Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library
Encyclopedia
The Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library is one of twenty-five libraries in the Columbia University Library System
Columbia University Library System
The Columbia University Libraries is the library system of Columbia University. With over 10.4 million volumes, is the sixth largest academic library in the United States; it is the third largest library — and the largest academic library — in the State of New York...

 and is located in Avery Hall on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in the City of New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. It is the largest architecture library in the world. Serving Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
The Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University in New York City, also known simply as GSAPP, is regarded as one of the most important and prestigious architecture schools in the world...

 and the Department of Art History, Avery Library collects book
Book
A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...

s and periodicals in architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

, historic preservation
Historic preservation
Historic preservation is an endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historical significance...

, art history
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...

, painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, sculpting, graphic arts, decorative arts, city planning, real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...

, and archaeology
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

, as well as archival materials primarily documenting 19th- and 20th-century American architects and architecture. The architectural, fine arts, and archival collections are non-circulating. The Ware Collection, mainly books on urban planning and real estate development, does circulate.

Avery Library is named for New York architect Henry Ogden Avery, a friend of William Robert Ware
William Robert Ware
William Robert Ware , born in Cambridge, Massachusetts into a family of the Unitarian clergy, was an American architect, author, and founder of two important American architectural schools....

, who was appointed the first professor of architecture at Columbia University in 1881. Soon after Avery's death in 1890, his parents, Samuel Putnam Avery
Samuel Putnam Avery
Samuel Putnam Avery was an American connoisseur and dealer in art. He was born in New York City where he studied engraving and was extensively employed by leading publishers. He began business as a dealer in art in 1865. In 1867 Mr. Avery was appointed commissioner in charge of the American art...

 and Mary Ogden Avery, established the library as a memorial to their son. They offered his collection of 2,000 books, mostly in architecture, archaeology, and the decorative arts, many of his original drawings, as well as funds to round out the book collection and to create an endowment. The Library now holds more than 400,000 volumes and currently receives approximately 900 periodicals, with legacy holdings of approximately 1,900 serial titles. The library's historic first-level reading room is a significant example of work by the New York architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White
McKim, Mead, and White
McKim, Mead & White was a prominent American architectural firm at the turn of the twentieth century and in the history of American architecture. The firm's founding partners were Charles Follen McKim , William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White...

.

Collection

Avery Library's collection in architecture literature is among the largest in the world and includes such highlights as the first Western printed book on architecture, De re aedificatoria
De Re Aedificatoria
De re aedificatoria is a classic architectural treatise written by Leon Battista Alberti between 1443 and 1452. Although largely dependent on Vitruvius' De architectura, it was the first theoretical book on the subject written in the Italian Renaissance and in 1485 became the first printed book on...

(1485), by Leone Battista Alberti
Leone Battista Alberti
Leon Battista Alberti was an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, cryptographer and general Renaissance humanist polymath...

; Francesco Colonna
Francesco Colonna
Francesco Colonna was an Italian Dominican priest and monk who was credited with the authorship of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by an acrostic in the text.He lived in Venice, and preached at St. Mark's Cathedral...

's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili , called in English Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream, is a romance said to be by Francesco Colonna and a famous example of early printing...

(1499); works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an Italian artist famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric "prisons" .-His Life:...

; and classics of modernism by Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...

 and Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...

, with the rarest materials held the library's Classics (Rare Book) Department.

In addition, Avery's Department of Drawings & Archives is among the largest and most significant architectural archives in the world. Its holdings include more than one and a half million architectural drawing
Architectural drawing
An architectural drawing or architect's drawing is a technical drawing of a building that falls within the definition of architecture...

s, photographs, manuscripts, business records, audio-visual recordings, and other related materials, primarily documenting the architectural history New York City and the surrounding region, with significant and wide-ranging examples of American and international architecture relating to the work of New York-based architects and alumni of Columbia's School of Architecture.

Among the notable architects and designers represented in the collection are:

  • Max Abramovitz
    Max Abramovitz
    Max Abramovitz was an architect best known for his work with the New York City firm Harrison & Abramovitz.- Life :...

  • Peter Blake
  • Oscar Bluemner
  • Gordon Bunshaft
    Gordon Bunshaft
    Gordon Bunshaft was an architect educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1988, Gordon Bunshaft nominated himself for the Pritzker Prize and eventually won it.-Career:...

  • Walker O. Cain
    Walker O. Cain
    Walker O. Cain was a prize-winning American architect.-Early life and education:Cain was born in Cleveland, Ohio and attended Case Western Reserve University for five years...

  • Félix Candela
    Félix Candela
    Félix Candela Outeriño was a Spanish architect known for his significant role in the development of Mexican architecture and structural engineering. Candela’s major contribution to architecture was the development of thin shells made out of reinforced concrete...

