New York City architectural renderer, artist, and printmaker. Born 1884 in Newark, New Jersey, Flanagan graduated from the School of Architecture at Columbia University in 1910. Flanagan taught drawing at Columbia from 1911 to 1912 and returned as an associate professor of design from 1920 to 1925. Flanagan also worked for several architectural firms, often as a renderer, including Trowbridge & Livingston, McKim, Mead & White, and Harvey Corbett. In 1927, Flanagan left Corbett's office and began full time work as a fine artist. From January 1928 until August 1929, Flanagan travelled in Europe, studying with painter Edouard Léon Cortès in Paris from the fall of 1928 through the spring of 1929. Flanagan was also one of the original members of the Society of American Etchers. Flanagan eventually returned to practicing architecture, associating with various firms until he retired in the mid-1960s. He died in New York City in 1969.

Bob Adelman (1930-2016) studied photography with Alexey Brodovitch at The New School in the 1950s and became one of the photographers regularly documenting the life of the New School in the 1970s and 1980s. Adelman also taught at the school and was one of the most well-known photographers of the Civil Rights Movement. This collection consists largely of black and white photographic prints taken for the New School for Social Research. The collection also includes a small group of prints representing Adelman's work in documentary journalism, including photographs of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as photographs documenting life in New Orleans and Moscow, and the New York City Housing Authority.

This collection primarily contains architectural drawings, correspondence, business records, and a small number of photographs related to the projects of Emery Roth & Sons and its subsidiary entities. A large portion of the entities are represented only in the Office Records series and are identified as such. Some projects on which Emery Roth & Sons acted as architect of record are not represented in this collection, most notably the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

This collection includes original and reprographic architectural drawings, photographs, office files, and professional papers related to the work of New York architect Frederick G. Frost, his son Frederick G., Jr., and his grandson, A. Corwin Frost. Examples of the work of Trowbridge & Livingston are also included.

Peter Marcuse (b. 1928), son of critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, is an attorney, planner, and professor of planning. He has produced extensive scholarship on planning matters, covering different issues such as professional ethics, housing, city planning, comparative policy, the 'right to the city' movement', urban history, and globalization. This collection consists mainly of teaching and course materials related to Marcuse's tenure as Professor of Urban Planning at Columbia University (since 1975) as well as research, writings, and reference materials for professional work inside and outside academia, including projects commissioned by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal.

This collection includes research materials, publication manuscripts, notes, correspondence, and architectural drawings related to the academic study, teaching, and writings of architect and urban historian Richard Plunz. The bulk of the collection contains research papers, administrative records, notes, and sketches, as well as reproductions of architectural drawings by other architects for various properties owned by the New York City Housing Authority, gathered by Plunz and his Urban Design Research Group students during their studies on the concept of "defensible space" in New York City public housing. Also included in this collection are notes and draft manuscripts for "Design and the Public Good" [Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1982], Plunz's compilation of writings by architect and educator Serge Chermayeff, as well as general research files about and correspondence with Chermayeff. Lastly, a small body of reproduced drawings documents various historic structures on Ellis Island, the 39th St. Ferry Terminal building in Manhattan and Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn.