General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York
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General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen
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General Society's Library Building
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| Location | 20 W. 44th St., New York, New York |
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| NRHP Reference # | 08001048 |
| Added to NRHP | November 12, 2008 |
The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York, was founded on November 17, 1785, by 22 men who gathered in Walter Heyer's public-house on Pine Street in Lower Manhattan. The aims of the General Society were to provide cultural, educational and social services to families of skilled craftsmen. The General Society during this early period celebrated the mutuality and centrality of the craft community. Besides its charitable activities, the society played a prominent part in the festivities that marked patriotic holidays, carrying banners emblazoned with its slogan 'By hammer and hand all arts do stand', echoing the motto of the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths.
The city of New York and the Society both benefited from the decision to make New York the seat of the Federal Government. In 1789, legislators and their assistants and families began to pour into the city. Business prospects brightened considerably. In 1792, the Society attained a membership of 413, and received a charter of incorporation. Old documents reveal that the Society was quite active in the last years of the 18th century, corresponding with other business related associations, and petitioning the state legislature in the interests of industrial progress.
In 1820, The General Society opened one of the city's first free schools. During the early 1800s, New York had no public school system. Only two free schools were to be found in the whole city - one in the almshouse, and the other open only to the children of freed slaves. The school opened with 70 students. Children of members were admitted free of charge, and a small fee was required from all others. Later that same year the Society added a separate school for girls. The school, which became the Mechanics Institute in 1858, continues to provide tuition-free evening instruction in trades-related education. Currently, it is the oldest privately endowed tuition-free technical school in the city of New York, with more than 180,000 alumni.
Also founded in 1820, the General Society Library is the second oldest in New York City. The Library's main reading room—which houses The Crouse Library for Publishing Arts—soars to a height of three stories topped by a magnificent skylight. The establishment of the Apprentices' Library put the Society well in the forefront of social reform. Later in the century there would be a great boom in libraries, and much thought would be directed toward public education, but in 1820 such ideas were still new, and the Apprentices' Library was one of the first public libraries in the city of New York. Its aim was to provide good and instructive reading for apprentice boys who worked all day, and had no other access to books and the library therefore kept evening hours.
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