Robert Caro's Extensive Reporting Archives Will Be Preserved & Made Public By The New-York Historical Society

Elizabeth Kim

Published Jan 9, 2020

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Scott Heins / Gothamist

Elizabeth Kim

Published Jan 9, 2020

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In a boon to students of New York City history and Lyndon B. Johnson, the large trove of reporting materials amassed by Robert Caro, the famed biographer and chronicler of political power, will soon be available for the public without any restrictions at the New-York Historical Society.

The museum made the announcement on Wednesday that it had acquired Caro's papers, which cover the history of New York City and the state from the 1920s through the 1960s, and that of the United States from the 1930s through the 1960s. The historical society will create a permanent installation for the material, some of which will be digitized. Caro, 84, specifically stipulated that the entire archive be made public.

“Making Robert Caro’s remarkable archive available to the public will give generations of scholars and researchers access to priceless documentation of some of the 20th century’s most influential public figures," said Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of New-York Historical Society, in a statement.

At roughly 200 linear feet, the archive is among the largest of a single individual in the historical society’s collection, according to the New York Times, who interviewed Caro last week.

"I have always felt that the qualities that are acknowledged to be crucial in fiction—things like mood, rhythm, sense of place—are just as crucial in non-fiction,” Caro said, in a statement. “Unfortunately, I can’t say I always, or even often, achieved them, but at least in these papers you can see someone trying to achieve them.”

The price of the acquisition was not disclosed although Caro told the Times that it was “more generous than I expected.”

Historians will likely be drawn to the thousands of interviews in the collection. A former Newsday reporter, Caro is legendary for his meticulous reporting and attention to detail. During the course of his reporting for his book The Power Broker, his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of master planner Robert Moses, Caro conducted more than 500 interviews, many of them with people who worked closely with former New York governor Al Smith and New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

For his still-in-progress five-volume work on Johnson, Caro interviewed the late president's widow Lady Bird Johnson several times as well as many close friends and associates of the former president.

In what may come as a surprise to some journalists, Caro "almost never" tape records his interviews. Instead, he transcribes his notes from a steno pad before going to bed. In 2016, he recounted to Gothamist an instance where Lady Bird Johnson asked for her interview to be taped. "I checked it against the transcript and I had every word," he said.

Some of the papers will not be moved to the historical society until Caro completes his long-awaited final installment of his biography on Johnson. According to the Times, there are 604 typed manuscript pages so far. The author, who has been depicted as having a monastic devotion to his subject, somewhat unexpectedly took a break from his work on Johnson recently to publish Working, which details his writing and reporting process and came out last year.

Caro has won a legion of fans, inspiring a devotion among some who will likely relish the opportunity to learn more about him through a museum installation. For years, comedian and talk-show host Conan O'Brien, who devoured the Lyndon Johnson biographies as an undergraduate at Harvard, made numerous failed requests to book Caro as a guest. In 2018, the Times wrote about O'Brien's quest in a story headlined "Conan O’Brien’s Unrequited Fanboy Love for Robert Caro."

It appeared to be a misunderstanding of sorts. When asked why he had declined to appear on the show, the author told the Times in a statement: “‘Conan’ — You mean it was O’Brien? I thought it was The Barbarian.”

In April 2019, O'Brien finally got his wish.

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