The Reference Files consist of ready-reference materials, primarily publications and articles, orginally compiled for the Commonwealth Fund Library.

Barry C. Smith served as General Director of the Commonwealth Fund, 1920-1947. During this period the reports were officially titled as Report of the General Director to the Directors of the Commonwealth Fund. Beginning in 1948, the offical title became known as Report of the President and Staff to Directors of the Commonwealth Fund.

Types of records include: financial material and general files.

This series is a vertical file created by Reginald H. Fitz consisting of articles, reports, studies, reprints and other associated subject matter.

Types of records include: blueprints, photographs, and maps. Images document the Harkness Family, Harkness House, Harkness Fellows. This series also contains a variety of material separated from the body of the early Commonwealth Fund grant records including grants in public health, rural hositals and disease research (FA290 Commonwealth Fund Grants, SG 1, Series 18.1) as well as the Division of Publications (FA285 SG 1, Series 13).

Correspondence, reports, memoranda, case records, photographs and printed material. The archive include central and district administrative records; cammittee correspondence and minutes; and files on the various programs--such as sheltered workshops, tuberculosis sanitariums and health centers, public baths and employment bureaus--run by the two organizations. The archive also contains hundreds of photographs, including works by Lewis Hine and Jessie Tarbox Beals; extensive casework files from the beginning of social work (originally referred to as "friendly visiting among the poor"); and copies of masters and doctoral theses from the New York School of Sociel Work and other schools. Much of the research for these theses was based on the CSS files

This set of general files chronicles management of the philanthropic affairs of David Rockefeller during the period 1992-1996. when he was naturally beginning to curtail his activities.

This collection contains correspondence, dockets, financial reports, minutes, and manuals relating to the Davison Fund, Inc.

Davison Fund I records were kept by the Fund's treasurer and include minutes of trustee and committee meetings and financial materials.

The collection documents all aspects of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association's activities from its creation, with the consolidation of the Downtown Manhattan Association and the Committee on Lower Manhattan in 1958, through its most active and successful years of 1958-1974, through the mid-1990s with its participation in the Lower Manhattan Project and its resulting updated Lower Manhattan Plan, and the role played by the DLMA as the supporting organization for Lower Manhattan's Business Improvement District (BID), the Alliance for Downtown New York. The material encompasses the meeting records of the Board of Directors, Members, Executive Committee, Planning Committee, and other prominent committees, a limited selection of officers files, financial records, membership records, projects, DLMA publications, and reports and studies.