Primary Archives

This section of the guide provides comprehensive coverage of the collections for which the primary body of an architect’s, designer’s, or engineer’s work is in the Prints & Photographs Division. The combined chronological range and qualitative depth of the holdings includes individuals and firms whose professional contributions have significantly influenced or defined developments in the fields of American architecture, design, and engineering. The collections are particularly valuable not only for the development of scholarly theses but for historic preservationists who need detailed documentation for the restoration of specific buildings. For each major era of architectural design, the Library tries to have one archive to represent the full working method and context of a designer with a national practice and impact.

Primary Archives include:

Adams (Wilbur Henry) Industrial design drawings and related material (1924-1957, bulk 1940s)
American Institute of Architects/American Architectural Foundation Collections (AIA/AAF) (ca. 1600-ca 2007, bulk 1860-2007)
Berla & Abel Collection in the AIA/AAF Collection (1941-1971)
Cappelmann (Eimer) Drawings (1928-1950)
Dominick (Theodore W.) Photographs and Drawings (1940-1980)
Dominick (William Francis) Drawings and specifications (1900-1945)
Drayer (Donald H.) archive (1931-1973, bulk 1945-1973)
Eames, Work of Charles and Ray (1885-1988, bulk 1940-1978)
Gilbert (Cass) Archive (1859-1934)
Goodman (Charles M.) Archive (1935-1987)
Grubbs (Christopher) Architectural Illustrations (1981-2010)
Gruen (Victor), Visual materials from his papers (ca. 1903-ca. 1979)
Heaton (Arthur B.) Archive (1895-1950, bulk 1910-1950)
Hunt (Richard Morris) Collections in the AIA/AAF Collection (1841-1895)
Iron-Craftsmen Collection (1920-1955)
Jacobsen (Hugh N.) Archive (1964-1985)
Lamb Studio Archive (1869-2000, bulk 1890-1990)
Loewy (Raymond) Archive (1929-1989)
Lundy (Victor A.) Archive (1940-2008)
Peter (Walter G. & Walter G., Jr.) Collection in AIA/AAF Collection (1880s-1971)
Ray (Luther R.) Archive (1920-1968)
Rudolph (Paul M.) Archive (1940-1997)
Smith (Chloethiel W.) & Associated Architects Archive (1957-1975)
Vogel (Jack K.) Drive-in-Theater Drawings (1940s-1960s)
Waggaman & Ray Archive (1896-1947, bulk 1909-1931)
Waterman (Thomas T.) Archive (1919-1951)
Wood (Waddy B.) Archive (1852-1965, bulk 1894-1937)

Each collection is briefly described below. Primary links display fuller bibliographic information about the collection in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog if available. Links are provided to digitized primary source content, finding aid and research guide for the collection, collection overview of the Collection, and background information page when available. The background information page includes more links to the left side under "This Collection." Additional links to related secondary sources are provided below each collection description, followed by books, periodicals, dissertations & theses, articles & blogs, and webcasts related to each collection when available.

Adams (Wilbur Henry) Industrial design drawings and related material (1924-1957, bulk 1940s)

Adams (Wilbur Henry) Industrial design drawings and related material
View digitized content from the Adams Collection
464 items including architectural and industrial design drawings, sketchbooks, photographs, and ephemera (selections digitized) by industrial designer and architect Wilbur Henry Adams (1906-1958) and his wife, interior designer Arleen Williams Adams (1910-1980), ranging between 1924 and 1957 (bulk 1940s).
[Image: LC-DIG-ppss-00888]

Exhibitions

Items from the Collection were featured in the following exhibition.

Exhibition at Erie Art Museum External

American Institute of Architects/American Architectural Foundation Collections (AIA/AAF) (ca. 1600-ca 2007, bulk 1860-2007)

American Institute of Architects/American Architectural Foundation Collections (AIA/AAF)
View digitized content from the AIA/AAF Collections
Nearly a half million items (selections digitized) including drawings, photographs, manuscript materials, rare books, monographs, serials, medallions, furniture and amongst others which were transferred from the American Institute of Architects and American Architectural Foundation to the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division in 2010. See further details in each collection below which is described as “…in AIA/AAF Collection.”
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-32152]

Berla & Abel Collection in the AIA/AAF Collection (1941-1971)

Berla & Abel Collection in the AIA/AAF Collection (1941-1971)
Drawings for over 600 projects by Berla & Abel, partnership created in 1941 between Joseph Henry Abel (1905-1985) and Julian E. Berla (1902-1976). Projects chiefly include apartment buildings commercial shipping centers, and many residences, especially in Washington, DC and surrounding areas.

Cappelmann (Eimer) Drawings (1928-1950)

Cappelmann (Eimer) Drawings
View digitized content from the Cappelmann Drawings
Approximately 2,000 drawing (selections digitized) for over 350 projects, mainly residences in District of Columbia, and Maryland and Virginia States by Eimer Cappelmann (1901-1965). Original clients’ names and addresses are indicated on each drawing.
[Image: LC-DIG-ds-08207]

Dominick (Theodore W.) Photographs and Drawings (1940-1980)

Dominick (Theodore W.) Photographs and Drawings
Approximately 5,000 photographs, drawings, and correspondence depicting design, remodeling, and restoration works by Yale graduate, Washingtonian architect Theodore Weston Dominick (1906-1996). Some work is by William Francis Dominick (1870-1945) and Theodore Weston.

Dominick (William Francis) Drawings and Specifications (1900-1945)

Dominick (William Francis) Drawings and Specifications
View digitized content from the Dominick Drawings and Specs
Approximately 4,500 drawings and specifications of construction and alteration designs for fifty residences, churches, schools, and other structures by William Francis Dominick (1870-1945) who was active in New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut, from 1917 to the 1940s. [image]

Drayer (Donald H.) Archive (1931-1973, bulk 1945-1973)

Drayer (Donald H.) Archive
View digitized content from the Drayer Archive
View finding aid for the Drayer architectural drawing archive
4,661 items, chiefly architectural drawings (selections digitized) by Donald Hudson Drayer (1909-1973) for residential buildings, commercial buildings, and housing developments in Washington, DC, and surrounding suburbs. Items are organized into 493 groups (called UNITs), which are usually based on separate building projects.
[Image: LC-USZ62-134063]

Eames, Work of Charles and Ray (1885-1988, bulk 1940-1978)

Eames, Work of Charles and Ray
View digitized content from the Eames Collection
An archive of design ideas and a record of work by Charles Eames (1907-1978) & Ray Eames (1912-1988), containing more than 750,000 items (selections digitized) including architectural drawings and other graphic items, photographic materials, and Christmas cards, amongst others, ranging between 1885 and 1988 (bulk: 1940-1978). The major impact that Charles and Ray Eames had on American design, particularly in the realms of graphic, textile, furniture, architectural and exhibit design is well-represented in the Collection. Approximately 300,000 slides from the Eames Collection (LC-E14) are arranged alphabetically by Eames Project Code and 250,000 photographic negatives and prints are organized in over seventy groups (called LOTs), which are usually based on projects.
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-57192]

Related collections at LC (links go to catalog records):

Charles Eames and Ray Eames papers, 1850-1989 (Manuscript Division Collection): A finding aid for the Charles Eames and Ray Eames papers, 1850-1989.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Eames Design by John Neuhart; Marilyn Neuhart
ISBN: 0810908794
Published/Created: 1989-10-01
Eames Design is the definitive study of the work of the extraordinarily prolific husband-and-wife team whose creative imprint revolutionized the look of postwar American society. Now back in print, this groundbreaking book remains the most complete catalog of their studio ever produced, examining in considerable depth every project--more than 200 in all--produced by the Eameses and their office of topflight designers from 1941 to 1978.
Charles and Ray Eames by Pat Kirkham
ISBN: 0262111993
Published/Created: 1995-06-01
Charles and Ray Eames, perhaps the most famous partnership of 20th-century America, did pioneering work in furniture, film, architecture and exhibition design. Out of respect for Charles's wishes, no book on them was published during their lifetime. In Charles and Ray Eames Pat Kirkham interprets their work in depth, probing the lives behind the designs and the nature of the collaboration. In researching this work, Kirkham had full access to the Eames archive and co-operation from the Eame's clients and associates. The result is a study of the designers and of their work from 1941 to 1978, including a re-evaluation of Ray's role.
Work of Charles and Ray Eames by Donald Albrecht
Call Number: CALL NUMBER NK1535.E25 W67 1997
ISBN: 0810917998
Published/Created: 1997-09-01
Charles and Ray Eames designed furniture, buildings, toys, films, graphics, exhibitions and books with the aim of improving society. This volume marks an international travelling exhibition organized by the Library of Congress, USA and the Vitra Design Museum, Germany.
An Eames Anthology by Charles Eames; Ray Eames; Daniel Ostroff (Editor)
ISBN: 9780300203455
Published/Created: 2015-04-28
An inspiring collection of the writings of two of the 20th century's most brilliant and influential designers An Eames Anthology collects for the first time the writings of the esteemed American architects and designers Charles and Ray Eames, illuminating their marriage and professional partnership of fifty years. More than 120 primary-source documents and 200 illustrations highlight iconic projects such as the Case Study Houses and the molded plywood chair, as well as their work for major corporations as both designers (Herman Miller, Vitra) and consultants (IBM, Polaroid). Previously unpublished materials appear alongside published writings by and about the Eameses and their work, lending new insight into their creative process. Correspondence with such luminaries as Richard Neutra and Eero Saarinen provides a personal glimpse into the advance of modernity in mid-century America.]]>
Essential Eames by Eames Demetrios (Editor); Carla Hartman
Call Number: NK1412.E18 E87 2017
ISBN: 9783945852170
Published/Created: 2017-11-21
Charles and Ray Eames are counted among the leading designers of the twentieth century. Perhaps best known for their furniture designs, the Eameses also made pioneering contributions to the fields of architecture (Eames House, Los Angeles), film (Powers of Ten), exhibitions ("Mathematica"), toys (House of Cards), graphics, and much more. Underlying all this work was a robust and compelling philosophy of design. "Essential Eames: Words and Pictures" draws from their lifetimes of speeches and writings, as well as an archive of nearly one million photographs taken by Charles and Ray Eames and their office staff over the course of four decades of work.

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Journal of Design History
Kirkham, Pat. “Humanizing Modernism: The Crafts, ‘Functioning Decoration’ and the Eamses.” Journal of Design History, vol. 11, no. 1 (1998): 15-29.
Abstract: This article outlines some of the problems encountered in evaluating the work of Charles and Ray Eames, the husband and wife design partnership flourishing in the USA from 1941 to 1978, including issues related to gender, crafts and Modernism. It focuses on two items of furniture and argues that both gender and pro-Modernist/anti-crafts biases are at work in the attitudes of design critics towards them. It goes on to examine the Eameses' attitudes towards the crafts, before and after they met in 1940, and considers the role played by 'functioning decoration' (their decorative arrangements of objects which encouraged an interplay between craft and machine work) in the humanizing of Modernist design in the post-war years in the USA.

Dissertations and theses listed below are accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (On-site access only). If you are searching at the Library of Congress or an institution which subscribes to the Database, clicking the hyperlink will bring you directly to the publication. Abstracts are retrieved from the Database when available.

Stephens, S. (1991). Charles and Ray Eames: Furniture, Architecture, Interior Design, Film And Photography External
(ProQuest document ID: 303992550)
Abstract: This thesis looks at the main areas of work undertaken by Charles and Ray Eames, namely architecture, interior design, furniture design and their work as communicators. As such it presents an overview of the Eameses' work and shows that it was as innovative in the field of aesthetics as it was in the utilisation of new materials and technology. It also re-evaluates the work of Ray Eames (nee Kaiser).
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Chapter one, Early Lives and Independent Work, deals with the less well known work of Charles Eames and Ray Kaiser and discusses the lack of attention given to what were important formative periods for both of them. It discusses Ray's involvement with the New York avant garde art world at a time when it was developing a new approach to painting. This was to have great significance for her later joint work with Charles, particularly in terms of form and colour. Charles's early work is discussed in detail and the main influences upon it analysed.

Chapter Two, Architecture and Interior Design from 1941, shows the Eameses at the forefront of Modernism in architecture with their utilisation of pre-fabricated frame architecture and argues that they humanised the interiors of those buildings. Chapters three, four and five, (Plywood Furniture, Glass Reinforced Plastic Furniture and Metal Furniture) examine their influential furniture designs in plywood, glass reinforced plastic and metal. Hailed as innovatory in the technical sense, the furniture was also distinctive in aesthetic terms and the various influences upon it are discussed. Although much of the furniture has been attributed to Charles alone, these chapters detail the valuable contribution made to it by Ray.

The Eameses were also interested in the communication of ideas and achieved considerable fame with their use of film, multi-media and multi-screen presentations and also exhibition design. During the 1960s and 70s most of their work was in these areas and it is dealt with in chapter six. Chapter seven, the concluding chapter, draws together the various aspects of their work and addresses the main aims of the thesis in so doing.
Chasin, N. B. (2002). Ethics and aesthetics: New brutalism, team 10, and architectural change in the 1950s External
(ProQuest document ID: 276322906)
Abstract: During the decade following World War II, Europe found itself faced with the massive task of reconstruction, which in terms of architecture was complicated by a variety of issues concerning nationalism, history, and style. This dissertation provides an in-depth investigation of a group of individuals who, in 1953, seized control of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in order to advocate for a new, sympathetic relationship between architecture and inhabitant. Their so-called “ethic” resulted from a direct refutation of the utopian architectural projects of the prewar architectural establishment, embodied by CIAM, which the younger generation found to be removed from the exigencies of everyday life.
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The attempt to name this new architectural ethic resulted in the heavily contested term “The New Brutalism.” They claimed that these words were meant to stand not for at aesthetic, but rather an ethical position, characterized by a consuming relationship with what the Smithsons called the “inescapable present.” However, as concluded in this dissertation, their words and deeds were often at a variance with one another, as an alternating embrace and denial of contemporary conditions forced a difficult and complex relationship between the ethical and the aesthetic components of architectural practice.

The major point of this dissertation is to understand the movement as a collaborative effort, and to situate each of the most prominent members of this younger generation within their historical context in order to understand how this new avant-garde negotiated the difficult terrain between the real circumstances of postwar European existence and the rarefied realm of the avant-garde, and to investigate the difficulties of collaboration when both actual and theoretical projects are concerned.

