Topeka ? The Menninger Clinic is gone from the city where it served scholars and psychiatric patients for more than 75 years, but 3,400 boxes of archival Menninger material now have a permanent home in Topeka.

The Menninger Foundation’s permanent transfer of the archives to the Kansas State Historical Society is expected to make it easier for researchers to tap the vast trove of material, which includes the papers of Dr. Karl Menninger, considered the father of American psychiatry.

On Thursday, a graduate student from Kansas University spoke to former Menninger employees about what she found in compiling a 75-page catalog of the archives.

Among the gems are several letters to Karl Menninger and others from Dr. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis. In one, written from Vienna in 1937, Freud notes — and politely declines — Menninger’s proposal to dedicate an issue of a clinic publication to him.

“It is my principle in undertakings of such personal nature not to participate in them myself,” the Viennese doctor wrote.

Scholars worldwide have already been attracted to the archives, which also include research and letters from the likes of author William James and nursing advocate Florence Nightingale.

Patricia Michaelis, director of library and archives division at the Kansas State Historical Society, said Menninger’s donation was a “highly significant” contribution to the historical society.

“It’s important to the history of Kansas, but it’s also important to the history of the treatment of mental illness, nationally and internationally,” Michaelis said. “It’s a major history of science and medicine.”

Founded by brothers Karl and Will Menninger and their father, Dr. C.F. Menninger, the clinic operated in Topeka from 1925 to spring 2003, when it moved to Houston. During its heyday in Topeka, it attracted such visiting scholars as Aldous Huxley, Anna Freud and Margaret Mead, and Hollywood actress Gene Tierney was a patient in the 1950s.

The archives were kept at the Historical Society on a temporary basis after the move. But Karl Menninger’s daughter and grandson wanted them kept permanently in Topeka, said John McKelvey, president of the Menninger Foundation and chairman of the Menninger Clinic board.

Until now, researchers had to obtain McKelvey’s approval to examine the archives. The permanent transfer means scholars may now access the material as they would any other documents at the society’s Center for Historical Research.

The Menninger Foundation is giving Dr. Karl Menninger’s office materials and books to Kansas State University’s Hale Library.

“I’m very pleased that the staff of two local institutions have taken such an interest and gone out of their way to preserve these papers and artifacts for research and education,” said Rosemary Menninger, who is Karl Menninger’s daughter and a teacher in Topeka.