Robert Newman had already sifted, sorted and sweated via untold mounds of paper — which to maintain, which to promote, which to provide away? — when he got here to a closet door he hadn’t opened in 20 years. Inside, crammed flooring to ceiling, had been nonetheless extra piles.

“Oh, Dad,” he muttered to himself. “What the hell did you do to me?”

His brother, Harry, has had the same thought. “My father was the most important pack rat there ever was,” he stated. “And we’re coping with that.”

To be honest, it’s not all Dad’s fault; Granddad and the brothers themselves had a hand in creating the litter. That is what occurs while you spend three generations constructing a household enterprise out of shopping for and promoting historical past, most of it on paper — lovely, helpful, hard-to-part-with paper.

The enterprise, based in 1898 because the Previous Print Store, is within the throes of shifting out of the storefront on Lexington Avenue in Murray Hill that it has occupied since 1921 and right into a sleeker, second-story house a number of blocks west. For 3 months, the brothers have led an exhaustive effort to haul out, scrutinize, pack and transport a listing of greater than 100,000 items that features Currier & Ives lithographs, John James Audubon illustrations, New York Metropolis scenes, vintage maps, up to date artwork and prints by early-Twentieth-century American masters like Edward Hopper, John Sloan and Thomas Hart Benton.

The store’s personal historical past is awash in marquee names. Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Andy Warhol had been loyal prospects. Berenice Abbott shot promotional images of the gallery and portraits of the homeowners’ household.

Even earlier than the tumult of the transfer, the ground-floor gallery was a warren of desks, bins and file cupboards so jampacked that the employees of seven could possibly be onerous to detect. The scuffed pine floorboards and overhead ductwork look higher suited to a ironmongery store, and the brothers come throughout much less like curators and extra just like the chatty guys behind the counter who know simply which drawer holds that discontinued dishwasher half. Their phrases of artwork run from “actually cruddy” to “uncommon as heck.”

Don’t be fooled. Robert, 65, the agency’s president, is skilled as a grasp printmaker and promotes the artwork of greater than 75 residing artists. Harry, 60, the vp, is a famous professional on sporting prints and maps. They’ve tracked down and authenticated items for dozens of personal collectors and museums, together with the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork and the Nationwide Portrait Gallery.

“I don’t know of one other map and print supplier that’s been in continued existence that lengthy, and their impression over time has put them on the very high of the pyramid,” stated J. Kevin Graffagnino, a retired director of the William L. Clements Library on the College of Michigan, who has acquired lots of their maps and prints for museums and libraries. “However they’re not seeking to be seen,” he added, “and I like them for that. They’re not flashy.”

They’ll be sorry to lose the walk-in visitors that street-level show home windows attracted. However they’re notably unsentimental about saying goodbye to the spot the place their grandfather, a door-to-door material salesman, remodeled himself into an artwork supplier identified within the commerce as “Mr. Americana” and “the Prince of Prints.” At one time or one other, numerous members of the family lived in a small condo upstairs.

“I’m going to overlook the outdated place, yeah. It was dwelling,” Robert stated. “However you’ve bought to embrace change whether or not you prefer it or not as a result of if you happen to don’t, it’s going to kill you

In March, weary of the repairs and pink tape concerned in proudly owning a geriatric constructing, the brothers offered the slender property at Lexington close to thirtieth Road to a developer. (“Luxurious condominiums,” Robert stated with an eye fixed roll.) They closed their doorways in August and hope to reopen in late September within the house they purchased and renovated at 49 West twenty fourth Road.

Embracing change isn’t all the time straightforward, particularly for historians. The brothers spent a latest morning making an attempt to cull mediocre materials — engraved portraits of forgotten individuals, memento views of obscure locations — however discovered it too painful to toss a lot.

A employees member was on the cellphone arranging a pickup of empty frames by Supplies for the Arts, a metropolis program that steers donations to artists. An earlier inquiry had come from Rikers Island, searching for frames for detainees’ tasks. “One in all our stranger requests,” Robert stated. “However certain, why not?”

They’ll transfer about three-quarters of their holdings to the brand new store, and retailer or donate the remaining. “We’re seeking to improve the gathering in favor of high quality,” he stated. “We wish to polish it up a bit.”