An examination of the contemporaneous situation in the United States, where postwar elation clashed with a new culture of containment, sheds light on this dilemma. The Europeans' view of their American contemporaries—such as Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, and Charles and Ray Eames—shows a desire to see beyond mere surface and find within the same ethical components celebrated in Europe, thus ignoring the Americans' overwhelming preference for formal concerns.
Zinguer, T. (2006). Architecture in play: Intimations of modernism in architectural toys, 1836–1952 External
(ProQuest document ID: 305262736)
Abstract: In the last two hundred years, architectural toys---blocks and construction sets---have echoed full-scale architectural experimentations. Architectural toys have provided evidence of the social and economic life of their period; they have reflected stylistic inclinations and incorporated technological changes in their 'systems of construction'. Designed by adults for children, architectural toys have presented an intersection between generations and a meeting point between pedagogy and means of production.
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With the advent of industrialization, the four construction sets investigated---made of wood, stone, metal and paper---have indicated changing attitudes towards form, structure and permanence. Having surveyed the world, they have classified and divided the environment, providing tools to recreate its orders. Froebel's Gifts (1836) included a series of cubes, spheres and cylinders that were gradually broken down to smaller geometrical parts; Anchor Stone Building Blocks (1877) comprised hundreds shapes of miniature stones that yielded castles, forts and churches; Meccano (1901) and Erector Set (1911) included small metal girders that constructed bridges and skyscrapers mimetic of contemporary steel structures; while The Toy (1950) and House of Cards (1952), designed by Charles and Ray Eames, were lightweight, cardboard kits-of-parts that echoed methods of prefabrication.

Allowing for a large array of assemblies and connections, all case-studies also shared the breakdown of contemporary conventions of architecture. A structured dissection of natural formations was followed by the decomposition of known molds of space, to be replaced by light building parts, suggesting prefabrication and mobility gradually questioning the nature of the house. Thus, play with construction sets wavered between getting used to an existing reality while simultaneously performing the destruction of that same reality. Hence, the vision offered by the construction toy enacted persistently an image of collapse. Breakdown and collapse, construction and taking apart positioned architectural toys as tools that appeared to advance---at all times---the constant reevaluation of spatial design. Lightness of building materials, modularity, systematization and greater versatility were parts of an architectural language that the toys exemplified. In the intimacy of the domestic environment, eradicating formal habits and re-conceiving visual orders, architectural toys intimated notions of the modern.

The Picture This blog invites you to share our love of pictures and the stories they can tell. Produced by specialists from the Prints & Photographs Division, you’ll see unique images and pictorial collections available to researchers at the Library of Congress—more than 14.5 million photos, posters, cartoons, architectural designs, and historical and fine art prints, many of which are available online.

Charles and Ray Eames Slides: Finding Aid Available
A Picture This blog introducing the launch of a finding aid for the Eames slides (August 15, 2019).

Items from the Collection were featured in the following exhibition.

The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention
Online version of the exhibition held at the Library of Congress from May 20 to September 4, 1999. Depicts the work of twentieth century designers Charles and Ray Eames. Features photographs and illustrations of furniture and buildings as well as excerpts from slide shows created by the Eames.

Gilbert (Cass) Archive

Gilbert (Cass) Archive
View digitized content from the Gilbert Archive
Contains drawings, manuscripts, photographs, prints, and other visual and printed materials including correspondence, in total of approximately 2,700 items (selections digitized) by Cass Gilbert (1859-1934), ranging from 1890-1939. Projects include Woolworth Building, Oberlin College buildings, courthouses, state capitols, Scott Memorial Fountain, and Detroit Public Library.
[Image: LC-DIG-ds-03153]

Related collections at LC (links go to catalog records):

Cass Gilbert and Cass Gilbert, Jr. archival materials (Prints & Photographs Division Collection): 150 items of correspondence, scrapbooks, books, pamphlets, glass negatives, photo albums, photographs, and drawings between 1890 and 1930.
Sketches and architecture by Cass Gilbert (Prints & Photographs Division Collection): 700 sketches in one album created between 1880 and 1927 and two photographic albums for Detroit Public Library dated 1921 and the U.S. Supreme Court done in 1935 by photographer Kenneth Clark.
ADE 11- Gilbert (Prints & Photographs Division Collection): Over 300 drawings/sketches by Gilbert.
Cass Gilbert papers, 1841-1961 (Manuscript Division Collection): A finding aid for the Cass Gilbert papers, 1841-1961.

Related collections outside of LC (external link):

Cass Gilbert presentation drawings, circa 1900-1935 External (New-York Historical Society Museum & Library Collection)
Cass Gilbert Collection External (University of Minnesota Collection)
Cass Gilbert Collection: 1897-1936 External (Smithsonian National Museum of American History Collection)

Books
Articles & Blogs

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

An address by Cass Gilbert on the presentation of the president's medal of the National academy of design to Edwin Howland Blashfield at the Fine arts building, by Cass Gilbert
Call Number: ND237.B62 G5
Published/Created: 1934

James Scott Memorial Fountain External
An article on James Scott Memorial Fountain by Dan Austine of HistoricDetroit.org. The fountain was designed by Cass Gilbert, and the most recent resotration was completed in 2020. For the restoration, all of the original drawings and photographs for construction in 1925 were digitized.

Goodman (Charles M.) Archive (1935-1987)

Goodman (Charles M.) Archive
View digitized content from the Goodman archive
View finding aid for the Charles M. Goodman architectural archive
Approximately 40,000 items of architectural drawings and photographic materials, and supplementary documents (selections digitized), representing more than 700 commissions and projects for residential, educational, government, and corporate structures, chiefly in the Washington, DC region, designed by Charles Goodman (1906-1992), ranging between 1935 and 1987. [Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-79725]

Related collections at LC (links go to catalog records):

River Park cooperative development in southwest, Washington, D.C. (Prints & Photographs Division Collection): Supplemental materials for the River Park cooperative development.
Historic American Building Survey for Hollin Hills, Fairfax County, VA (Prints & Photographs Division Collection)
Historic American Building Survey for The Commons of McLean, Fairfax County, VA (Prints & Photographs Division Collection)
Charles M. Goodman papers, 1932-2003 (Manuscript Division Collection): A finding aid for the Charles M. Goodman papers, 1932-2003.

Related collections outside of LC (external link):

Papers of Dan Kiley External (Harvard University Collection): Harvard University's papers of Dan Kiley include landscape plans of Hollin Hills, the residential community designed by Charles Goodman.

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Hollin Hills : community of vision : a semicentennial history, 1949-1999. by Alexandria, Va. : Civic Association of Hollin Hills
Call Number: F234.H645 H65 2000
Published/Created: c2000

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Atomic ranch
Mastro, Michelle. “One of the Last.” Atomic ranch, (Renovation Guide, 2024): 74-89.
Landscape Architecture
Voight, L.B. “Modern Gardens: Indoor-Outdoor Living Based on a Well-Conceived Design.” Landscape Architecture, vol. 42, no. 3 (1952): 116-119.
Washington history : magazine of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Goode, James M. “Flying High: The Origins and Design of Washington National Airport.” Washington History, vol. 1, no. 2 (Fall, 1989): 4-25.

