The papers of William Averell Harriman (1891-1986) span the years 1869 to 1988, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period 1895 to 1986, and highlight every phase of Harriman's career except his New York governorship (1955-1959), which is documented by papers held at Syracuse University, and some of his private business interests. Included are family papers, household data, White House-related files, State Department and Commerce Department material, correspondence, memoranda, business records, political files, diplomatic accounts, speeches, statements and writings, photographs, architectural and mechanical drawings, printed matter, administrative miscellany, scrapbooks, and numerous other original and secondary material.

The arrangement of the Harriman Papers mirrors the breadth and variety of a life dedicated initially to private pursuits and then refocused on public service. The turning point occurred in 1941, when at age forty-nine Harriman became Franklin D. Roosevelt's special representative to administer Lend-Lease aid to Britain during the low point of the Allied war effort. As a financier and businessman, Harriman had used the fortune he inherited from his father, railroad magnate Edward Henry Harriman, to invest in projects of his own creation, including the founding during World War I of the Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation and his involvement shortly after in international shipping. Following the war he established W. A. Harriman & Company, a financial house which became the Wall Street firm of Brown Brothers Harriman & Company. In the mid-1920s, Harriman invested in extracting manganese from mines in the Soviet Republic of Georgia, and during the early 1930s, he took charge of the Union Pacific Railroad and was credited with revivifying the line during the bleakest years of the Depression. Other involvements included the founding of magazine with Vincent Astor ( merged with in 1937), the building of Sun Valley, Idaho, as a ski resort, and the chairmanship from 1937 to 1939 of the Business Advisory Council. It was the latter association, and especially his emerging friendship with Franklin D. Roosevelt's secretary of commerce, Harry L. Hopkins, which propelled Harriman into a second life as advisor to presidents and one of the "wise men" of America's postwar foreign policy establishment. A listing of the many notable events on which he had a bearing covers the weightiest topics of the World War II era and beyond: the defeat of Germany, Soviet-American relations, the Marshall Plan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Korean and Vietnam wars, African independence movements, United States intervention in Latin America, and arms negotiations.

The circumstances of Harriman's beginnings are illustrated in several series, most prominently in early chronological portions of the Family Papers and the Subject File predating his government service. Noteworthy in the family segment are boyhood items showing the formative effects of Groton School and Yale University (class of 1913) and correspondence between Harriman and his father, who died in 1909. Also valuable are letters he exchanged with his mother, civic activist Mary W. Harriman, which, because they continue into the 1930s, document the maturation of his social and financial commitments. By then he was divorced from his first wife, the former Kathleen ("Kitty") Lanier Lawrence, and was married to Marie Norton Whitney, who is represented throughout the papers, most significantly as a collector together with her husband of some of the world's finest paintings and illustrations. There are a few folders in the Subject File pertaining to the New York gallery Marie Harriman maintained, and her private correspondence located among the Family Papers contains such select items as a note from Henri Matisse. Harriman's extensive social life as a businessman is manifest at every turn, from correspondence and other exchanges with eminences of European and American society to the entertainment files he kept with respect to dinners, travel excursions, sporting interests, and construction and management of Arden Estate, the family's New York country home. Coach of the rowing crew while at Yale, Harriman as an adult was world class in polo and croquet and expert or at least proficient in bowling, skiing, hunting, and shooting. Additional interests included dog breeding and ownership of a stable.

All these activities are delineated with precise documentation maintained by an expert staff. Even greater detail is recorded in papers depicting Harriman's pre-World War II financial and professional responsibilities. Subject files from the period treat his every connection and interest, from Wall Street to Hollywood to the capitals of Europe, with correspondents including government leaders, businessmen, writers, journalists, bankers, and lawyers. Significant among the financial papers are records in the Special Files: Business series documenting Harriman's investments in the USSR following the Bolshevik Revolution and Civil War. Organized under the corporate titles, Georgian Manganese Company and Russian Finance and Construction Corporation, these Soviet business records complement Harriman's other special business files relating to his rail, banking, shipping, and Sun Valley enterprises.