If clearing out the store’s three flooring has hit some velocity bumps — mould, a scourge for something constituted of paper, turned up in a number of bins of prints — it has additionally yielded the occasional reward. The Newman brothers discovered a James McNeill Whistler etching they’d misplaced observe of. Even the overstuffed closet held a prize: a uncommon watercolor view of New York Metropolis within the 1820s.

Discovering gems in unlikely locations is how the enterprise started.

The brothers’ grandfather, Harry Shaw Newman, was cleansing the attic of his mom’s New Jersey boardinghouse shortly after World Battle I when he found a roll of prints by Currier & Ives, the New York writer whose cheap lithographs turned a family staple in Nineteenth-century America. He offered them to Edward Gottschalk, who had based the Previous Print Store years earlier in Greenwich Village.

Mr. Newman sought out different prints and work for Mr. Gottschalk and purchased the enterprise from him in 1928. As he taught himself about artwork and purchased necessary works, his renown grew. Roosevelt, a former secretary of the Navy and a collector of maritime prints, made a much-heralded go to to the store quickly after he was elected in 1932. He purchased a Currier & lves portfolio to hold within the Oval Workplace. (As president, Kennedy, a Navy veteran, additionally bought naval prints from the store.)

Quickly after World Battle II, Mr. Newman’s son, Kenneth, joined the enterprise, and the 2 sailed to Europe to butter up artwork sellers — with actual butter and eggs, then scarce commodities on the Continent — and snap up prints.

Kenneth’s sons, Robert and Harry, recall highway journeys with their father within the household station wagon, which returned dwelling full of antiques purchased at flea markets and auctions. The dealing with wasn’t all the time white-glove. A ship mannequin emerged from the automobile with a damaged mast. An 18th-century globe their grandfather dropped wound up egg-shaped.

The brothers stay cautious of an extra of warning — a priority for preservation so eager that treasures might be displayed solely in pristine environments or for restricted occasions or in no way. “When the conservation departments pay money for museums, they get much less fascinating,” Robert stated.

On the Previous Print Store, the one temperature or humidity controls, even within the new house, are heating and air-conditioning. The Newmans take their cue from how the room feels: “In case you’re snug, they’re snug,” Robert stated of the prints.

The gallery has weathered floods from historical plumbing. Fireplace is all the time a concern, however the brothers appear extra nervous about water injury from the sprinkler system required within the new constructing.

Their greatest problem is the shifting tides of vogue, which the store has navigated with combined success.

The household was prescient in shopping for work by Nineteenth-century American masters like Frederic Remington and George Caleb Bingham. However it offered lots of them within the mid-Twentieth century earlier than costs surged. A Winslow Homer oil portray was offered in 1964 for $45,000. At the moment, Robert estimated, it might fetch $45 million.

“Within the Sixties, historical past was value greater than artwork,” he stated. “At the moment, artwork is value greater than historical past.”

In reality, it’s value greater than virtually something: In Could, a Warhol portray of Marilyn Monroe offered for $195 million, probably the most ever paid at public sale for a piece by an American artist. However again in 1979, Warhol proposed a commerce of recent artwork for historic illustration: an entire set of his Monroe silk screens for a single Audubon avian print.

“Father wouldn’t do it,” Harry stated. “He had little interest in that type of factor.” And he apparently had little endurance with Warhol, who as soon as confirmed up on the store in a revealing pair of ripped shorts. “My father virtually threw him out.”

At the moment, the store presents prints for all types of budgets, from a 2005 black-and-white etching of Midtown constructing adverts for $75 to an 1894 shade drypoint print by Mary Cassatt for $325,000.

The times of panning for gold in barns and tag gross sales are lengthy gone. Shopping for and promoting have migrated on-line. And “Antiques Roadshow” apart, the patron urge for food for something that got here earlier than midcentury trendy has slumped. “Vintage has develop into a grimy phrase,” Robert stated.

Nonetheless, the Newmans have been in enterprise lengthy sufficient to imagine that may change. They already see it in their very own household, the place a fourth era is fascinated by the previous. Robert’s son, Brian, 39, works within the store. Harry’s son, Scott, 23, spent the summer time between school semesters serving to with the transfer.

Throughout a lull within the packing, Scott and his uncle paused to admire a wall-size map of New York Metropolis commissioned by the British authorities in 1766 (and now priced at $325,000). Their dialog rolled again in time, from Revolutionary Battle technique to the burning of the Library of Alexandria to the autumn of historical Carthage and past. Towards the swell of historical past within the room, the long run felt like a footnote.