaked his initials into the stamping machine) and Metrocards to an actual conductor/motorman cab door from an IRT Redbird subway car, complete with cracked glass over a 1970s-era subway map. Displays are layered, so you can look through a set of glass, siphon-topped seltzer bottles to learn about the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Statue of Liberty, which the museum calls “Secular Saint of the New York Harbor,” gets lots of play. A six-foot-tall metal locker opens to display a tiny exhibit on burlesque. The courtyard has an outdoor bar kiosk decorated in beer bottle caps. Even the little bathroom is jammed with exhibits. It takes less than an hour to see.
As an NYC native, I found this tiny museum quite charming, even though I haven’t lived in the city since 1980. Here are some photos and an interview with Assistant Director Beth Haines:https://youtu.be/qbtdLZmvl-U