  • Carrère and Hastings
    Carrère and Hastings
    Carrère and Hastings, the firm of John Merven Carrère and Thomas Hastings , located in New York City, was one of the outstanding Beaux-Arts architecture firms in the United States. The partnership operated from 1885 until 1911, when Carrère was killed in an automobile accident...

  • Giorgio Cavaglieri
    Giorgio Cavaglieri
    Giorgio Cavaglieri was an Italian American architectural preservationist and painter of gouaches. His best-known work is his 1960s restoration of the Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village....

  • Serge Chermayeff
    Serge Chermayeff
    Serge Ivan Chermayeff was a Russian born, British architect, industrial designer, writer, and co-founder of several architectural societies, including the American Society of Planners and Architects....

  • Ogden Codman, Jr.
    Ogden Codman, Jr.
    Ogden Codman, Jr. was a noted American architect and interior decorator in the Beaux-Arts styles, and co-author with Edith Wharton of The Decoration of Houses , which became a standard in American interior design....

  • Harvey Wiley Corbett
    Harvey Wiley Corbett
    Harvey Wiley Corbett was an American architect primarily known for skyscraper and office building designs in New York and London, and his advocacy of tall buildings and modernism in architecture.-Early life and career:...

  • Le Corbusier
    Le Corbusier
    Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...

  • Ralph Adams Cram
    Ralph Adams Cram
    Ralph Adams Cram FAIA, , was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic style. Cram & Ferguson and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson are partnerships in which he worked.-Early life:Cram was born on December 16, 1863 at Hampton Falls, New...

  • Alexander Jackson Davis
    Alexander Jackson Davis
    Alexander Jackson Davis, or A. J. Davis , was one of the most successful and influential American architects of his generation, in particular his association with the Gothic Revival style....

  • Delano & Aldrich
  • Leopold Eidlitz
    Leopold Eidlitz
    Leopold Eidlitz was a prominent New York architect best known for his work on the New York State Capitol , as well as "Iranistan" , P. T. Barnum's house in Bridgeport, Connecticut; St. Peter's Church, on Westchester Avenue at St...

  • Wilson Eyre
    Wilson Eyre
    Wilson Eyre, Jr. was an influential American architect, teacher and writer who practiced in the Philadelphia area...

  • Abe Feder
  • Fellheimer & Wagner
  • Ernest Flagg
    Ernest Flagg
    Ernest Flagg was a noted American architect in the Beaux-Arts style. He was also an advocate for urban reform and architecture's social responsibility.-Biography:...

  • Hugh Ferriss
    Hugh Ferriss
    Hugh Ferriss was an American delineator and architect. According to Daniel Okrent, Ferriss never designed a single noteworthy building, but after his death a colleague said he 'influenced my generation of architects' more than any other man...

  • Greene and Greene
    Greene and Greene
    Greene and Greene was an architectural firm established by brothers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene , influential early 20th Century American architects...

  • Walter Burley Griffin
    Walter Burley Griffin
    Walter Burley Griffin was an American architect and landscape architect, who is best known for his role in designing Canberra, Australia's capital city...

     and Marion Mahony Griffin
    Marion Mahony Griffin
    Marion Griffin was an American architect and artist. She was one of the first licenced female architects in the world, and is considered an original member of the Prairie School.-Biography:...

  • Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue
  • Percival Goodman
    Percival Goodman
    Percival Goodman was an American urban theorist and architect who designed more than 50 synagogues between 1948 and 1983. He has been called the "leading theorist" of modern synagogue design, and "the most prolific architect in Jewish history."-Biography:Percival Goodman was born in New York City...

  • Ferdinand Gottlieb
    Ferdinand Gottlieb
    Ferdinand Gottlieb was a New York-based architect. He headed his own firm, Ferdinand Gottlieb & Associates based in Dobbs Ferry ....

  • Hector Guimard
    Hector Guimard
    Hector Guimard was an architect, who is now the best-known representative of the French Art Nouveau style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries....

  • Charles Coolidge Haight
  • Talbot F. Hamlin
  • Wallace K. Harrison
  • Herts & Tallant
  • Raymond Hood
    Raymond Hood
    Raymond Mathewson Hood was an early-mid twentieth century architect who worked in the Art Deco style. He was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, educated at Brown University, MIT, and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At the latter institution he met John Mead Howells, with whom Hood later partnered...

  • Robert Allan Jacobs
  • Norman Jaffe
    Norman Jaffe
    Norman Jaffe was an American architect, most noted for his contemporary residential architecture, and his "strikingly sculptural beach houses" on Eastern Long Island, in southeastern New York...

  • John MacLane Johansen
  • Philip Johnson
    Philip Johnson
    Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...

