Baruch college | Newman Library

INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION COLLECTION AND LUTHER GULICK PAPERS

The Institute of Public Administration collection documents the rise of the municipal reform movement from the revolt against Tammany Hall corruption in the early 1900s through the Great Depression, World War II and postwar urban modernization. The materials highlight the roles of John D. Rockefeller Jr., Andrew Carnegie, E.H. Harriman and other titans of industry and commerce in fostering accountable, efficient and honest government by professional public servants applying rigorous new auditing and budgeting principles.

Central to this good-government revolution that spread from New York across the country was a pioneer of public administration, Luther Halsey Gulick III, who ran the first training school for public service; reorganized the executive branch for President Franklin D. Roosevelt; mobilized World War II defense production; fed, clothed and sheltered millions of refugees; and guided America into the modern age.

The collection materials include the records of the Institute of Public Administration, including the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, the predecessor of the IPA; and the papers of Luther Gulick (1892-1993), who led the organization for close to sixty-five years. The collection is made up of city, state, federal, and international studies by the Institute of Public Administration and Luther Gulick with the aim of creating more effective and responsive government.

Our archivists are digitizing vast portions of the collection under generous funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York, making the material readily available to our students and researchers and scholars worldwide.