Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten draft of the Declaration of Independence is on free public display at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in Midtown, with two chances left to see it this week: today and July 7, according to AMNY.
The exhibition, called Declaration America, opened July 1 and spans multiple galleries inside the Schwarzman Building. It features 250 artifacts from the library’s collections, assembled to mark the nation’s approaching 250th anniversary. The library is closed July 3 through July 5. After today, July 7 is the only remaining day to visit. Free tickets must be reserved in advance at nypl.org.
The centerpiece is Jefferson’s handwritten draft, where the words “United States of America” appear capitalized, possibly for the first time. “At the very top, United States of America is capitalized, perhaps for the first time,” Anthony W. Marx, President and CEO of the New York Public Library, told AMNY. “Jefferson’s capitalization marks the idea of a single American nation being born, rather than simply a collection of states.”
Highlights include Benjamin Franklin’s letter to George Washington announcing the Declaration was being prepared, a silk banner carried by anti-slavery activists marking the abolition of slavery in Great Britain in 1834, a “Civil Rights Now!” pennant from the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Revolutionary War-era maps of New York showing troop positions and colonial street names, and U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith’s erasure poem “Declaration,” according to AMNY.
Marx told AMNY the exhibition prompts reflection on what the founding document has meant across two and a half centuries. “We want all New Yorkers, and everyone visiting from around the world, to think about how audacious this document is, how uncertain the outcome was, and how Americans have spent the last 250 years debating how to live up to its aspirations,” he said. “Sometimes we’ve failed, often we’ve made progress, but the Declaration set that process in motion.”
Genevieve Barbee, a 22-year-old Cornell University student minoring in American history, traveled from Nassau County on Long Island to see the exhibition after spotting it on the library’s social media, AMNY reported. Barbee, who visited on her birthday, said the exhibition was “the perfect opportunity to see a document like this firsthand.” She wants to work in preservation and archival studies.
