Where bronx history lives.

  • The Bronx County Historical Society (BCHS), founded in 1955, is a non-profit educational and cultural institution chartered by the New York State Board of Regents. BCHS, the historical agency for The Bronx, a county of New York State and a borough of the city of New York, is dedicated to the collection, preservation, documentation, and public interpretation of the history of The Bronx and lower Westchester County from its earliest human habitation by indigenous peoples through the present.

    BCHS disseminates information to the general public, schools, students, historians, community members, activists, urban planners, and staff of other museums and libraries on the historical, social, and economic development of The Bronx. It utilizes its collections in exhibits, both in-house and traveling, historical research, oral history projects, production of publications, and educational and cultural programming. BCHS operates a Research Center with a Research Library and The Bronx County Archives and two national landmark historic house museums, the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage and the Museum of Bronx History at the Valentine-Varian House.

    The common theme in all of these activities is the promotion of pride in The Bronx through recovering and preserving the borough’s place in the history and development of the region and the nation. The buildings maintained by BCHS are major attractions and also serve as anchors around which dynamic communities develop and thrive.

  • Jacqueline Kutner, President
    Anthony Morante, Vice President
    Patrick Logan, Treasurer
    Gil Walton, Secretary
    Steve Baktidy, Trustee
    Robert Esnard, Trustee
    Mei Sei Fong, Trustee
    Dr. G. Hermalyn, Trustee
    Joel Podgor, Trustee
    Lloyd Ultan, Trustee
    Jac Zadrima, Trustee

  • Dr. G. Hermalyn
    CEO

    Dr. Steven Payne
    Director
    spayne(at)bronxhistoricalsociety.org

    Teresa Brown
    Chief Administrative Officer

    Pastor Crespo, Jr.
    Research Librarian/Archivist
    718-881-8900 x105
    pcrespo(at)bronxhistoricalsociety.org

    William “Roger” McCormack
    Director of Education
    718-881-8900 x107
    education(at)bronxhistoricalsociety.org

    Abby Rose Notarnicola
    Museum Educator

    Christopher Padilla
    Bookstore Manager
    718-881-8900 x100
    mailroom(at)bronxhistoricalsociety.org

    Edwin Pagán
    Film Educator

    Ethan Pagán
    Museum Educator

    Eleanor Smith
    Museum Educator

    STAFF 161
    Urban Arts Educator

    Hatoumata Tunkara
    Museum Educator

    Maribelle Vázquez
    Museum Educator

    Serena Velasquez
    Museum Educator

  • The Bronx County Historical Society is supported in part through the funding of the New York City Departments of Cultural Affairs and Parks and Recreation, the Historic House Trust of New York City, New York Community Trust, New York State Council on the Arts, the Office of the President of the Borough of The Bronx, the Bronx delegation of the New York City Council, the Bronx delegations of the New York State Assembly and New York State Senate, the New Yankee Stadium Community Benefits Fund, Columbia University's MA Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, additional public and private entities, members, and individual donors.

  • Dr. Amy Starecheski is a cultural anthropologist and oral historian whose research focuses on oral history as a social practice and the politics of history, value and property in cities. She is the Director of the Oral History MA Program at Columbia University and served as 2021–2022 President of the Oral History Association. In 2022 she received the Lenfest Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award.

    She consults and lectures widely on oral history education and methods, is co-author of the Telling Lives Oral History Curriculum Guide, and co-founded the Pedagogy of Listening Lab. She was a lead interviewer on Columbia’s September 11, 2001 Narrative and Memory Project, for which she interviewed Afghans, Muslims, Sikhs, activists, low-income people, and people who lost work. During 2020–2023 she was Co-Director of the NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Project.

    Dr. Starecheski was a founding member of the Core Working Group for Groundswell: Oral History for Social Change during 2011–2018, where she facilitated the Practitioner Support Network. In 2015 she won the Oral History Association’s article award for “Squatting History: The Power of Oral History as a History-Making Practice,” and in 2016 she was awarded the Sapiens-Allegra “Will the Next Margaret Mead Please Stand Up?” prize for public anthropological writing. She received a PhD in cultural anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she was a Public Humanities Fellow.

    Her book, Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City, was published in 2016 by the University of Chicago Press. She is the founder of the Mott Haven Oral History Project, which collaboratively documents, activates, and amplifies the stories of her longtime neighborhood, as told by the people who live there, and currently directs the NEH-funded Mott Haven History Keepers Project, a joint project of Columbia University’s Incite institute and The Bronx County Historical Society that supports grassroots historical workers in Mott Haven.

    Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Bronx Council on the Arts, and Radcliffe Library.