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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 career, philanthropic, political, and personal aspects of Charles Richard Crane's life were closely intertwined. Among the correspondence of significance in the papers are letters to and from James Francis Abbott, Kathryn Newell Adams, Jane Addams, Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, Edvard Benes, Boris III, King of Bulgaria, Louis Dembitz Brandeis, Nicholas Murray Butler, Frances F. Cleveland, Grover Cleveland, Archibald Gary Coolidge, Calvin Coolidge, John Dewey, Charles William Elliot, Hamlin Garland, William Rainey Harper, Jean-Jules Jusserand, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Alexander Kuprin, Robert Marion LaFollette, Seth Low, William Gibbs McAdoo, Jan Masaryk, Tomas Masaryk, Pavel Miliukov, John Pierpont Morgan, Alphonse Maria Mucha, Fridtjof Nansen, George Haven Putnam, John Davison Rockefeller Jr., Theodore Roosevelt, Upton Beall Sinclair, William Howard Taft, Lillian D. Wald, Herbert George Wells, Edith B. Wilson, Woodrow Wilson and other.

Master's thesis produced by May Randall entitled "The New Negro Poet" for her degree in English from the University of Chicago in the late 1920s. The thesis examines black poets of the Harlem Riennaisance and the collection includes a photocopy of her thesis, and the original letters from 39 Dlack poets of the time, all personal correspondence with Ms Randall regarding her thesis, which she Dlanned to submit for publication. The poets include many of the leading lights: Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Claude McKay, plus 35 lesser known authors. Most of the letters are giving her permission to publish their work, but they also referred her to other poets, and gave her contact information so she could include them. The letters are friendly, helpful, and enthusiastic about the idea that her thesis might become a published book.