0.7 Chapter five: new initiatives and economic shocks, 1982-1987

Chapter five: new initiatives and economic shocks, 1982-1987

Expansion and the pursuit of a real estate windfall, 1982-1984

On June 10, 1982, a special meeting of the board was held to name James B. Bell director of The New-York Historical Society. A graduate of the University of Minnesota with a doctorate in history from Balliol College at Oxford, Bell had taught at Ohio State and Princeton. Immediately before coming to the Society, he had been the director of the New England Historic Genealogical Society for more than nine years. Introducing Bell in the annual report of 1982, Society Pres­ident Robert Goelet expressed his enthusiasm for the new director: "Although he has been with us for only a short period, Dr. Bell has already begun to place his mark on the Society. In the report that follows, he details new programs that he and his staff have introduced. Judging from what he has undertaken, the years to come promise to be productive and exciting ones."

Still, Goelet closed the 1982 annual report with these words of caution addressed to the membership: "Your society needs to broaden its membership base and enlarge the number of its corporate and foundation contributors. The level of annual deficits incurred in recent years simply cannot be allowed to con­tinue. We will need your help in implementing what I trust will be a most suc­cessful era in the history of your society."

From the very start, Bell's emphasis was on new programs, new initiatives, and the development of a new attitude at the Society. Perhaps in response to the beleaguered and more or less moribund last years of his predecessor, Bell sought to reestablish the Society as an active institution. In his first annual report, Bell wrote of the progress that had been made by the Society in a variety of areas. He pointed to the publication of the New-York Historical Society Gazette, a newsletter to keep members informed of the goings-on at the Society. A comprehensive eval­uation was under way of the collecting, lending, and exhibition policies of the museum as well as a plan to renovate the Society's museum storage areas. On the library side, Bell wrote of two grants that brought the Society into the computer age. Awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the grants funded two new programs: one provided resources to enable the Society to enter its hold­ings in an on-line catalog called the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN), and the other helped the Society to develop a computerized catalog of its extensive newspaper holdings. In terms of public service, the Society continued its long-running lecture series and began to sponsor conferences for scholars on topics of general interest and significance.

Bell was out to remake the Society, and he was going to do it with gusto. Look­ing back on his first months in office, Bell wrote: "These are only some of the pro­grams that the Society will provide in the years to come. The challenge that the staff and I have undertaken is to build on the Society's record of 178 years of distinguished service to the city, state, and nation. We accept that challenge with enthusiasm."