WHEN WAMPUM PAID THE BILLS

Evening Post, Issue 86, 11 April 1936, Page 21

WHEN WAMPUM PAID THE BILLS

Dutch New Amsterdam with its burghers and Indians, its wampum and beaver skins for trade, its, early newspapers -and .advertisements, ; its street venders and first stores, together with an exhibition depicting, the growth and development of communications form two, new permanent exhibits at the Museum of the City of New York, says the "Christian Science Monitor." i

The first room shows the retail trade of the city from the time 6f "muffs and tippets" and the even earlier barter with the ,Indians. The exhibition comprises early maps,, bills for hoopskirts and Indian shawls, price lists, and humorous- trade cards, signs from store fronts and pictures from the Fly Market of 1695 to the modern Washington market.

The communications room, modelled on plans drawn by Mrs. Adele Nathan, includes seven miniature groups showing the first regular post rider leaving Bowling Green in '1673 for Boston, the

semaphore on Telegraph Hill for the relaying of news from sailing ships coming into the harbour, Samuel F. B. Morse laying his first" submarine cable on October 18, 1842, the''first stock ticker in the office of DavidGroesbeck and Co., Alexander Graham Bell giving his first demonstration of the "speaking telephone" on May 11, 1877, the great blizzard of 1888, which showed the weakness of overhead wires and 'helped to advance the use of underground conduits, and the pilot house of the Ponce on October 3, 1899, during.the international cup race off Sandy Hook, when Marconi demonstrated the use of wireless by flashing a description of the race to a station on Navesink Highlands. ■■•■•••■

At the same time the museum is opening a special exhibition of romanticised Victorian drawings by Eliza Greatorex A.N.A., showing "old New York from the Battery to Bloomingdale," 18 of which were shown at the centennial exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876.' '