  • Ely Jacques Kahn
    Ely Jacques Kahn
    Ely Jacques Kahn was an American commercial architect who designed numerous skyscrapers in New York City in the twentieth century. In addition to buildings intended for commercial use, Kahn's designs ranged throughout the possibilities of architectural programs, including facilities for the film...

  • Charles R. Lamb
  • Thomas W. Lamb
    Thomas W. Lamb
    Thomas White Lamb was an American architect, born in Scotland. He is noted as one of the foremost designers of theaters and cinemas in the 20th century.-Career:...

  • Morris Lapidus
    Morris Lapidus
    Morris Lapidus was the architect of Neo-baroque Miami Modern hotels that has since come to define the 1950s resort-hotel style synonymous with Miami and Miami Beach....

  • Lee Lawrie
    Lee Lawrie
    Lee Oscar Lawrie was one of the United States' foremost architectural sculptors and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II...

  • Frances Henry Lenygon and Jeannette Becker Lenygon
  • Jac Lessman
  • Detlef Lienau
    Detlef Lienau
    Detlef Lienau was a German architect born in Holstein. He is credited with having introduced the French style to American building construction, notably the mansard roof and all its decorative flourishes...

  • Harold Van Buren Magonigle
    Harold Van Buren Magonigle
    Harold Van Buren Magonigle was an American architect best known for his memorials.Born in New Jersey, Magonigle worked for Calvert Vaux, Rotch & Tilden and McKim Mead & White before opening his own practice in 1903...

  • McKim, Mead, and White
    McKim, Mead, and White
    McKim, Mead & White was a prominent American architectural firm at the turn of the twentieth century and in the history of American architecture. The firm's founding partners were Charles Follen McKim , William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White...

  • John J. McNamara
  • Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
    Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
    Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....

  • Mayers, Murray & Phillip
    Mayers Murray & Phillip
    Mayers, Murray & Phillip was an architecture firm in New York city and the successor firm to Goodhue Associates, after Bertram Goodhue's unexpected death in 1924. The principals were Francis L.S...

  • Hermann Muthesius
    Hermann Muthesius
    Adam Gottlieb Hermann Muthesius , known as Hermann Muthesius, was a German architect, author and diplomat, perhaps best known for promoting many of the ideas of the English Arts and Crafts movement within Germany and for his subsequent influence on early pioneers of German architectural modernism...

  • Paul Nelson
    Paul Nelson
    Paul Nelson may refer to:*Paul Nelson , rock critic who worked for Rolling Stone*Paul R. Nelson, 2006 Republican nominee for Wisconsin's 3rd congressional district*Paul Nelson...

  • Richard Neutra
    Richard Neutra
    Richard Joseph Neutra is considered one of modernism's most important architects.- Biography :Neutra was born in Leopoldstadt, the 2nd district of Vienna, Austria Hungary, on April 8, 1892. He was born into both-Jewish wealthy family...

  • Carl Pfeiffer
    Carl Pfeiffer (architect)
    Carl Pfeiffer was a United States architect.-Biography:He came to the United States at age 16 and resided several years in the west...

  • Charles A. Platt
    Charles A. Platt
    Charles Adams Platt was a prominent artist, landscape gardener, landscape designer, and architect of the "American Renaissance" movement. His garden designs complemented his domestic architecture.-Early career:...

  • John Russell Pope
    John Russell Pope
    John Russell Pope was an architect most known for his designs of the National Archives and Records Administration building , the Jefferson Memorial and the West Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.-Biography:Pope was born in New York in 1874, the son of a successful...

  • Rambusch Company/Rambusch Studios
  • James Renwick, Jr.
    James Renwick, Jr.
    James Renwick, Jr. , was a prominent American architect in the 19th-century. The Encyclopedia of American Architecture calls him "one of the most successful American architects of his time".-Life and work:Renwick was born into a wealthy and well-educated family...

  • James Gamble Rogers
    James Gamble Rogers
    James Gamble Rogers was an American architect best known for his academic commissions at Yale University, Columbia University, Northwestern University, and elsewhere....

  • Emery Roth/Emery Roth & Sons
    Emery Roth
    Emery Roth was an American architect who designed many of the definitive New York City hotels and apartment buildings of the 1920s and 30s, incorporating Beaux-Arts and Art Deco details...

  • Walter Sobotka
  • John Calvin Stevens
    John Calvin Stevens
    John Calvin Stevens was an American architect who worked in two related styles — the Shingle Style, in which he was a major innovator, and the Colonial Revival style, which dominated national domestic architecture for the first half of the 20th century...

  • Gustav Stickley
    Gustav Stickley
    Gustav Stickley was a manufacturer of furniture and the leading proselytizer for the American Arts and Crafts movement, an extension of the British Arts and Crafts movement.-Biography:...

  • Russell Sturgis
    Russell Sturgis
    Russell Sturgis was an American architect and art criticof the 19th and early 20th centuries. He was one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870.-Early life and marriage:...

