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This series contains the records of the Board of Directors for Morningside Heights Inc./Morningside Area Alliance, as well as the records of the Executive Committee and some of the various other committees that were formed over the years. The committee on cooperative housing and committee on education are some of the best represented here. The files usually contain the records of each meeting--the agenda and minutes, the materials distributed to those present at the meeting, memoranda for members, and occasionally correspondence between members and receipts or other items which were of concern to the board or those present at the meeting. Also included in this series are files from the office of one-time director Barney Weinberg. Correspondence is included in his files, as are a number of photographs and negatives made by Weinberg

This series contains the bulk of the larger-scale reports and theses generated by consultants, employees of the organization, and students. For the most part they have either been written in conjunction with or in service of the Alliance. Where this is not the case, the reports were likely retained because they were on topics that affect or are affected by the organization. In some cases the contributing material to the report has been retained--i.e. tabulations of figures or preliminary drafts--but for most it is only the final published report that was retained.

This series contains materials on education both collected and created by the Alliance. As opposed to the "Schools" subseries of the Project Files series, the materials that have been retained in this series are mostly concerned with educational programs in the community which fall outside of the standard offerings of the city's public education system. The series includes information on and examples of guides and resources for teachers and youth. There is also a large body of literature on programs created by the institutions that are meant to serve the members of the community, as well as literature on similar programs and options outside of these institutions-- such as the Peace Corps. For much of its existence the Alliance published an "Inventory of Resources" in the community and the educational materials that went into this publication are included here. Also collected are clippings on programs and institutions of higher education in the neighborhood, newsletters arising out of the area's educational programs, as well as publications and journals concerning the topic of urban education.

This series is made up of the various financial records generated by and for the Alliance. Much of the series is comprised of budget, financial, and audit reports created for the organization and produced yearly. Also included are materials and some correspondence about the stock options and institutional funding of the organization, especially from its early days as Morningside Heights Inc. In addition there are some materials about small-scale expenses and funding such as office supplies. This series is mostly concerned with the finances of Morningside Heights Inc./Morningside Area Alliance as itself. Materials relating to the finances of the bodies and organizations created by the Alliance usually appear with the rest of the materials on these groups, rather than in this series.

This series is comprised of the photographic materials in the collection which were not already filed with the materials of another series. Photographs located in the files of another series have been left there and their presence noted in the container list. Included in this series are a large number of promotional photos from the various sponsoring institutions, along with many photographs of buildings and facilities in Morningside Heights. Most of these photos were created or collected for use in reports published by the Alliance. Also included are the contents of a photo exhibit displaying the photography of Richard Conrad depicting mostly street scenes around Morningside Heights as well as the inhabitants of the neighborhood. The text of the exhibit, though it has not been associated with any particular group of photos, has also been retained.

This is a small series, and contains publications that were not retained specifically with any other group. Publications that appear here are those —such as literary publications, histories, and religious publications. In addition there are directories and guidebooks--of New York City and otherwise--that have been retained under this category.

This series contains information and publications generated by either city, state, or federal government agencies. By far the majority of the materials are on programs and publications of the United States Government. In line with the Alliance's early mission and work, the materials are mostly concerned with public housing as well as the legislation and funding affecting these programs. Grant notifications on projects carried out by the Alliance are included here. Some court records concerning housing in the city of New York have also been retained, along with official record of action on housing legislation in both the New York State and United States Legislatures.

One of the largest founding mandates for the Alliance was the gathering and mapping of information that had previously been unavailable. Most of the large-format copies of these maps, and occasionally their accompanying architectural or neighborhood plans, have been retained in this series. The maps and plans are almost exclusively of the neighborhood of Morningside Heights, but occasionally maps of neighborhoods in the vicinity or maps of the entire city are included. A wide variety of information has been mapped onto the materials in this series, including demographic, population, land use, zoning, transportation, institutional expansion, economic, and physical building characteristics. Most of the maps appear to have been made as part of major studies carried out by the Alliance, especially the Morningside-Manhattanville Redevelopment Report (1951) and the Morningside Heights Core Area Study (1968).

This series is made up of the materials retained from the Alliance's main office, and the employees and functions which were located there. There is a collection of contact information along with a chronological file of correspondence directed to the main office. A particularly valuable resource that appears in this series is the entire run of the Alliance's Staff Notes newsletter--in existence for almost as long as the organization itself--as well as material on the writing and publishing of this document. Some human resources materials are included as well as a collection of "Historical Files,"organizational files from the beginning of Morningside Heights Inc. which were apparently set apart from the others.

The subject files are files that were collected and placed together to provide information on subjects of interest to the Alliance--which range from housing and redevelopment to education and youth. The files are mostly arranged alphabetically, but a small final section that had never been filed among the rest remains out of order. Larger topics are broken up into subheadings underneath the main topic. The subject files are a good place to begin research, and they cover a very wide variety of topics that include the tasks the organization undertook along with the workings of the Alliance itself and the various bodies it has created.