Martin, C. T. (2000). Tract -house modern: A study of housing design and consumption in the Washington suburbs, 1946–1960
(ProQuest document ID: 304619634)
Abstract: Popular imagery of post-World-War-II suburban housing reinforces an image of vast, barren tracts of tiny, Cape Cod houses built ad infinitum through the 1950s. When the tremendous postwar housing demand was finally met in 1950, however, home builders were forced to become more creative to sell their product. To differentiate their product, they rejected the familiar Cape Cod box and provided the consumer with new forms and ideas featured in home magazines. Builders adopted fundamental modernist elements such as a low, horizontal profile, wide roof overhangs, an open interior plan, and extensive use of glass uniting indoors and outdoors. Going beyond the basic ranch house, a few pioneering builders teamed with progressive architects to improve design. The result was “tract modernism,” intended to provide custom character at the mass level.
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This study examines the transformation of modernist ideas in mass housing by focusing on metropolitan Washington as a case study. Fueled by a mushrooming federal government, Washington was among the top ten largest housing markets during the postwar period, outpacing many larger cities. Close inspection suggests that the typical 1950s suburban subdivision was not an “anonymous” tract of Cape Cod houses. Rather, subdivisions exhibit a surprising amount of local character, influenced by a complex fusion of forces driven by changing local consumer taste, local market economics, and the personal preferences of individual home builders.

Builders and architects in metropolitan Washington played a key role in promoting progressive, modernist design in tract housing during the 1950s. Drawing from the high proportion of architects that relocated to Washington during the 1930s and 1940s, the Washington suburbs fostered notable early projects resulting from builder-architect collaboration. Holmes Run, a local collaborative effort begun in 1950, drew accolades from national trade journals and popular shelter magazines for its simplified modernist program that provided a lesson for builders anywhere in the country. Local builders integrated modernist ideas in other more mainstream ways. With the National Association of Home Builders and the American Institute of Architects both headquartered in Washington, local players from both sectors worked at the institutional level to pave the way for greater collaboration industry-wide during the 1950s and beyond.
Space, C. (2017). Forest of Lorien
(ProQuest document ID: 1914897851)
Abstract: Forest of Lorien Forest of Lorien documentary photography project explores the mid-century modern community, Hollin Hills, located in Alexandria, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. The project is comprised of a book of photographs, an interactive website, essays, and a sensorial multi-media project—a thread of natural sounds, moving imagery, interviews, and a voice over reciting poems, stitch together the growth and renewal of many generations. Unlike contiguous neighborhoods, Hollin Hills is an enclave of forests and is defined by the vision of modernist architect Charles M. Goodman and land developer Richard C. Davenport who together worked post World War II to create a symbiotic relationship between man and landscape. Hollin Hills offers a harbor from the prevailing urban sprawl and monotonous stretches common to suburban design. Residents seek to make this unique woodland their family home and discover a timeless atmosphere of living. The community is an exceptional force of nature, alive in the way it thrives off the auras of its inhabitants, inhaling and exhaling in perpetuation of harmony. The light, wildlife reverberations, and experiential sensations of the community lace together a tranquil and enigmatic environment. This delicate balance dissolves boundaries allowing people and nature to exist freely.

Grubbs (Christopher) Architectural Illustrations (1981-2010)

Grubbs (Christopher) Architectural Illustrations
View digitized content from the Grubbs collection
View Grubbs journal sample
Approximately 3,400 illustrations (selections digitized) by Christopher Grubbs (1950-) for over 300 architecture and landscape projects designed by well-known architects and architectural firms, mostly American, such as Skidmore, Owen, and Merrill, between 1981 and 2017. The collection also includes 46 journals presenting his ideas.
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-41002]

Webcasts

Chris Grubbs | CSU LA DAYS Lecture Series 2021 External
A talk by Christopher Grubbs on his design process and methodologies.

Gruen (Victor), Visual materials from his papers (ca. 1903-ca. 1979)

Gruen (Victor), Visual materials from his papers
View digitized content from the Gruen collection
Over 21,000 items (selections digitized) including professional and personal photographs, lecture slides, awards, and architectural drawings and presentation materials related to projects in Europe and the U.S. by Victor Gruen (1903-1980), a pioneer in the design of shopping malls in the U.S., ranging ca. 1903-1979. Items were transferred from the Library’s Manuscript Division where his papers are stored.
[Image: LC-DIG-ds-03196]

Related collections at LC (links go to catalog records):

Listing of Gruen projects (Prints & Photographs Division Collection)
ADE 11 - Gruen (Prints & Photographs Division Collection)
Victor Gruen papers, 1886-1991 (Manuscript Division Collection): A finding aid for the Victor Gruen papers, 1886-1991.

Related collections outside of LC (external link):

Victor Gruen papers, 1903-1980 External (University American Heritage of Wyoming's Center Collection): Papers of Victor Gruen held at University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center. Collection contains materials relating to Gruen's architectural career, including speeches and articles written by Gruen on shopping centers, urban renewal, area planning, and architecture; newspaper and magazine clippings; professional correspondence; the galleys, manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, and reviews of "Shopping Towns USA," "The Heart of Our Cities" and "Centers for the Urban Environment;" and project files and booklets produced by Victor Gruen Associates describing various projects. The Collection also contains photographs and negatives of Gruen and his projects. Some film and audiotapes of programs, speeches, and interviews relating to Gruen are also present.

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Shopping Town by Victor Gruen; Anette Baldauf (Editor)
Call Number: NA1011.5.G76 A2 2017
ISBN: 9781517902094
Published/Created: 2017-05-30
Victor Gruen was one of the twentieth century's most influential architects and is regarded as the father of the U.S. shopping mall. In spring 1979, less than a year before his death, he began reconstructing his life story. Now available in English for the first time, Shopping Town is the long overdue account of a man whose work fundamentally altered the course of city development. Shopping Town opens in Vienna in 1938 with the Anschluss--the turning point in Gruen's life--as he narrowly escaped the Nazi regime. A few years later, in the suburbs of postwar America, the Jewish refugee sought to reproduce the vitality of Vienna's city center and invented the commercial apparatus now known as the shopping mall. Gruen's Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota, was the first fully enclosed shopping center in America. He then translated the concept to economically neglected city centers, setting the path for pedestrian zones and fighting passionately for an urban ideal without compromise. Highlighting Gruen's sense of humor as well as reflections on the complex forces that sustained the postwar transformation of American cities, Shopping Town embeds Gruen's experiences and perspectives in a wider social and political context while helping us understand his problematic place in American architectural culture. With afterwords by his son and daughter, Shopping Town closes with Anette Baldauf's richly insightful essay on the legacy of Victor Gruen.
Meet Me by the Fountain by Alexandra Lange
Call Number: HF5430.3 .L36 2022
ISBN: 9781635576023
Published/Created: 2022-06-14
Longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Awards "A smart and accessible cultural history."-Los Angeles Times "A fantastic examination of what became the mall ... envision[ing] a more meaningful public afterlife for our shopping centers."-Vulture A portrait--by turns celebratory, skeptical, and surprisingly moving--of one of America's most iconic institutions, from an author who "might be the most influential design critic writing now" (LARB). Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as malls. Since their birth in the 1950s, they have loomed large as temples of commerce, the agora of the suburbs. In their prime, they proved a powerful draw for creative thinkers such as Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, who understood the mall's appeal as both critics and consumers. Yet today, amid the aftershocks of financial crises and a global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era's defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated? In her acclaimed The Design of Childhood, Alexandra Lange uncovered the histories of toys, classrooms, and playgrounds. She now turns her sharp eye to another subject we only think we know. She chronicles postwar architects' and merchants' invention of the mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. In Lange's perceptive account, the mall becomes newly strange and rich with contradiction: Malls are environments of both freedom and exclusion--of consumerism, but also of community. Meet Me by the Fountain is a highly entertaining and evocative promenade through the mall's story of rise, fall, and ongoing reinvention, for readers of any generation.