  • Louis Sullivan
    Louis Sullivan
    Louis Henri Sullivan was an American architect, and has been called the "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism" He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an...

  • Martin E. Thompson
    Martin E. Thompson
    Martin Euclid Thompson was an American architect and artist prolific in nineteenth-century New York City, and a co-founder of the National Academy of Design....

  • Bernard Tschumi
    Bernard Tschumi
    Bernard Tschumi is an architect, writer, and educator, commonly associated with deconstructivism. Born of French and Swiss parentage, he works and lives in New York and Paris. He studied in Paris and at ETH in Zurich, where he received his degree in architecture in 1969...

  • Richard Upjohn
    Richard Upjohn
    Richard Upjohn was an English-born architect who emigrated to the United States and became most famous for his Gothic Revival churches. He was partially responsible for launching the movement to such popularity in the United States. Upjohn also did extensive work in and helped to popularize the...

  • Isaac Ware
    Isaac Ware
    Isaac Ware was an English architect and translator of Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio.He was apprenticed to Thomas Ripley, 1 August 1721, and followed him in positions in the Office of Works, but his mentor in design was Lord Burlington.Ware was a member of the St...

  • Warren & Wetmore
  • Stanford White
    Stanford White
    Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found...

  • Frederick Clarke Withers
    Frederick Clarke Withers
    Frederick Clarke Withers was an successful English architect in America, especially renowned for his Gothic Revival church designs.-Biography:...

  • Shadrach Woods
    Shadrach Woods
    Shadrach Woods was an American architect, urban planner and theorist. Schooled in engineering at New York University and in literature and philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, Woods joined the Paris office of Le Corbusier in 1948...

  • Frank Lloyd Wright
    Frank Lloyd Wright
    Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...

  • York and Sawyer
    York and Sawyer
    The architectural firm of York and Sawyer produced many outstanding structures, exemplary of Beaux-Arts architecture as it was practiced in the United States. The partners Edward York and Philip Sawyer had both trained in the office of McKim, Mead, and White...


The Archives also holds the records of the Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...

, Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company
Guastavino tile
Guastavino tile is the "Tile Arch System" patented in the US in 1885 by Valencian architect and builder Rafael Guastavino...

, the New York Architectural Terra-Cotta Co., and Woodlawn Cemetery
Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx
Woodlawn Cemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in New York City and is a designated National Historic Landmark.A rural cemetery located in the Bronx, it opened in 1863, in what was then southern Westchester County, in an area that was annexed to New York City in 1874.The cemetery covers more...

 in the Bronx, New York, as well as papers of artist and writer Kenyon Cox
Kenyon Cox
Kenyon Cox was an American painter, illustrator, muralist, writer, and teacher. Cox was an influential and important early instructor at the Art Students League of New York...

, journalist Douglas Haskell
Douglas Haskell
Douglas Putnam Haskell was an American writer, architecture critic and magazine editor. Today he is widely known for his 1952 coinage of the term Googie architecture in a 1952 article in House and Home magazine....

, who was editor of Architectural Forum
Architectural Forum
Architectural Forum was an American magazine that covered the home-building industry and architecture. Started in 1892, it absorbed the magazine Architect's world in October 1938, and ceased publication in 1974.-Other titles:...

, and drawings by mural and stained glass artist John LaFarge
John LaFarge
John La Farge was an American painter, muralist, stained glass window maker, decorator, and writer.-Biography:...

. The department also has major archives of architectural photography, including works by C. D. Arnold, George Cserna, Samuel H. Gottscho
Samuel H. Gottscho
Samuel Herman Gottscho was an American architectural, landscape, and nature photographer.Samuel Gottscho was born in Brooklyn, New York. He acquired his first camera in 1896 and took his first photograph at Coney Island...

, and Joseph W. Molitor. Lastly, the department holds Antonio Lafreri
Lafreri atlases
Especially in the important trading centers of Rome and Venice, many individual maps were printed in Italy from about 1544. Each publisher worked independently, producing maps based upon his own customers' needs. These maps often varied greatly in size....

’s "Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae".

Avery Index

Avery Library is also home to the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, a program of the Getty Research Institute
Getty Research Institute
The Getty Research Institute , located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts". A program of the J...

 (GRI). Begun at Avery in 1934, the Index provides citations to articles in approximately 300 current and over 1,000 retrospective architectural and related periodicals, with primary emphasis on architectural design and history as well as archaeology, landscape architecture, interior design, furniture and decorative arts, garden history, historic preservation, urban planning and design, real estate development, and environmental studies. The Index also includes a large body of obituaries of architects. Until July 1, 2009, the Getty Information Institute and later GRI co-produced the index. On that date, GRI transferred the database back to Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, which continues to maintain it.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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