New York District Attorney Case Files, 1916-1925, Preservation and Indexing Project

FAIN: PW-51103-12

New York City Department of Records and Information Services (New York, NY 10007-1210)
Leonora A. Gidlund (Project Director: July 2011 to March 2014)
Marcia Kirk (Project Director: March 2014 to April 2014)

The re-housing, indexing, and creation of a database for 51,500 New York City District Attorney felony case files (572 cubic feet) dating from 1916 to 1925.

The Municipal Archives requests Endowment support for a project to preserve and index approximately 51,500 New York District Attorney case files dating from July 1916 through 1925. The case file documents are currently housed in highly acidic envelope "jackets" that are extremely brittle and crumble when handled. Access to the information in the files is further hindered by the lack of a searchable index. The case files are a significant resource for a range of scholarly works on the history of the nation's largest city during a critical time period. The NYDA case file jackets will be photocopied; the case file documents will be re-housed in appropriate archival materials and stored in a climate-controlled environment. Project staff will also produce a name-and-offense-based database index to the series. Project activities will take place in-house over an eighteen-month time period between July 1, 2012, and December 31, 2013.