Links to Business History Resources in the United States
American Precision Museum, Windsor, Vermont
Historical Collections, Baker Library, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts
The business manuscripts collections includes approximately 1,400 collections of original business manuscripts from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries. Subjects include agriculture, transportation services, manufacturing industries, and marketing and financial services, with over 30,000 photographs and prints documenting the history of American industry.
http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/
Harvard University's Open Collections Program
Includes "Women Working, 1800-1930", which focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections. The collection features approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images.
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ww/
Charles River Museum of Industry, Waltham, Massachusetts
American Textile History Museum, Lowell, Massachusetts
The Saga of Landers, Frary & Clark
Makers of housewares and hardware, of New Britain, Connecticut.
http://www.toaster.org/landers.html
Otis Elevator, Farmington, Connecticut
Video about the company's 160th anniversary in 2013
http://www.multivu.com/mnr/60420-otis-elevator-company-marks-160-th-anniversary
History of the Pratt and Whitney Company founded in Hartford, Connecticut
http://www.prattandwhitney.com/history.htm
Museum of Connecticut History, Hartford, Connecticut
The focus of the museum is on Connecticut's government, industrial and military history.
http://www.museumofcthistory.org/
Connecticut Antique Machinery Association, Kent, Connecticut
A non-profit museum dedicated to the preservation, restoration and demonstration of antique machinery.
Bridgeport [Connecticut] Public Library
The library holds records of companies such as the Locomobile Company, Warner Brothers, Sprague Meter, Remington Arms, Wheeler & Wilson and other Bridgeport companies.
http://www.bridgeportpubliclibrary.org/
Museum of American Finance, New York, New York
http://www.financialhistory.org/
Smithsonian Institution: National Museum of American History
The Archives Center, at http://www.americanhistory.si.edu/archives/home.htm, holds the National Museum of American History's collections of personal papers, business records and commercial ephemera, sheet music, historic film, video, and photographs. Prominent among them is the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, http://www.americanhistory.si.edu/archives/d7060a.htm.
Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware
The library houses a collection of books, pamphlets, trade catalogs, manuscripts, photographs, ephemera, and audiovisual materials documenting the history of American business and technology. Hagley's main strength is in the Middle Atlantic region, but the scope of collecting includes business organizations and companies with national and international impact.
Penn State University, University Libraries, Special Collections. University Park, Pennsylvania. Historical Collections & Labor Archives
Documents on Pennsylvania's core industries, firms, and entrepreneurs form one significant group of HCLA's collections. There are account books dating from the mid-eighteenth century for several charcoal iron furnaces; correspondence of steel magnates and executives Andrew Carnegie, Charles Schwab, and William B. Dickson; business records for nineteenth- and twentieth-century anthracite and bituminous coal firms; and records for the Pennsylvania Railroad's Central Division and numerous subsidiary railroads. The letters and papers of prominent efficiency engineer Harrington Emerson also contain rich information on business operations.
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/speccolls/hcla.html.
University of Pittsburgh Libraries, Archives of Industrial Society. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Archives of Industrial Society (AIS) is the general designation for the hundreds of historical collections related to the development of the urban industrial society, with an emphasis on Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, preserved by the University of Pittsburgh. The Archives Service Center holds 626 collections comprising 19,424 linear feet of documentation, 48,195 microform units, 3,111 audio recordings, 132,000+photographs including 57,000 glass plates and 2,400 slides, more than 3,702 maps (many related to coal mining), and 1,300+ architectural drawings/blueprints, and 6,681 volumes.
http://www.library.pitt.edu/libraries/archives/ais.html
Temple University Libraries, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Collections are of the following subjects: Business and Economic development, community affairs, crime and the legal system, culture, education, health, housing, immigrant and ethnic communities, labor, politics and protest, social services, and transportation.
http://library.temple.edu/collections/urbana/
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Business History Resources in the Manuscripts Department at the Wilson Library.
Mahoning Valley [Ohio] Historical Society, Business and Media Archives of the Mahoning Valley
http://www.mahoninghistory.org/bmahome.htm
The Cleveland Memory Project: A Showcase for the Special Collections of the Cleveland State University Library
http://www.clevelandmemory.org/. Includes photographs of Cleveland Business and Commerce, at http://www.clevelandmemory.org/exhibits/industry.shtml
Cleveland State University Library, Cleveland, Ohio. Great Lakes Industrial History Collection
The materials available through the Great Lakes Industrial History Collection include personal and company records, diaries and other keepsakes of the visionaries and leaders who took enormous risks to create industrial development in the Great Lakes region.
http://web.ulib.csuohio.edu/SpecColl/glihc/
The Ohio Historical Society Youngstown Historical Center for Industry & Labor
The Archives/Library research facility houses local government records as well as materials relating to the iron and steel industries in northeastern Ohio and the development of organized labor. In addition to manuscript collections from corporations and labor unions such as the United Steelworkers of America, District 27, Subdistrict 6, the Archives/Library also holds and collects personal papers of local residents, oral history interviews with workers and managers, films and videos on steelmaking, photographs, blueprints, newspapers on microfilm, and reference books on industrial and labor history.
http://www.ohiohistory.org/youngst/arch_lib.html
U.S. Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection, 1906-1970
http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/steel/
Kettering University, Flint, Michigan. Kettering/GMI Alumni Foundation Collection of Industrial History
The collection seeks to collect and preserve manuscripts, photographs, printed materials and miscellaneous memorablia that relate to the development and growth of the automobile and related industries. Included are collections and documents recording the lives and contributions of people and events that helped shape America's industrial hertiage, particularly as it relates to the automobile industry.
http://www.kettering.edu/library/scharchburgArchives.jsp
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Milwaukee Urban Archives
The Archives, located at the Golda Meir Library of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is the premier repository for researching the history of Milwaukee-area businesses, civil rights, environmental campaigns, ethnic groups, families, housing, labor, urban development, women, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
http://www.uwm.edu/Library/arch/.
Minnesota Historical Society, Business Collections
Holds the records of dozens of Minnesota and American businesses, covering such businesses and industries as lumber, technology, manufacturing, banking and hardware.
http://www.mnhs.org/collections/manuscripts/business.htm
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This page maintained by L. Smith.