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Journal of Society of Architectural Historians
Clausen, Meredith L. “Northgate Regional Shopping Center-Paradigm from the Provinces.” Journal of Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 43, no. 2 (1984): 144-161.
Abstract: One of the most dramatic events in the post-World War II period, of profound urban as well as architectural significance, was the rise of the big regional shopping center. The regional, differing from prewar community shopping centers in both size and function, was a hotly debated topic among architects and city planners in the late 1940s. Several of these new, experimental, gargantuan centers, 50 to 150 acres in size with stores and services numbering 100 or more, were in the planning stage across the country at the time. The urban-dimensioned problems that architects and planners faced, however, were formidable. Few were professionally equipped to handle them. The postwar period was marked by a boom in the retail industry: population was increasing, private incomes were rising, and the demand for consumer goods, long capped by the Depression and then by the war, soared. Meanwhile, as use of the private car became commonplace and high-speed freeway systems expanded, vast numbers of people moved to the suburbs. The situation was ripe for the emergence of the large-scale suburban retail center. These highly competitive, multimillion-dollar projects were, however, wholly financed by private investment, and the financial risks were enormous. It was a highly experimental period, with architects and developers following each other closely. The Northgate Shopping Center, located just outside Seattle and finished in 1950, was the first of the regional type to open. Designed by architect John Graham, its progress was monitored carefully by other shopping center planners and developers across the country, in particular, by William Wurster, Welton Becket, and Victor Gruen. Architecturally undistinguished, hence slighted by the architectural community, Northgate was financially highly successful. Graham's concept of a narrow pedestrian mall lined with a dense array of stores and services surrounded by easily accessible parking, attesting his thorough understanding of merchandising as well as architectural and planning problems, proved, in the last analysis, paradigmatic.

Smiley, D. (2006). Pedestrian modern: Shopping, modern architecture and the American metropolis, 1935–1955
(ProQuest document ID: 305268092)
Abstract: This dissertation argues that the store and the shopping center were crucial instruments through which American architects between 1935 and 1955 interpreted and shaped modernist architectural and urban principles.
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The normalization of modernist formal and planning methods is an established avenue of study, but retail design has only recently been examined. Moreover, these two threads, modernist methods and retail design, are rarely considered to be related: shopping centers in particular are framed with respect to suburbanization and not to modern architecture and its discourse.

The dissertation follows the mid-twentieth century work of Kenneth Welch, Morris Ketchum and Victor Gruen, among other architects engaged in retail design, and examines and how they interacted with the contemporary professional and publishing cultures. In their practices, these architects joined modernist architectural theory not to corporate office buildings, cultural institutions or homes but to the most ostensibly "pedestrian" of program types. In both the dense commercial districts within the city core and the spreading settlement without, many architects and architectural observers framed the retail district or "store group" as a testing ground of modernist practices: efficient networks of circulation transparently rendered in steel, glass and aluminum. A variety of modernist urban, community and landscape planning strategies were deployed. The mid-century shopping center was an integral part of mid-century architectural and urban design theory, best understood in terms of the neighborhood unit and the superblock, and in terms of the combined effects of economic expansion and a broadly interpreted nuclear threat. And with population and consumption continuing their historic dispersal to the region, the dissertation also examines the rhetoric of "suburbanization". Used so often to index modernist planning effects, "suburbanization" has become allegorical, shifting meaning away from architecture towards one if its possible entanglements.

This "pedestrian modern" joins two threads that defined shopping in architectural culture at mid-century. By its complicity with consumption and mass culture, the store was a less respected professional undertaking. At the same time, the images and connotations of walking compensated for many of the problems of modernity.

Heaton (Arthur B.) Archive (1895-1950, bulk 1910-1950)

Heaton (Arthur B.) Archive
View digitized content from the Heaton Archive
View finding aid for the Heaton architectural drawing archive
Approximately 9,200 architectural drawings (selections digitized) by Arthur Berthrong Heaton (1875-1951) for residential, commercial, industrial, religious, educational, recreational, health care, transportation, and organizations’ buildings in a wide range of style located in the Northwest and Northeast quadrants of Washington, DC and surrounding suburbs.
[Image: LC-USZC4-3754]

Hunt (Richard Morris) Collections in the AIA/AAF Collection (1841-1895)

Hunt (Richard Morris) Collections in the AIA/AAF Collection
View digitized content from the Hunt Collection in the AIA/AAF Collection
A collection with a large amount of material in various formats such as drawings, photographs, scrapbooks, sketchbooks, and journals (selections digitized) by Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895) was transferred from the American Institute of Architects and American Architectural Foundation in 2010. Materials cover most of his projects. The Collection also includes items by Richard’s brothers William Morris Hunt (1824-1879) and Leavitt Hunt (1831-1907), sister Jane Hunt (1882-1889), and sons Richard Howland Hunt (1862-1931) and Joseph Howland Hunt (1870-1924).
[Image: LC-DIG-ds-13986]

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

The Architecture of Richard Morris Hunt by Susan R. Stein (Editor)
Call Number: NA737.H86 A88 1986
ISBN: 0226771687
Published/Created: 1998-04-27
Richard Morris Hunt by Paul R. Baker
Call Number: NA737.H86 B34
ISBN: 0262021390
Published/Created: 1980-04-01
A comprehensive biography of Richard Morris Hunt.
Versailles revival, 1867-1937 by sous la direction de Laurent Salomé et Claire Bonnotte
Call Number: MLCL 2021/40198 (D)
ISBN: 9782902302475
Published/Created: 2019
An article "Versailles Outre-Mer: Architecture and Decoration in the United States," by Sam Watters in association with Mari Nakahara, is included in pp.316-327.

The Daguerreian Society Quarterly
Hanlon, David R. "Re-exposed: Parallels in Early Travelers’ Portraits from Upper Egypt." The Daguerreian Society Quarterly. Vol. 32, No. 2 (2020): 3-6.
Library of Congress magazine : LCM.
Reyburn, Susan. "A Gilded Life." LCM, vol. 13, no. 5 (2024): 12-17. External
Watters, Sam. "Last Word." LCM, vol. 13, no. 5 (2024): 28. External
Rivista Di Studi Di Fotografia. Journal of Studies in Photography
Saunders, B. "Seguaci americani della Scuola Romana di fotografia: Nathan Flint Baker, Leavitt Hunt e Richard Morris Hunt." Rivista Di Studi Di Fotografia. Journal of Studies in Photography. Vol. 5, No. 9 (2019): 8-29.

Silvergold, B. K. (1974). Richard Morris Hunt And The Importation Of Beaux-arts Architecture To The United States
(ProQuest document ID: 302662247)
Howard, J.M. (1982). Richard Morris Hunt: The Development Of His Stylistic Attitudes
(ProQuest document ID: 303229705)
Abstract: The architectural styles exhibited by the works of Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895) are remarkable for their diversity and finesse. With few exceptions they are also European. Since the early years of the twentieth century Hunt has been ignored and, at times, severely criticized for his European predilections, in preference to design attitudes which could be considered both more original and more American. Indeed, even though Hunt was born an American and periodically proclaimed his patriotism, a basic preference for the sophistication of nineteenth century architectural forms and lifestyles more common to the Continent than to the New World can hardly be denied. But a new and deeper understanding of his stature as an architect and his profound contributions to this field in the United States has long been needed.
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The study focuses upon the sources from which Hunt drew his artistic inspirations and the effects of such sources on his subsequent works. The sources are four in number: his education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (the first American for whom this was the case), his training in the atelier of the prominent French architect Hector-Martin Lefuel, his life and travels throughout Europe and the Mediterranean world as a student, and his continual renewal of European artistic and cultural ties during the four decades of his professional practice. Of particular influence in the last category were his association with the Exposition Universelle in Paris, of 1867, and his friendships with recognized leaders in the esthetic milieu of post-1850 France, notably Viollet-le-Duc and the Duc d'Aumale.

