Search

Collection contains watercolor renderings, sketches, technical drawings (ground plans, elevations and details), photographs, glass plate and acetate negatives, scrapbooks, set models and some related papers covering Urban's career in Vienna and New York as an architect, set designer, decorator and illustrator. There is a thorough representation of his New York career including his set designs for Florenz Ziegfeld (1915-1932) and the Metropolitan Opera (1917-1933). The collection also contains information on Urban's work for William Randolph Hearst as art director for Cosmopolitan Studios, his exhibitions including his 1921 Wiener Werkstätte store, and his many architectural projects. Biographical information and research gathered by Richard Cole and Randolph Carter including contributions from his daughter,Gretl Urban, and biographical notes and some letters from his widow, Mary Urban, are also present.

Papers of the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China consist of correspondence, memoranda, reports, minutes, committee files, membership records, financial records, fund raising records, motion pictures, audio tapes, phonograph records, photographs, posters, publications of ABMAC and other printed materials. Also included are the files of related Chinese relief organizations: Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, 1954-1969; American Emergency Relief, 1941-1946; United Services to China, 1941-1977. Of particular interest are approximately 6,000 photographs of Chinese medical colleges, hospitals, laboratories and personnel and 45 phonograph records including speeches by such ABMAC supporters as Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek, Pearl S. Buck, Wendell Willkie, Fiorello LaGuardia and a number of movie stars

The reports and correspondence relating to UNRRA were arranged according to the nine administrative divisions of that organization that generated the documents: Bureau of Administration (26 reels); Office of the Diplomatic Adviser (4 reels); Office of the Director General (20 reels); Office of the Economic Adviser (4 reels); Office of Far Eastern Affairs (9 reels); Office of the General Counsel (19 reels); Office of the Historian (16 reels); Office of Public Information (1 reel); and Secretariat Executive Office (3 reels). Within each division, subsidiary bodies are typically separated into subject and country files.

Correspondence, manuscripts, speeches, scrapbooks, and printed materials of John B. Oakes, a prominent journalist and editor, who for many years editied the New York Times editorial page.