The bulk of the collection is contained in the series identified as Special Files: Public Service, which is arranged largely according to Harriman's major official assignments. The earliest files in this series include records of Harriman's membership on the Palisades Interstate Park Commission administering land donated by his mother and papers relating to the Business Advisory Council. Starting with his Lend-Lease appointment in March 1941, researchers can trace in the public service files Harriman's career sequentially as well as topically, with the added facet that his papers are arranged largely as created. The collection proceeds from World War II files on the Harriman Mission in London (March 1941-September 1943) and his Moscow ambassadorship (October 1943-January 1946) to Truman administration files covering the posts Harriman filled in that presidency, to the various appointments he held under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1969. A separate subseries relates to his 1952 and 1956 Democratic presidential campaigns, and an additional segment features political activities during his New York governorship (1955-1959) and during the two years before and after when Republicans controlled the White House. The public service files end with a small group of papers emanating from official responsibilities under the Jimmy Carter administration, followed by records documenting his postgovernment work from the time he left full-time government service in January 1969 to his final visit to the USSR to meet Premier Yuri Andropov in May 1983.

The World War II subseries of Harriman's public service files is divided into segments relating to his London and Moscow assignments. Most of the correspondence, memoranda, reports, and notes of meetings, both original and transcribed, are arranged chronologically by day, revealing Harriman's every important function from intimate conversations with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin to special missions he undertook in the Middle East and USSR involving Allied military personnel. There is an emphasis on the major wartime conferences, almost all of which Harriman attended, and an explication of most of the important political issue involving the European powers. There is also the more than occasional rare item--a signed memorandum by Stalin, mementos autographed by the Big Three rulers--plus letters by Kathleen Lanier Harriman Mortimer, Harriman's daughter, who accompanied him abroad and whose correspondence to her sister in the United States is filled with the narrative detail generally absent from the ambassador's memoranda and letters.

After Harriman left Moscow in early 1946, Harry S. Truman named him ambassador to the Court of St. James before recalling him to Washington to become secretary of commerce. Files generated from both appointments concern Europe's postwar recovery, with the London portion centering on political ramifications, especially as discussed during the 1946 Paris Conference, and those from the commerce post focusing on economic aspects. In May 1948 Truman sent Harriman to Paris to implement the European Recovery Program, known as the Marshall Plan. He returned to the United States in mid-1950 to become the president's special assistant, then took the job of director of the Mutual Security Agency. While at the technical and military assistance organization, Harriman also served as representative to the Temporary Council Committee of NATO to study Western defense, an assignment of large proportions which, like his Marshall Plan and Mutual Security Agency duties, is represented by an individual subseries. Evidence of the mediating role he played in the British-Iranian oil crisis of 1951, as well as in Korean War controversies surrounding the firing of General Douglas MacArthur, is contained in the Special Assistant file covering the last years of Truman's presidency.

In 1952, at the point Harriman became Truman's political favorite and was himself ready to become president, or at least hopeful of being secretary of state, Dwight D. Eisenhower won the election. His party out of power, Harriman turned his attention to domestic issues, with Albany matters taking priority, as documented in his New York Files. Not until after his defeat for a second term as governor, when he went to the USSR for a meeting with Nikita Khrushchev and the new Russian leadership, do world affairs again assume prominence in the papers. Travel to India and Pakistan and a 1960 tour of Africa as Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy's personal emissary round out Harriman's more significant foreign ventures during the Republican administrations.

Although his ambition to become Kennedy's secretary of state was not fulfilled, Harriman nevertheless reemerged a consequential adviser in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. As indicated by files from the period, he was first ambassador-at-large, then assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, next under secretary for political affairs, and finally, during Johnson's full term, ambassador-at-large again. The scope of his influence or involvement is indicated by a random listing of subjects covered: Cuba and the Congo, Malaysian independence, war on the Asian subcontinent, and political crises in Latin America. Under Kennedy, Harriman served additionally as American representative to the Geneva Accords on Laos and as negotiator in Moscow of the 1963 Test Ban Treaty. Both episodes are fully illuminated by his files. Also highlighted are the missions he conducted worldwide on behalf of Johnson's Vietnam policy. Papers from his negotiations during the 1968 Paris peace talks with representatives of North Vietnam conclude the record of his major diplomatic engagements.

Harriman's Kennedy/Johnson files are organized differently from earlier papers in the Special Files: Public Service series, which are arranged by assignment or posting. In the Kennedy/Johnson subseries, an alphabetical file precedes other material from the era, including a file on trips and missions, a chronological file, and a file of memoranda of conversations. Extensive duplication between and within segments makes it possible to identify correspondents and topics not only by name of person and chronology, but also by context (e.g., country, issue, meeting, conference, etc.)