The author traces Hunt's episodic borrowings as new visual stimuli in Europe engendered new stylistic characteristics in the United States. The nature of Hunt's personal attitudes and their possible effects upon his professional habits are also examined with respect to esthetic preferences and the interrelationships between architect and client. Thus does a new image of Hunt emerge, that of a man devoted to the preservation of an extremely high level of taste and finesse fully expressed only in the models of architectural historicism found in nineteenth century Europe.
Moran, C. (2019). The aura of 660 Fifth Avenue: Alva Vanderbilt, Richard Morris Hunt, and the emergence of American luxury
(ProQuest document ID: 2359349867).
Abstract: This project introduces 660 Fifth Avenue as a total work of art and through a multidisciplinary framework, examines its aura, as it was originally completed and displayed to guests and members of the press at the time of the Vanderbilt Ball on March 26, 1883. Once completed, 660 Fifth Avenue was possessed as an act of performative identity by social celebrity, Alva Vanderbilt. Further, this project identifies Richard Morris Hunt as a cultural intermediary and arbiter of taste whose singular brand of academically studied, historically referential style, created a desire for a new mode of domestic architecture, which came to define American luxury. This project seeks to explore the potential of American Gilded Age domestic architecture to define taste, create desire, and shape a cultural zeitgeist.

Exploration and Discovery: Ernest Benecke Photographs in the Richard Morris Hunt Collection
A Picture This blog introducing newly discovered Ernest Benecke photographs in the Richard Morris Hunt Collection (February 5, 2020).
Richard Morris Hunt: Exploring the Man and the Legacy
A Picture This blog introducing Richard Morris Hunt Collection after the Collection was transferred from the American Architectural Foundation to the Library in 2010 (June 5, 2014).
Richard Morris Hunt: Architect of the Gilded Age
A Timeless, the main blog of the Library of Congress, introducing Richard Morris Hunt and his collection held at the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. It also talks about a newly published book, The Gilded Life of Richard Morris Hunt by Sam Watters (September 24, 2024).

Items from the Collection were featured in the following exhibition.

Exhibition Versailles Revival 1867-1937 External
An exhibition held at the Chateau des Versailles between November 19, 2019 and March 15, 2020. A part of the exhibition introduces Richard Morris Hunt's work of Marble House, along with an essay by Sam Watters.

Iron-Craftsmen Collection (1920-1955)

Iron-Craftsmen Collection
View digitized content from the Iron Craftsmen Collection
Approximately 6,000 drawings (selections digitized) by Iron-Craftsmen (Firm) ranging between 1920 and 1955, showing wrought iron work.
[Image]

Jacobsen (Hugh N.) Archive (1964-1985)

Jacobsen (Hugh N.) Archive
View digitized content from the Jacobsen Archive
View finding aid for the Jacobsen architectural drawing archive
620 items, chiefly architectural drawings (selections digitized) by Hugh Newell Jacobsen (1929-2021) for residential building in Washington, DC, and surrounding suburbs, organized into eleven groups (called UNITs), which are usually based on separate building projects. Additionally, more than 640 tubes of rolled drawings, and nearly 150 bankers boxes containing sketches and drawings, photographs, office records, and correspondence are located in the Hugh Newell Jacobsen Collection in the AIA/AAF Collection.
[Image: LC-USZ62-116864]

Books

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Hugh Newell Jacobsen, Architect by Massimo Vignelli (Editor); Robert Lautman (Illustrator); Vincent Scully (Introduction by)
Call Number: NA737.J3 A4 1988
ISBN: 091396297X
Published/Created: 1988-01-01
Hugh Newell Jacobsen set up an independent practice in Washington, DC over forty years ago. Since then, he has become one of America's finest architects and his projects have been built and published worldwide, earning him numerous national and international design awards. First published in 1988 by the AIA Press, this current edition has been printed on high quality art paper with enhanced imagery.

Lamb Studio Archive (1869-2000, bulk 1890-1990)

Lamb Studio Archive
View digitized content from the Lamb Archive
View background information and search the Lamb Studios Archive
Approximately 2,900 design sketches and drawings of stained glass windows, murals, mosaics, furnishings, metalwork, and interior design primarily for churches, synagogues, and other sacred spaces, designed by J. & R. Lamb Studios between 1869 and 2000 (bulk 1890-1990) (mostly digitized). The Lamb Studio is the oldest decorative arts firm in continuous operation in the United States.
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Loewy (Raymond) Archive (1929-1989)

Loewy (Raymond) Archive
View digitized content from the Loewy Archive
Nearly 20,000 items (selections digitized) including photographic materials and drawings for architecture, land, air, sea, space vehicles, and most famously, automobiles for Studebaker Avanti and Moskvitch, as well as a logo for Exxon, by industrial designer Raymond Loewy (1893 – 1986), created between 1978 and 1986. Some were transferred from the Raymond Loewy Papers, 1929-1988, held at the Library’s Manuscript Division.
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-40077]

Related collections at LC (links go to catalog records):

Photographs by Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc. showing Loewy’s design work for department stores, restaurants, and office buildings, amongst others (Prints & Photographs Division Collection)
Raymond Loewy papers, 1929-1988 (Manuscript Division Collection): A finding aid for the Raymond Loewy papers, 1929-1988.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Industrial design by Loewy, Raymond (Author)
Call Number: TS140.L63 A34 1988
ISBN: 9780947795382
Published/Created: 1988
Raymond Loewy by Angela Schoenberger (Editor)
Call Number: T183.G32 B43613 1990
ISBN: 3791310666
Published/Created: 1990-05-01
Raymond Loewy : designs for a consumer culture by Porter, Glenn.
Call Number: T183.G32 P67 2002
ISBN: 0914650343
Published/Created: 2002

Raymond Loewy External
The Avanti website introducing Raymond Loewy, his works, and related exhibits.

