The Herschel Daniel "Dan" Carpenter Papers document Carpenter's life and career from his boyhood and education in rural Ohio, to his leadership role in the New York City settlement house movement. The collection also documents Hudson Guild, a West Side settlement house from its origins in the 1890s, when it organized clubs for Chelsea boys, to its work a century later, when it provided a wide range of social services to West Side residents.

The records include addresses, annual reports, correspondence, memos, minutes, program files, newsclippings, administrative records, photographs, video tape, and film. They include material dating from the decades prior to the establishment of the settlement which shed light on the philosophy and motivation of its founders, and offer a unique view of the first wave of the settlement house movement in America. The records document social conditions, demographic change, political activity and philanthropy in New York City. Addresses by East Side House founder Everett P. Wheeler, included in Series I, document his family history and career as a lawyer and civic reformer prior to the founding of East Side House. Wheeler's correspondence details his role in establishing the settlement and managing it during its first decades.

This collection includes nine letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as letters of Louis Agassiz, Amos Bronson Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, John Lothrop Motley, Charles Sumner, and John Greenleaf Whittier. In addition, there are two incomplete manuscripts by Emerson and one document from the Liverpool Custom-house signed by Nathaniel Hawthorne as Consul for the United States. The collection also includes the corrected typescript, index, and page and galley proofs for Thomas Franklin Currier, A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (New York, 1953) which was edited by Professor Tilton. Also, some early correspondence and photographs of the Tilton family and friends. There are letters from the actors Annie Louise Ames, Richard J. Dillon, and Hans L. Meery to Tilton's grandfather, Bernard Paul Verne, as well as photographs, tintypes, and daguerreotypes of the Verne family and friends.

The records include annual reports, board minutes, budgets, by-laws, correspondence, memos, publications, reports, scrapbooks, photographs and printed material. They document the settlement and its antecedent institutions from 1854 to 1994, offering a unique view of the first wave of the settlement house movement in America, as well as related philanthropy and social welfare activities in New York City over a 140 year period. The origins of Goddard-Riverside Community Center are documented in Series I, which includes eight institutional subseries. These records provide a wealth of information on philanthropic, social welfare and settlement work from the mid-19th century through the 1950s. Series II - IV document the activities of the settlement from 1959 to the 1990s, with a particular emphasis on the urban renewal period of the 1960s. Items in Series VII include photographs of staff, activities, facilities of Goddard-Riverside Community Center, as well as several of its predecessor institutions.

The Grosvenor Neighborhood House Records document the settlement from its incorporation in 1916 when it sponsored day care and hot lunch programs for East Side children, to its activities over seventy-five years later when it provided social services to youth and families on the Upper West Side.

Correspondence, manuscripts, papers, essays, etc. relating to Berlioz, and 19th century arts and literature. The correspondence includes original Berlioz letters and over 200 copies of letters relating to Berlioz and the romantic era, written by musicians, critics, historians, and literateurs of the past century. There are many photostats of letters and manuscripts obtained from the principal libraries of the world which hold original Berlioz material. The collection includes much printed material in the form of music scores, published letters, essays, clippings, biographies, music and book catalogues, program notes, and playbills.

The Hudson Guild Records document the institution from its origins in the 1890s, when it organized clubs for Chelsea boys, to its work a century later, when it provided a wide range of social services to West Side residents.

Correspondence, manuscripts, lectures, notes, diaries, notebooks, reports, financial records, blueprints, photographs, and printed materials of Y.C. James Yen and the IIRR concerned with the development, sharing, and financing innovative methods of teaching, improving agriculture, health and family planning, and education in impoverished villages. Among the cataloged correspondents are: Pearl Buck, William O. Douglas, Nelson Rockefeller, and DeWitt Clinton.

The correspondence, research, and teaching files of French-American cultural historian and Columbia University professor emeritus Jacques Barzun (1907-2012).

These files concern the publication of Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl in 1952, the dramatization of this diary and the subsequent legal disputes with Meyer Levin over the play, and the motion picture made from the play. They also deal with the activities of the Anne Frank Foundation, primarily support for the renovation of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the programs of the International Anne Frank Youth Center. These files include 145 letters from her father, Otto Frank, and letters from Alfred Kazin, Max Lerner, Meyer Levin, and Eleanor Roosevelt. There are also seven letters from Adela Rogers St. Johns and related materials about her own books and the 1963 volume of minutes of the Doubleday & Co. Publishing Committee.