Collections : [Rare Book & Manuscript Library]

The incoming correspondence of Vanderpoel, containing letters from friends, clients, and colleagues and dealing with personal and legal matters. Correspondents include Henry M. Alexander, William Allen Butler, John P. and William V. S. Beekman, G. W. Bulkey, Joseph H. Choate, Frederic R. Coudert, Lewis L. Delafield, Jay Gould, William D. F. Maurice, Edward Pierpont, J. Bryce Smith, John Van Alen, John and Thomas Van Buren, and Henry Vanorden. Letters of a personal and business nature from various family members include several from Aaron and John Vanderpoel and Lewis Oakley, his uncles, and from Henry C. Van Schaack, his father-in-law. There are approximately twelve manuscripts of essays and speeches by A. J. Vanderpoel while he attended Kinderhook Academy and New York University, as well as a few by other family members. Various documents including mortgages, deeds, indentures, agreements, and court records relate to Vanderpoel's law practice and to family property.

Correspondence, programs, clippings, and other theatrical memorabilia relating the the careers of Alice and Rita Lawrence.

Correspondence, copies of letters, documents, manuscripts, invitations, menus, clippings, school papers, leases, agreements, deeds, financial accounts, photographs, and printed miscellany. The papers deal with many aspects of the Belmont family interests from 1799 until 1930, including: finance, banking and the Rothschilds; the United States Navy, Commodore Matthew C. Perry (1794-1858) and the Perry expeditions to Mexico and Japan; Belmont's embassy to The Netherlands from 1853 to 1857; the Democratic Party, New York City politics, presidential and Civil War politics; social life in New York and Newport and European travel; horses, horse breeding, The Jockey Club, polo, the Remount Association (for cavalry horses in World War I), fox hunting, dog breeding, and yachting; New York subway construction, railroads, the Cape Cod Canal and aviation; the Democratic Convention of 1912; and genealogical notes on the Belmont, Perry, and other families. In addition to the correspondence, there are 117 letter books, tissue-paper copies of outgoing letters.

Invitations and photographs relating to dinners given by the Bohemian Club to honor artists such as Mischa Elman, Engelbert Humperdinck, Serge Koussevitzsky, Ignace Paderewski, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss, and Eugene Ysaye.

Letters of Hoffman to his family. There are seventeen letters to his niece, Matilda Nicholas Whitman, and one letter to his half-sister, Ann Hoffman Nicholas. The correspondence deals with the literary and social life in New York and with the Hoffman family. Two of the letters have notes added by his father, Josiah Ogden Hoffman. Also, an engraved portrait of Charles Fenno Hoffman.

Letters written by and relating to Watts and members of his family. There are 45 letters written by Charles Wats, dated principally from Biloxi, Miss., to members of his family in New York, and 21 letters from, to, and relating to his sister, Helen Watts, and her husband, H. Floyd Jones, and his family. Also, a few letters from Charles Watts, Sr., to his son, Judge Charles Watts. The letters are personal in nature, dealing with family affairs, daily life, and friends.

Correspondence, legal papers, and letter books of Shepard. The correspondence, which comprises the largest part of the collection, is rich in information about New York politics and social activities at the turn of the century. The letter books cover the years 1890-1911. The collection also contains legal papers, drafts of speeches, clippings, and memorabilia. Correspondents with Shepard include Felix Adler, Thomas Willing Balch, Frederic Bancroft, Bernard Baruch, Richard Rogers Bowker, William Jennings Bryan, Alfred Clark Chapin, Grover Cleveland, Hamlin Garland, Richard Watson Gilder, Edward Everett Hale, Fletcher Harper, Abram S. Hewitt, Charles Evans Hughes, John La Farge, Henry Cabot Lodge, Josephine Shaw Lowell, Hamilton Mabie, Walter H. Page, Alton B. Parker, George Foster Peabody, Bliss Perry, Joseph Pulitzer, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Carl Schurz, Kate Nichols Trask, Oswald Garrison Villard, and Booker T. Washington.

Correspondence, memoranda, and legal and financial documents of Keppel. The files deal largely with Keppel's personal and professional life during his tenure as President of the Carnegie Corporation, and also include some files from his years as Newton D. Baker's Third Assistant Secretary of War, and as Dean of Columbia College. There are extensive files of correspondence from and to Keppel's parents and children, as well as files concerning his activities in organizations such as the Century and Columbia University Clubs. The letters from friends and business associates concern American education, politics, business, and cultural life, particularly in the New York metropolitan area, from 1900 to 1943.

A photostatic copy of the diary of Strong. The diary, running without interruption from Oct. 1835 through June 1875, contains a wealth of information about life in New York City. Its scope broadens to include the national scene with the outbreak of the Civil War. There is also a miscellaneous assortment of approximately 150 photostatic copies of personal correspondence with family and friends, correspondence during his term as treasurer of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, original drawings, caricatures and doodlings, invitations, guest lists, theater and concert programs, newspaper clippings, a family tree, and photographs. Includes typed index of Columbia references in Strong's diary.