Thorough record keeping is a characteristic of the remainder of the papers as well. Harriman's staff kept a large Speeches and Statements series, a small Memoirs file (part of a larger series of Writings), and a Photographs series. Each comprises the material specified, with the chronologically-arranged Speeches and Statements series also containing related correspondence and background data. As is true of other important items in the collection, duplicate texts of speeches, talks, interviews, and quotes are often located in pertinent chronological/subject folders elsewhere, but usually without the appended matter available in the main series. Photographs can also be found in other files, although less frequently and with the difference that prints in other series are invariably unique and singular. The significant feature of Harriman's Memoirs file is information pertaining to the Cold War. Less voluminous than related items regarding World War II, most of which involve publication of his wartime biography Special Envoy coauthored by Elie Abel, the portion focusing on 1948 and after stands out because of the transcribed interviews conducted by Mark Lincoln Chadwin of Harriman's former associates.

The Harriman Papers include prominent correspondents from almost every part of the world and for many of the principal decades represented. Family members not already cited include Averell's brother, E. Roland Harriman, his sister, Mary Harriman Rumsey, and his widow, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman. Nonfamily correspondents not previously cited include Dean Acheson, Konrad Adenauer, C. R. Attlee, Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook, Georges Bidault, Habib Bourguiba, Leonid Il'ich Brezhnev, James Francis Byrnes, Sir Richard Stafford Cripps, Wilhelm Cuno, John R. Deane, Charles de Gaulle, Anatoliy Fedorovich Dobrynin, Allen Welsh Dulles, Ira Eaker, Anthony Eden (Earl of Avon), Dwight D. Eisenhower, James Forrestal, Edward Heath, Richard Helms, Paul G. Hoffman, Cordell Hull, Robert F. Kennedy, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, Mohammad Ayub Khan, Aleksey Nikolayevich Kosygin, Robert A. Lovett, R. S. Lovett, John Jay McCloy, Harold Macmillan, Robert S. McNamara, George C. Marshall, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (Shah of Iran), Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov, Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, Jean Monnet, Mohammad Mosaddeq, Jawaharlal Nehru, Georgi M. Pushkin, Dean Rusk, Robert Schuman, Souvanna Phouma, Paul-Henri Spaak, Edward R. Stettinius, Herbert Bayard Swope, Josip Broz Tito, Ahmed Sekoú Touré, Cyrus R. Vance, Sumner Welles, and Harold Wilson.

The first addition to the Harriman Papers spans the years 1899-1986, with the bulk of the items concentrated from 1969 to 1986. The majority of these papers consist of the Special Files: Public Service series pertaining to Harriman's public and personal life from 1969 to his death in 1986, in particular Soviet-United States relations, a May 1983 trip to the USSR, the nuclear freeze movement, and various philanthropic activities. Family material has been filed in the series as received rather than relocated in a separate series. The papers also contain a few of Harriman's speeches, statements, and writings from 1981 through 1985.

An elaborate album documents a scientific expedition to Alaska undertaken by several members of the Harriman family and various scientists, artists, and naturalists, including John Muir, from May to August 1899. Compiled by various expedition members, the album includes notes, poetry, speeches, watercolors, maps, photographs, and signatures of the expedition members.

The second addition to the papers, Addition II, spans the years 1891-1988, with the bulk of the items concentrated from 1969 to1984. Addition II supplements files in the main portion of the papers and is organized largely according to the arrangement of the first segment of papers. Addition II includes six series, Family Papers; Special Files: Public Service; Special Files: Business; Speeches and Statements; Writings; and Photographs.

The Family Papers consist chiefly of letters to Harriman from friends, acquaintances, and government officials offering condolences after Marie Norton Whitney Harriman's death. The Special Files: Public Service series contains material relating to two subseries, the Kennedy/Johnson Administrations and Postgovernment. The Kennedy/Johnson subseries includes press materials documenting Harriman's trips and missions from 1961 to 1968 and files relating to foreign policy matters. Papers in the Postgovernment subseries chronicle Harriman's public and personal life from 1969 to his death in 1986 and reflect his interest in foreign policy and politics and his affiliations with various organizations and institutions. The bulk of the Writings pertain to Harriman's Memoirs and Research files and include notes, interviews, and reminiscences by Harriman about World War II, Korea, and the Vietnam conflict.