New York City Records Online

Images of New York City vital records are now online- for free!

The included years start in the mid 1860s or upon creation of the five boroughs in 1898. The final years for each type of record:

Births through 1909

Deaths through 1948

Marriages through 1937

The records for earlier years are available elsewhere. To obtain records for subsequent years, you need to jump through the hoops of the Department of Health.

Also not included are affidavits for marriage, usually issued between 1908-1937. If your couple of interest married during these years, obtaining copies of the affidavit from the Municipal Archives might provide additional information.

Search or browse birth, marriage, and death records for New York City
Website as of this writing: https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/search

The digitized images are in color. Compare the digitized versus paper copy of the marriage certificate of my great grandfather, Howard Lutter, and his second wife, Fiorita Lorenz, in 1928.

The affidavit for a license to marry provided details about the divorces of both parties.

Ancestry has an index of these vital records, including copies of the indexes.

I will note a caveat I uncovered when trying to find a marriage record in the new digitized records.

I was looking up a couple, George Stegman and Charlotte Taylor. They were born in the 1890s in New York. Ancestry's index of licenses has the date as December 30, 1913, which corresponds to the images of the indexes. This is not the marriage date. This is the date the license was issued.

I sought the marriage record to discover the names of the parents of the bride and groom. The record was not found in 1913. I expanded the search and found the record in 1914. The ceremony was January 4, 1914 in Manhattan.

George Stegman and Charlotte Taylor married January 4, 1914 in Manhattan, New York County, New York.
Groom's parents- Henry Stegman and Martha Tuthill.
Bride's parents- Edmund Taylor and Catherine Sweeney.

It is understandable that the marriage ceremony occurred a short time after the license was issued. When the license is obtained at the end of a year, the couple might not marry until the following year. This is an important distinction when reporting dates of events or looking for subsequent records.