NEW YORK – Robert A. Caro stands between two giant columns in a second-floor library of the New-York Historical Society, looking out on dozens of friends, family members, and colleagues. A research room named for him looms behind. Portions of his archives are on display nearby.

“The most honest thing I could possibly say tonight is also possibly the corniest, and that is having my archives here is, in a way, a dream come true,” the historian said during a recent dinner tribute at the Society, a 200-year-old institution located opposite Central Park that he would visit often as a child who already imagined becoming a writer.

“I won’t say I dreamed of being a well-known writer,” he added. “But my dreams were of being a writer. So now, I am a writer and my papers are here, and you could say it’s a dream come true.”