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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.

Correspondence, memoranda, photographs, documents, manuscripts, wire recordings, and printed materials dealing mostly with Russian War Relief, Inc. (The American Society for Russian Relief, Inc.), 1940-1954. There are some materials on the Institute of Pacific Relations and its investigation by the McCarran Committee in the early 1950s. Also, personal and family correspondence, photographs, and other memorabilia. Correspondents include Hugo L. Black, Henry Sloane Coffin, Andrei Gromyko, John Hersey, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Arnold Toynbee.

The Edwin W. Patterson Papers collects the papers of Patterson related specifically to the revision of the New York Insurance Law 1939 while he worked as Deputy Superintendent of the Insurance Department of New York State. Patterson was an expert in insurance law and authored both "The Insurance Commissioner in the United States" 1927) and "Essentials of Insurance Law" (1935). The collection contains the work of the New York Insurance Department, in particular the Committee of Insurance Law Reform. The documents are in the form of minutes, correspondence, memoranda, and drafts of bills proposals with annotations and marginalia. The collection also holds the transcript of hearings held by the New York State Legislature on Insurance reform in the 1930s.

Files of the ESCO Fund Committee, Inc. and its related foundations ESCO Foundation for Palestine and ESCO, Friends, Inc. The files contain correspondence, reports, clippings, Board minute books, photographs and ESCO publications. Among the correspondence are Stephen Wise, Theodore Kolleck, Ernest Bloch, and Leonard Bernstein. The collection also includes papers relating to Frank and Ethel Cohen's personal (i.e., non-ESCO) Zionist and Jewish interests.