MAP: Explore the women’s suffrage movement through the lens of NYC landmarks
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote in New York State, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission released an interactive story map that highlights places where suffragists lived and worked in New York City. The map, called NYC Landmarks and the Vote at 100, designates 43 sites associated with impactful activists, organizations, and institutions. Explore significant sites like the Cooper Union, the Panhellenic Tower, the New School for Social Research and much more, while learning about their role in the suffrage movement.
The interactive story map includes seven chapters, each highlighting specific advocates and the significant places, districts, and landmarks associated with them. Users can scroll through, or navigate the map chapter by chapter. Chapters include: “Early Suffragists,” “The Mainstream Movement,” “The Young Insurgents,” “Suffragists, Immigrants, Labor,” “African-American Suffragists,” “The ‘Suffragents,'” and “Institutions.”
(L) Meeting minutes from Cooper Union (1914) via Wikimedia; (R) A drawing of the building, via NYPL
While women in states like California and Wyoming were granted the right to vote before women in New York, the campaign for women’s suffrage for all states got its start at Seneca Falls in 1848. Soon after, advocates turned their attention on the country’s largest, and wealthiest, city at the time: New York City.
(L) Sarah Smith Garnet founded the Equal Suffrage League of Brooklyn, via NYPL; (R) Her home at 205 DeKalb Avenue in Fort Greene, via NYC Dept. of Taxes Municipal Archive
As the Commission explains, NYC was central in attaining women’s suffrage on the national level. It soon became home to several major feminist organizations and institutions that still exist today. The map takes the user on a storytelling journey through the lives of early suffragists of the 1800s, the young insurgents of Brooklyn, the struggles of African American suffragists and much more.
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