This collection consists of photographs, postcards, glass projection slides, printed materials, and reference materials. Photographs and postcards document the businesses, social environment and development of New York's Chinatown, including inter-ethnic tensions. Printed material include articles, magazines, booklets, and a guidebook about the social history of Chinatowns and the political environment during the Second Sino-Japanese War. There are also menus for Chinese Restaurants in New York City and their accompanying instructional recipe booklets. Publicity materials consist of two calendar pin-ups, trade cards, two songbooks and a Chinese newsclipping about Chinese Opera. The majority of the collection dates from the 1860s through the 1970s.

One of the many highlights of the collection is a letter written and signed in the late 1880s by Journalist Wong Chin Foo, one of the first Chinese-American human rights activists in the U.S, who some credit with coining the term Chinese American.