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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.

Included are Fellheimer & Wagner's architectural drawings for the Union Passenger Station in Macon, Ga. (1915); the State Street Station in Chicago, Ill. (1924); the Passenger Station in South Bend, Ind. (1927); the Kentucky and Indiana Railroad Terminal in Louisville, Ky. (1928); the Springfield Union Station in Springfield, Mass. (1924); the New York Central Rail Road Buffalo & East Buffalo Terminal Improvement Passenger Station and Curtis Street Passenger Station in Buffalo, NY (1927-1928); the Cincinnati Terminal in Cincinnati, Ohio (1930-1931); the Passenger Station in Elyria, Ohio (1924); the Erie Passenger Station in Erie, Penn. (1928-1931); and the Toronto-Hamilton & Buffalo Railway Company in Hamilton, Ont., Canada (1931).

The collection consists of correspondence, manuscripts, notebooks, diagrams and tables, lists of addresses, and printed materials. Correspondence is mostly drafts of letters by Novak and letters to and from Mark Weinbaum. The bulk of the collection consists of manuscripts by Novak dealing with topics in engineering and physics. Novak criticizes Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Newton's laws of mechanics in his discussions. Notebooks include drafts of articles. Diagrams and tables mostly complement his manuscripts. Printed materials include copies of a pamphlet by Novak"Fizika 3-khmernogo prostranstva.".

Letters and papers of Olcott. Among the subjects covered are the history of the Bank; banks and politics in New York during the Jacksonian era; the operations of the safety Fund Banking System; land acquisition in the West, particularly Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and western New York; the Boston and Albany Railroad; the Corning Land Company; and the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. The papers are divided into the following groups: letters received, including correspondence with Martin Van Buren, Samuel P. Chase, William Henry Seward, William B. Astor, Silas Wright, William Kent, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Horatio Seymour; documents including land deeds, wills, leases, bonds, sureties, orders to pay, checks, bank ledgers, partnership agreements, earnings reports, tax assessments, and land sales; household bills and receipts; bank notes including excellent examples of early American currency; miscellaneous account books, photographs, and printed material; patents for Michigan and Ohio lands to William Thompson, Thomas W. Olcott, and Garrit Denniston signed by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren (proxy signatures).

Correspondence of Wilgus with officials of various railroads in the United States and Canada regarding a study undertaken by Wilgus at the instance of Dr. James T. Shotwell and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The study was of "the railway interrelations of the United States and Canada with a view to setting forth the extent to which they play a part in the comity and well-being of the two nations." Also, various statistical and other reports submitted to Wilgus, correspondence with Shotwell and others, notes taken while working on the project, and galley and page proof of the published work RAILWAY INTERRELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA (Yale University Press, 1937).