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This archive consists of manuscripts, business files, production materials, and correspondence from 1966 -2012. The journal Hanging Loose was first published in 1966 was preceded by the journal Things, begun by two Columbia College students Emmet Jarrett and Ron Schreiber, Hanging Loose Press founders. The most recent issue #101 was published in 2013. The press has also published books, mostly poetry. The selection process is collective and inclusive. Hanging Loose publishes high school students and has dedicated issues to literature written by prison inmates. HL published Hettie Jones, long-time Columbia-affiliated poet Paul Violi, Jack Agueros, Sherman Alexie, and Charles North, as well as many of the collective members. Denise Levertov is a former board member.

The collection consists of the editorial and production archives of Random House, Inc. from its founding in 1925 to the 1990s. The correspondence and editorial files include many of the prominent novelists and short story writers from 20th-century American and European literature: Saul Bellow; Erskine Caldwell; Truman Capote; William Faulkner; Sinclair Lewis; André Malraux; Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder. Among the poets there are files for W. H. Auden; Allen Ginsberg; Robinson Jeffers; Robert Lowell; and Stephen Spender. In the area of theater there are files for Maxwell Anderson; Moss Hart; Lillian Hellman; Eugene O'Neill; and Tennessee Williams. Random House transacted business with many fine presses and noted typographers and the archives contain files for Nonesuch Press, Grabhorn Press and Golden Cockerel Press, as wll as for Bruce Rogers, Valenti Angelo, and Edwin, Jane, and Robert Grabhorn.

The collection contains correspondence with the authors, including contracts signed with authors as well as negotiations with the authors over various aspects of publishing their works; financial records documenting many aspects of the operation of Harper & Brothers, including royalties paid to authors, records of stock offerings and company reorganizations, and general ledgers which contain daily notes on all aspects of the operation of the business; book catalogues and trade lists; research materials collected by Eugene Exman for his history of Harper & Brothers; visual materials, from drawings and photographs of Harper's authors to colophon designs and an oil painting of the original Harper's building.

Files of the company, 1911-1920, much of which consists of unsucessful architectural bid documents, each noting the architect, building, and location, as well as estimated costs, sketches, and related correspondents. These bid documents represent commissions not awarded to NYATCC, and do, in some cases, indicate the outcome of the bid. Architects represented include McKim, Mead & White; Cass Gilbert; George Post; D.H. Burnham & Company; Warren & Wetmore, Schwartz & Gross, and many others. Also includes correspondence and office memoranda, including some describing the formative years, 1911-1914, of the National Terra Cotta Society, trade catalogs, and job photographs. Also, two albums containing photographs of sample pieces of terra cotta, and month by month construction records for three buildings, including the American Theater (42nd Street, New York, 1892) by Charles Coolidge Haight; the Renaissance Apartments (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1889) and the Imperial Apartments (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1890) both by Montrose Morris.

This collection includes nine letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as letters of Louis Agassiz, Amos Bronson Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, John Lothrop Motley, Charles Sumner, and John Greenleaf Whittier. In addition, there are two incomplete manuscripts by Emerson and one document from the Liverpool Custom-house signed by Nathaniel Hawthorne as Consul for the United States. The collection also includes the corrected typescript, index, and page and galley proofs for Thomas Franklin Currier, A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (New York, 1953) which was edited by Professor Tilton. Also, some early correspondence and photographs of the Tilton family and friends. There are letters from the actors Annie Louise Ames, Richard J. Dillon, and Hans L. Meery to Tilton's grandfather, Bernard Paul Verne, as well as photographs, tintypes, and daguerreotypes of the Verne family and friends.

This collection primarily contains 177 groups of English, Continental and American drafting sets and individual instruments dating from circa 1700 to 2004. These instruments were used to create technical drawings, typically by architects, draftsmen, engineers, surveyors, and students. Complementing the instruments are a small group of miscellaneous items, including medals, a model, a necktie, and a charm bracelet, and a large group of published materials, including trade catalogs and other technical, biographical, historical, and scholarly writings about drafting and scientific instruments and related subjects.

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).