Bush, D. J. (1973). Streamlining: Functionalism In American Product Design, 1927-1939
(ProQuest document ID: 302678043)
Cogdell, C. G. (2001). Reconsidering the streamline style: Evolutionary thought, eugenics, and United States industrial design, 1925–1940
(ProQuest document ID: 304718685)
Abstract: This dissertation posits the streamline style in U.S. architecture and industrial design in the 1930s as the material embodiment of eugenic ideology, arguing that public acceptance of the style stemmed in part from public familiarity with eugenic principles.
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Little has been written on eugenics in the popular realm in the U.S. during this decade, and many treatments by historians of science actually assert that scientific interest in eugenics declined dramatically after the discovery of the complexity of human genetics in the early 1930s. This study, therefore, draws upon primary research in the archives of eugenicists and multiple industrial designers to argue for the popularity of eugenic thought during this period and its interconnections with the theory and designs of the streamline style. Backed by a middle- to upper-class white intellectual and industrial elite, both eugenics and streamlining were top-down aesthetic reform programs based upon the application of biological principles to design, both social and industrial. By removing the “less evolved,” “extraneous,” disabling and “diseased” features and people from the “tail end,” both eugenicists and streamline designers hoped to reduce the “parasite drag” that hindered forward evolutionary progress, relying in part upon the processes of sterilization and hygiene. Both insisted on pure form, rationality and order as the proper basis and goal of design; both believed in the control and power of the designer to realize “ideal types” and bring about an imminent utopia. In its introductory examination of the evolutionary roots of some of the fundamental tenets of modern architecture, this study recontextualizes eugenical streamlining as a logical outgrowth of early “high modernist” design principles. This correlation of eugenics and streamlining offers the first explanation to theoretically unify the major facets of the style (its concerns for drag reduction and efficiency, hygiene, and the “ideal type”) and suggest a cohesive ideological rationale for its rise and popularity at this time.
O’Malley, Christine Grace (2002). The “Design Decade” and Beyond: American Industrial Designers and the Evolution of the Consumer Landscape from the 1930s to the 1950s
(ProQuest document ID:276177213)
Abstract: This dissertation examines the role played by several consultant industrial designers in the shaping of the American consumer landscape from the 1930s to the 1950s.
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American consultant industrial designers emerged in the second quarter of the twentieth century to identify and articulate the aesthetic and functional potential of industrially manufactured objects. These practitioners designed mass-produced objects for a burgeoning consumer society, such as cameras, dinnerware, refrigerators, and transportation vehicles, but they also seized the opportunity to design commercial and retail structures such as service centers, stores, showrooms, and department stores. By expanding their reach into the realm of architecture, these industrial designers used their specialized knowledge of products and salesmanship to bring the world of consumption to the built landscape. Their work challenged the established authority of architects by offering their clients an unprecedented promise of full-service design.

Throughout the 1930s, early consultant industrial designers like Norman Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss, Raymond Loewy and Walter Dorwin Teague worked to articulate the scope of their new profession. The first part of this study considers how these industrial designers promoted their full-service design skills in articles and books, and provided physical proof of their abilities in their designs for commercial and retail buildings in the 1930s. Their active participation in the production of exhibits for the 1939–1940 New York World's Fair and their self-promotion at this event assisted their aim to legitimize their profession. In fact, their rapid rise to fame brought them into direct conflict with many architects, prompting discussions about the relationship between the two professions during this period. The second part of this study consists of case studies focused on the work produced by Raymond Loewy's firm for International Harvester and Lord & Taylor in order to demonstrate the ability of one consultant industrial design office to fulfill its goal of full-service design. Their work points to the frequently overlooked convergence between industrial design, architecture, and consumption during this period. This dissertation uncovers selected industrial designers' contributions to the development of the consumer landscape, and the implications of this work for architects.

Lundy (Victor A.) Archive (1940-2008)

Lundy (Victor A.) Archive
View digitized content from the Lundy Archive
The archive relates to the architectural career and life of Victor Alfred Lundy (1923-). Materials include approximately 56,000 items (selections digitized) such as sketches, drawings, photographic materials, correspondence and files, and journals called Brains Books, ranging between 1940 and 2008.
[Image: LC-DIG-ds-11053]

Related collections at LC (links go to catalog records):

World War II sketchbooks from the Victor A. Lundy Archive (Prints & Photographs Division Collection)
View research guide for the World War II Sketches by Victor A. Lundy
Victor Alfred Lundy Collection (Veterans History Project)
Introducing the Lundy collection held in the Veterans History Projects.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Constructing Building Enclosures by Clifton Fordham (Editor)
Call Number: Electronic Resource
ISBN: 9780429296963
Published/Created: 2020-07-21
Constructing Building Enclosures investigates and interrogates tensions that arose between the disciplines of architecture and engineering as they wrestled with technology and building cultures that evolved to deliver structures in the modern era. At the center of this history are inventive architects, engineers and projects that did not settle for conventional solutions, technologies and methods. Comprised of thirteen original essays by interdisciplinary scholars, this collection offers a critical look at the development and the purpose of building technology within a design framework. Through two distinct sections, the contributions first challenge notions of the boundaries between architecture, engineering and construction. The authors then investigate twentieth-century building projects, exploring technological and aesthetic boundaries of postwar modernism and uncovering lessons relevant to enclosure design that are typically overlooked. Projects include Louis Kahn's Weiss House, Minoru Yamasaki's Science Center, Sigurd Lewerentz's Chapel of Hope and more. An important read for students, educators and researchers within architectural history, construction history, building technology and design, this volume sets out to disrupt common assumptions of how we understand this history.　
Victor Lundy: artist architect by Donna Kacmar (Editor)
Call Number: NA737.L87 V53 2018
ISBN: 9781616896614
Published/Created: 2018-10-30
If you're looking for something new under the midcentury sun, Victor Lundy (born 1923) is a real find, an important yet underappreciated figure in the history of American architecture. Trained in both the Beaux Arts and Bauhaus traditions, he built an impressive practice ranging from small-scale residential and commercial buildings to expressive religious buildings and two preeminent institutional works: the US Tax Court Building in Washington, DC (now on the National Register of Historic Places), and the US Embassy in Sri Lanka. This first book on Lundy's life and career documents his early work in the Sarasota School of Architecture, his churches, and his government buildings. In addition to essays on his use of light and material, many of the architect's original drawings, paintings, and sketches--including those from his travels throughout Europe, the Middle East, India, and Mexico, now held at the Library of Congress-- are reproduced here for the first time.

Taylor & Francis Online. Journal of Architectural Education
Bieber, Susanneh. "Atmospheric Pressures: Victor Lundy's AEC Pavilion and the Sociopolitical Climates of Inflatable Architecture." Taylor & Francis Online. Journal of Architectural Education. Vol. 73, No. 1 (2019): 32-45.

Interview with Victor Lundy
An interview by Sarah Rouse on March 11, 2010, as part of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project.

US Modernist - Architecture You Love: VICTOR ALFRED LUNDY, FAIA (1923-) External
Brief introduction of Victor A. Lundy and his projects.
Happy 100th Birthday, Victor A. Lundy
A Picture This blog intorucing Victor A. Lundy who turned 100th years old on Febrary 1, 2023, his works, and programs in association with his big birthday (January 12, 2023).

US Modernist Radio - Architecture You Love: Adam Štěch + Victor Lundy + Donna Kacmar + Musical Guest Diana Panton External
Architect Victor Lundy and Donna Kacmar, one of the book authors of "Victor Lundy: artist architect," talk about his projects, such as U.S. Tax Court, U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka, and New York World's Fair, and his design process. Lundy also gives an advice to young architects.
Victor Lundy: Sculptor of Space External
A short description and the film showing U.S. Tax Court, released in January 2014 for the benefit of the American public. The Historic Building Film Series is part of the Public Buildings Heritage Program, which GSA produces in support of the National Historic Preservation Act and Executive Order 13287, Preserve America.

Peter (Walter G. & Walter G., Jr.) Collection in AIA/AAF Collection (1880s-1971)

Peter (Walter G. & Walter G., Jr.) Collection in AIA/AAF Collection
Over forty flat boxes and fifteen bankers boxes containing architectural drawings, photographs, office records, and correspondence for design projects by Walter Gibson Peter (1868-1945), a noted Washington, DC architect with the firm Marsh and Peter. The firm's many local projects included a design for the main building of Walter Reed Army hospital and additions to the famous Willard Hotel. The collection also includes works by his son Walter Gibson Peter, Jr. (1908-1971).

