Our Collection

At the Institute’s core is the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the great archives in American history. More than 85,000 items cover five hundred years of American history, from Columbus’s 1493 letter describing the New World through the end of the twentieth century.

Twentieth Century

Twentieth Century

A select group of materials highlights the major events of the twentieth century including World War I, World War II, women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Cold War.

Selected searches in the Collection’s catalog