Visitors might not expect to find items like seltzer bottles, a collection of miniature versions of the Statue of Liberty, and a piece of the Flatiron Building. But they fit right in at the City Reliquary.

“We started off as a very humble nonprofit organization collecting little bits of New York City history,” Dave Herman, founder of the community museum and civic organization, said.

It began as a window display in his Williamsburg apartment in 2002.

What You Need To Know

  • The City Reliquary is a museum and civic organization in Williamsburg

  • It was founded 20 years ago by Dave Herman in his apartment window

  • The museum moved to a Metropolitan Avenue storefront in 2006

  • The City Reliquary has also hosted a number of community events over the years

Four years later, he moved it a few blocks away into a storefront on Metropolitan Avenue.

Since then, it has welcomed visitors from around the world, transforming as the surrounding neighborhood did the same.

“It wasn’t exactly the place that all of the visiting tourists were coming out to see. We were over in Brooklyn. It felt far away from the Empire State Building and Midtown Manhattan,” Herman said.

He noted the City Reliquary is listed in guidebooks along with other bigger museums.

Besides the many items from the city’s past in the museum, there are rotating exhibitions, including Wonder Woman, New York City’s Heroes of Heterodoxy.

It makes the connection between comic book superhero Wonder Woman and the women that inspired her and were inspired by her.

“Wonder Woman appeared in very specific landmark sites throughout New York City so both on the pages of the comic book, but also behind the scenes the people who were sort of creating this character were here on the New York City streets,” Herman said.

Another exhibit features Queens native Peter Parker, also known as Spiderman.

It’s the story of the 1989 comic book issues that revealed his address in Forest Hills, and the family that collected a slew of letters from around the world addressed to their friendly neighborhood, Spiderman.

“These are all the letters that started showing up and thankfully the family living there was impressed by that and they wanted to collect and they collected their own little archive for it,” Herman said.

Coincidently, that family’s name was Parker. It’s one of the many true stories at the City Reliquary.