World Center for Women's Archives was an organization established by Rosika Schwimmer and Mary Ritter Beard in the hopes of creating an educational collection which women could consult to learn about the history of women. The center was located in the Biltmore Hotel at 41 Park Avenue in New York City. It closed in 1940, but the efforts made to establish a center to collect records encouraged several colleges and universities to begin develop similar archives of women's history. It was one of the earliest efforts to collect women's documents in the United States, predated the first accredited women's studies course in the U.S by 34 years, and preserved materials about women which otherwise might have been lost. It also redefined the way that historical documents were selected for archival inclusion. By changing what documents were noteworthy, using personal records to shape public history, the Women's Archive legacy was foundational to the development of feminist theory.
Establishment
In 1935, Rosika Schwimmer, a pacifist suffragist, proposed to historian Mary Ritter Beard an idea to establish an archive to preserve the records of influential women. In Schwimmer's letter to Beard, she expressed her desire to create a repository for her personal archives, as well as leaders in the feminist and pacifist movements. Lamenting the lack of scholarship on women's history, she noted that while some noted women's records had been preserved, they were scattered, making it difficult to create an accurate or complete accounting of historic people and events. She also was concerned that the conservative environment which emerged in the interwar period would suppress gains made in the Progressive Era. Evaluating the state of feminism in the 1930s, Beard had concluded that greed and destructive tendencies had led to the Great Depression and that the equality sought by some feminists was merely "equality in disaster". She thought that women should focus on new ideas which would create a better society. She believed that a knowledge of the roles women had played throughout history could help women forge new leadership paths without imitating systems with subjugated them. Upon receipt of Schwimmer's letter, Beard immediately understood the educational value of such an archive, which would allow academics and other women to study women, rather than focusing solely on the achievements of men.
On September 17, 1935, Beard; Geline MacDonald Bowman, president of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs; Mary Jobson; Kathryn McHale, president of the American Association of University Women; and Lena Madesin Phillips, founder of the International Federation of Business and Professional Women, sent out a letter hoping to secure sponsors for the development of the archive and announced that a conference to discuss organization would be held the following month. The letter was sent to women such as Pearl S. Buck, Anne Morgan, Alice Paul, and Eleanor Roosevelt, including women from a variety of occupations as well as political viewpoints. The first meeting of the board was held in New York City on October 15, 1935, and early in 1936, the archive was incorporated with Inez Haynes Irwin as chair; banker Mina Bruere, as Treasurer; and Jane Norman Smith and Phillips on the Executive committee. In March 1936, Schwimmer, who had mainly worked in the background because of negative publicity surrounding her, resigned from the project for unspecified reasons.