Fly Market

William P. Chappel

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In Dutch New Amsterdam, this location was a marshy valley called Smee’s Vly. When the city was under English rule, colonists in the late 1600s established a market here dubbed the "Fly." One of New York’s oldest and most vital marketplaces, the Fly extended up Maiden Lane from the East River and comprised three arcades—for fish, produce, and meat (shown here). Customers could expect a high level of quality due to the atypical degree of oversight provided by the city council that administered a small army of clerks, inspectors, and porters. To the left—at 197 Pearl Street—Chappel pictures the druggist J & T Schieffelin.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art