Times Archives Come to the Library

“Well, the deed is did—Felicitations are in order,” wrote Adolph Ochs on August 13, 1896, in a letter home to his wife, Effie, in Chattanooga. Ochs was reporting on his successful purchase of The New York Times, which had fallen into a state of decline but which Ochs saw as an opportunity for his future. The handwritten letter is one of hundreds of thousands of documents in the newspaper’s archives, which were donated to the Library in July by The New York Times Company. The vast collection includes the records of all its publishers and many of its managerial departments, and bears witness to the developments large and small that shaped the legendary journalistic endeavor from its founding in 1851 to today.

The publishers of the Times were frequently in contact with elected officials who sought advice and favor with the paper, and they heard from accomplished figures in every field. The archives include correspondence with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, Fiorello LaGuardia, and Emma Goldman, to name just a few, and detailed documentation of meetings, controversies, and visits with international leaders and local officials. The archives will be right at home at the Library: in 1994, the Times donated a portion of its press clipping files to the Library, which also holds the papers of numerous writers and editors who worked at the paper.

“I must confess that my success leads me to believe that much that we designate as impossible is possible if we but try with earnestness of purpose,” Ochs continued in his letter home. The archives of The New York Times document how Ochs made his impossible venture possible and how his descendants have delivered on the challenge ever since.