Walt Reed was the founder of Illustration House in New York and handled the sale and stewardship of original works by major and minor illustrators alike. Reed also built a significant corpus of reference material and authored The Illustrator in America as well as monographs on several leading 20th-century illustrators. The Walt Reed Illustration Archive is a comprehensive collection that includes over 200,000 magazine tear sheets, 8,000 magazines, 1,200 books, and approximately 150 original works by American illustrators from the late 19th century well into the mid-20th century.

Only a portion of this collection is available digitally. For additional information about the collection, including portions not digitized, please consult the finding aid.