The Revisions

Stokes, I. N. Phelps.
Annotated Manuscripts, Glass Slides, and Photographic Proofs.
(Boxes 24 and 33)
I.N. Phelps Stokes Papers, 1909–1944.
New York Public Library: Archives | Manuscripts | Rare Books

Six years passed before Stokes was ready to submit his draft manuscript for Volume I of Iconography. By 1915, after innumerable hours spent, as Francis Morrone noted, “rush[ing] from dealer to dealer, and spen[ding] every spare moment delving through portfolios and drawers of old stock,” Stokes had crafted a comprehensive, fond narrative of New York City, and assembled visual reproductions for some of the most important related maps and illustrations, representing everything from the “Period of Discovery (1524–1609)” to the “Period of Adjustment and Reconstruction (1783–1811)”.

Of course, merely composing the thing was not enough, and Volume I was just the beginning. In draft manuscripts (Fig. 6, typed by Ellen C. Ahern?), Stokes revised his revisions, leaving erasures for posterity, though information on the total number of redrafts completed is unclear. Printer Walter Gilliss (Gilliss Press) presented Stokes with dummy volumes for review (Fig. 7), which Stokes, in turn, proofread and corrected.

Stokes’ oversight extended to visual materials, and the collection reflects his review of—and insistence on superior quality for—photography. Box 33 contains thirty large-format black-and-white film negatives and approximately thirty-two 8″ x 10″ glass plates (Fig. 9) in a box marked “Negatives for Vol. IV (Discarded)”. The negatives show a selection of prints donated to the Library by Stokes in 1930 (but not used in Iconography). The glass plates were deemed too fragile for research use.3

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Fig. 6. Manuscript copy, 1915.

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Fig. 7. Dummy volume, 1915.

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Fig. 8. Erasures in manuscript, 1915.

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Fig. 9. Box of glass negatives, 1922.

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Fig. 10. Annotated proof, To his excellency Sr. Henry Moore … this plan of the city of New York…
(map in The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs:
Print Collection, The New York Public Library).

3Permission was granted to photograph the topmost plate in the box.

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