Architectural Archives
Architectural Archives
Architectural archives offer a wealth of primary source material about the history of a building, an architect, or a firm. Archives will hold personal papers, building plans & records, drawings, ephemera, firm information, etc. Be sure to allow yourself plenty of time when researching archival materials; they are described differently than printed matter and it is usually more difficult to identify relevant sources.
Online Resources & Organization Web Sites
ArchivesUSA: This online current directory covers 5,550 repositories and 149,218 collections of primary source material across the United States. Descriptions of a repository's holdings are provided which serve researchers in determining whether a collection contains material useful to their work as well as find the information they need to contact the repository directly.
Architectural Archives Resource List (University of Nevada): comprehensive list of various archival collections in the U.S. and abroad.
Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania: Preserves the works of more than 400 designers from the 18th century to the present. The collection is noted for its Louis I. Kahn Collection whose resources include all drawings, models, photographs, correspondence, and project files from Kahn's office. Other major architects represented in the collection include Alfred Bendiner, Cope and Stewardson, Paul Philippe Cret, Frank Miles Day, Wilson Eyre, Frank Furness, Edmund Gilchrist, Lawrence Halprin, Warren Powers Laird, Mitchell/Giurgola, John Nolan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Zantzinger Borie and Medary. In addition to these American 19th and 20th-century architects, the Architectural Archives collects the work of several significant European architects. The Freidrich Weinbrenner collection is the most important archive of this architect's work outside of Europe and provided the basis for a major exhibition and scholarly catalogue by Professor David B. Brownlee.
Drawings and Archives Department- Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library: The drawings collection was formed by Henry Ogden Avery's drawings and now contains approximately 400,000 drawings, photographs, letters, and manuscripts relating to architecture and architects. The focus of the collection is American architecture, with a strong emphasis on New York City and its architectural history. Included in this collection are several important archives: Richard Upjohn, Alexander Jackson Davis, Greene & Greene, Warren & Wetmore, Harold van Buren Magonigle, Stanford White, Wallace K. Harrison, Gordon Bunshaft, Philip Johnson and the archives of the Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company.
Canadian Centre for Architecture: The CAA Archives Department collects, conserves, and makes available archival resources of individuals and groups who have worked in a significant way, on the local or international scale, in the areas of architecture, urban planning, or landscape architecture. Since the collection began in 1981, particular attention has been paid to the archives of architects' offices. Click here for a collections list.
Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Survey: HABS and the HAER collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types and engineering technologies including examples as diverse as the Pueblo of Acoma, houses, windmills, one-room schools, the Golden Gate Bridge, and buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Administered since 1933 through cooperative agreements with the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, and the private sector, ongoing programs of the National Park Service have recorded America's built environment in multiformat surveys comprising more than 350,000 measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for more than 35,000 historic structures and sites dating from Pre-Columbian times to the twentieth century. HABS/HAER online collections includes digitized images of measured drawings, black-and-white photographs, color transparencies, photo captions, data pages including written histories, and supplemental materials.
National Archives - documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government.
Ryerson & Burnham Archives (Art Institute of Chicago): The Archives' collections are notably strong in late 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, with particular depth in Midwest architecture. Architects such as Edward Bennett, Daniel Burnham, Bruce Goff, Bertrand Goldberg, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright are represented in a broad range of papers. As well, the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago is documented through photographs by C.D. Arnold and through a small collection of ephemera. The Historic Architecture and Landscape Image Collection (HALIC), a large collection of mounted photographic prints and lantern slides, provides valuable historic records of American architecture, landscape design, and urban planning. Clcik here for collections descriptions.
Yale University Manuscripts & Archives - Features documentation on art, architecture, and drama including sources related both to the teaching and practice of those fields at Yale and more general sources about their existence in the wider world. Manuscripts and Archives also collects broadly in the areas of public policy and administration; diplomacy and international affairs; political and social thought and commentary; science, medicine, and the environment; legal and judicial history; the visual and performing arts; urban planning and architecture; environmental policy and affairs; and psychology and psychiatry. In addition, the department has extensive holdings on New Haven, Connecticut, and New England history. Manuscripts and Archives houses many papers and records which contain material on Yale architects and buildings. Official University archival records also contain extensive information on Yale buildings. Depending upon the date of construction, architectural information may be found in the records of the university treasurers, presidents, and the Buildings and Grounds Department and its successors. There is also a collection of drawings from numerous university offices in Yale University architectural drawings collection. This collection has approximately 11,000 design, preliminary, working, shop, and "as built" architectural drawings reproduced (in 1980) as 35mm negatives and individually indexed and mounted on cards for easy viewing in the reading room. Drawings may be vague and conceptual in nature or as specific as full scale details of faucet fixtures.