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The collection consists of personal, professional, and project-related papers. The project and professional papers are made up of contracts, specifications, proposals, published speeches, reports, clippings, trade catalogs, and engineering drawings and documents. Among the projects documented in the collection are T. Kennard Thomson's Niagara River Water Power project, Manhattan Extension project, New York City Belt Line Railroad and Elevated Highways project, and Fifth Avenue Traffic Puzzle project. Additional engineering projects represented in the collection include those primarily related to bridge and elevated railroad projects. The personal papers include photographs, financial records, obituaries, clippings, and collected ephemera of Thomson and his extended family members. The personal papers also include menus, programs, and bulletins from various clubs and societies Thomson was associated with, including the Canadian Club of New York and the University of Toronto Engineering Society (founded by Thomson while at University).

There is a letter book / account book of 347 p., 1790-1856, containing 466 draft copies of his commercial and social correspondence with shipping agents in Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Germany, China, Canada, as well as in the United States. The correspondence concerns Bell's business arrangements, the various cargos he shipped and their disposal, political affairs affecting the shipping trade, laws and treaties of various countries to be dealt with, taxes, embargoes, piracy, threats of war, and other pertinent events. A second account book of 84 p. (many are blank), 1787-1852, for the Ship Stephania and others contains ships' records for 1799 to 1828 and miscellaneous accounts up to 1857. There is a one volume carbon typescript (113 p.) of genealogical notes and reminiscences by Gordon Knox Bell (Regent of the University of the State of New York and grandson of Isaac Bell) and others, ca.1940. There is also an essay and lists of the residents of Greenwich Street (including the Bell and Rogers families) by Elizur Yale Smith with related correspondence, 1940.