Sub-Series I: Special Projects,, 1962-1977(bulk 1970 - 1977).
Dates
- 1962-1977(bulk 1970 - 1977).
Scope and Contents
Special Projects includes a full range of project types as described above in the Series Overview. A sampling of the scope of the most well-represented items in the sub-series follows:
Urban areas such as Newark, East Orange, Paterson, Jersey City, Camden, Atlantic City, and Trenton are particularly well-represented, but many smaller municipalities such as Hoboken, Paulsboro, and Princeton are also included. Local community organizations are well-represented, such as NARCO, Inc (Narcotic Addiction Rehabilitation Center Organization) of Atlantic City, Black People's Unity Movement (BPUM) Economic Development Corp of Camden, Puerto Rican Congress of Trenton, and the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association. Municipal plans for programs conducted under the aegis of the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission in the years leading to 1976 are included. HAW's decade-long, and ultimately failed, effort to bring a VA hospital to Camden is extensively documented. The importance of Picatinny Arsenal, Fort Dix, Bayonne Navy Depot, Lakehurst Naval Base, Fort Monmouth and other military installations to their local communities is documented in this sub-series.
Examples of county or regional organizations well-represented in the sub-series include OCEAN, Inc (Ocean Community Economic Action Now) and the legal services corporations of Hudson, Union, Ocean, and other counties. Highway projects, including Route 18 in New Brunswick, and river projects, including those of the Delaware and Passaic, are represented. Community Action Programs, Retired Senior Volunteer Programs (RSVP), urban renewal, public housing, Model Cities Programs, and Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) are among the programs well-represented.
There is extensive documentation of educational and research proposals from Rutgers University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Glassboro State, Trenton State, University of Medicine and Dentistry, and several community colleges. Often these proposals are aimed at poverty, health, or other conditions in nearby communities. Local public school initiatives, such as those of Teaneck, Berlin, and Cinnaminson are included in the sub-series. Health initiatives, such as those of DARE (Drug Addiction Rehabilitation Enterprise), Odyssey House, and Seabrook House are included.
Language of Materials
Undetermined .
Physical Description
(55 cubic feet)
Arrangement
The arrangement of Special Projects follows the original order of the files as they were shipped in batches over time to the Federal Records Center by HAW's office. Eleven such batches, or sets, were reconstructed by the processing archivists. The eleven sets progress roughly in chronological order, though there is substantial overlap among them. Within each set, arrangement is alphabetical. The alphabetical order is based most commonly on the applicable department/agency, but a company, town, university, or other subject name is often used instead. Not all sets contain a full "A-Z" complement of project files. (See Appendix A for information on department/agency acronyms used in the folder descriptions.)
HAW's staff used three terms to refer to the files in this sub-series: "Leg-Case," "Special Projects," and "Leg-Case Special Projects." For simplicity, the processing archivists chose to use the term "Special Projects" for the sub-series.
Folder descriptions are taken from the original labels. Dates on the container list are generally from the original folder label, not from the documents in the folder.
Material related to many of the projects or underlying institutions in this sub-series (e.g. Fort Dix, NARCO Inc, etc.) can also be found in other sub-series of SPECIAL PROJECTS FILES.
Appraisal and Discard Information
Following the standard approach for the project, annual reports, government publications, and other such documents with minimal or no other contextual material, and which would be more accessible if cataloged individually, were removed and sent to a Special Collections and University Archives bibliographer for disposition. Otherwise, the bulk of project files was retained; discards were limited to those files with lean, non-substantive content.
General
Index Terms
The following key index terms were used for this sub-series:
Because of the relationship of many projects to specific municipalities or counties, town or county name was used as an index term unless it was in the folder description or did not apply. This relationship might be direct (e.g., a town receiving funds for urban renewal) or indirect (e.g., a town as target of a program run by an educational or other institution). Town name was also attached as an index term to projects (e.g., government contracts or loans) related primarily to local companies.
The Federal department/agency related to the project program was typically included in the original folder label. Wherever a department/agency was not included in the folder label, but one could be perceived by the processing archivist, that department/agency was used as an index term. This department/agency (e.g., HUD) is broadly indicative of the nature of the project, but is also useful for linking themes across project folders in this sub-series and across all sub-series in SPECIAL PROJECTS FILES.
Where the folder description used an acronym (other than for Federal department/agency), the full name was included as an index term (e.g., NAFEC in the folder description; National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center as an index term).
Where the folder description referred to projects in possibly obscure ways, underlying information was included as index terms (e.g., Save the Dinky as project/folder description; Princeton Junction as an index term).
For particularly substantive content not well-described by the folder description, additional index terms were included as warranted.
Part of the New Brunswick Special Collections Repository