Ray (Luther R.) Archive (1920-1968)

Ray (Luther R.) Archive
View digitized content from the Ray Archive
View finding aid for the Ray architectural drawing archive
Approximately 800 items, chiefly drawings (selections digitized), by Luther Reason Ray (1892-1978) and his firm, the Structural Porcelain Enamel Co., for detached houses, apartment buildings, stores, theaters, gas stations, and restaurants, including the Little Tavern and Hot Shoppes in Washington DC, and surrounding suburbs. Spanish Colonial Revival, Georgian Revival, and Tudor Revival styles are often seen in the Collection. Drawings are organized into 181 groups (called UNITs and LOTs), which are usually based on separate building projects. Ray’s archive also contains additional ca. 850 items including resource files.
[Image: LC-DIG-ds-10535]

Rudolph (Paul M.) Archive (1940-1997)

Rudolph (Paul M.) Archive
View digitized content from the Rudolph Archive
An archive of design ideas, a record of work, for nearly 400 projects by Paul Marvin Rudolph (1918-1997), containing over 150,000 items, including sketches, drawings, photographic materials (selections digitized), furniture, and manuscripts, ranging from 1940 to 1997. The collection also includes resources for his teaching and lectures (selections digitized).
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-39713]

Related collections at LC (links go to catalog records):

Spaces--the architecture of Paul Rudolph (Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division Collection): A film by Bob Eisenhardt; produced by Eisenhardt Productions, Inc.; written, edited, and directed by Bob Eisenhardt.

Related collections outside of LC (external link):

Paul Rudolph architectural history collection External (Claire T. Carney Library Archives and Special Collections, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)
Paul Rudolph architectural history sub-collection External (Claire T. Carney Library Archives and Special Collections, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

The architecture of Paul Rudolph by Rudolph, Paul; Moholy-Nagy, Sibyl
Call Number: NA737.R8 M6
Published/Created: 1970
Paul Rudolph : drawings by Rudolph, Paul; Futagawa, Yukio
Call Number: NA737.R8 F87
Published/Created: 1977
Reassessing Rudolph by Timothy M. Rohan (Editor)
Call Number: NA737.R8 R438 2017
ISBN: 9780300225860
Published/Created: 2017-12-05
American architect Paul Rudolph (1918-1997) was internationally known in the 1950s and early 1960s for his powerful, large-scale concrete buildings. Hugely influential during his lifetime, Rudolph was one of the most significant American architects of his generation. To a remarkable extent, his reputation rose and fell with the fortunes of postwar modernism in America. This insightful book reconsiders Rudolph's architecture and the discipline's assessment of his projects. It includes nearly a dozen essays by well-known scholars in the fields of architectural and urban history, all of which shed new light on Rudolph's theories and practices. Contributions explore the architect's innovative use of materials, including plywood, Plexiglas, and exposed concrete; the places he lived and worked, from the Anglo-American axis to the Bengal delta; his affiliation with CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne); and currents within his philosophy of architecture.
Writings on architecture / by Paul M. Rudolph, Forward by Robert A.M. Stern
Call Number: NA2560 .R83 2008 FT MEADE
ISBN: 9780300150926
Published/Created: c.2008
The first collection of writings by one of the most innovative architects and educators of the 1950s and 1960s, this book includes a wealth of archival materials and many previously unpublished photographs. Featured texts include a selection of Paul Rudolph’s published critical writings, which cover such topics as Rudolph’s views about the architecture and city planning of his time and the proper way to educate an architectural student. Controversies about the preservation of many of Rudolph’s buildings—including the landmark Art and Architecture Building at Yale, which celebrates its 45th anniversary and grand reopening in November 2008.

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
Rohan, Timothy M. “Challenging the Curtain Wall: Paul Rudolph's Blue Cross and Blue Shield Building.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 66, no. 1 (2007): 84-109.
Britton, Karla Cavarra, and Daniel Ledford. “Paul Rudolph and the Psychology of Space: The Tuskegee and Emory University Chapels.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians vol. 78, no. 3 (2019): 327-346.

Rohan, T. M. (2001). Architecture in the age of alienation: Paul Rudolph’s postwar academic buildings
(ProQuest document ID: 304698673)
Abstract: The American architect Paul Rudolph (1918–1997) was acclaimed in the early 1960s for creating monumental buildings like his Yale School of Art and Architecture (1958–1964). His work drew upon the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier and reflected the cultural policies of American higher education during the Cold War period. Yet by the early 70s, he had ceased to develop as an architect, his work had fallen from critical favor and his buildings were derisively called “Brutalist.”
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This dissertation draws upon my extensive primary research as the first scholar to look at the Rudolph papers now housed in the Library of Congress. It examines three college fine arts centers (Wellesley, Yale and Colgate) and one campus plan (the University of Massachusetts, South Dartmouth) by Rudolph to explain how his buildings were “citadels for the arts” designed to preserve the humanities from the alienating effects of mass culture. To combat alienation, Rudolph used richly textured surfaces, bright colors, cantilevered forms and complex processional routes to connect the viewer with his buildings.

Although Rudolph believed that he was “humanizing” modern architecture, many found his surfaces overly aggressive and his interiors confusingly labyrinthine. Paradoxically, his buildings often engendered the very alienation that they were designed to combat. This contradiction can be understood if the buildings are seen as a register of Rudolph's own alienation as he struggled to synthesize disparate elements of the modernist vocabulary while living as a homosexual man in the Cold War period. This study breaks new theoretical ground by analyzing Rudolph's so-called “Brutalism” as a form of hypermasculinity. It is a manifestation of camp—a homosexual sensibility that rose to the forefront of artistic practice in the early 60s and that was described by Susan Sontag in her well-known essay “Notes on ‘Camp’” of 1964.
Chasin, N. B. (2002). Ethics and aesthetics: New brutalism, team 10, and architectural change in the 1950s
(ProQuest document ID: 276322906)
Abstract: During the decade following World War II, Europe found itself faced with the massive task of reconstruction, which in terms of architecture was complicated by a variety of issues concerning nationalism, history, and style. This dissertation provides an in-depth investigation of a group of individuals who, in 1953, seized control of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in order to advocate for a new, sympathetic relationship between architecture and inhabitant. Their so-called “ethic” resulted from a direct refutation of the utopian architectural projects of the prewar architectural establishment, embodied by CIAM, which the younger generation found to be removed from the exigencies of everyday life.
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The attempt to name this new architectural ethic resulted in the heavily contested term “The New Brutalism.” They claimed that these words were meant to stand not for at aesthetic, but rather an ethical position, characterized by a consuming relationship with what the Smithsons called the “inescapable present.” However, as concluded in this dissertation, their words and deeds were often at a variance with one another, as an alternating embrace and denial of contemporary conditions forced a difficult and complex relationship between the ethical and the aesthetic components of architectural practice.

The major point of this dissertation is to understand the movement as a collaborative effort, and to situate each of the most prominent members of this younger generation within their historical context in order to understand how this new avant-garde negotiated the difficult terrain between the real circumstances of postwar European existence and the rarefied realm of the avant-garde, and to investigate the difficulties of collaboration when both actual and theoretical projects are concerned.

An examination of the contemporaneous situation in the United States, where postwar elation clashed with a new culture of containment, sheds light on this dilemma. The Europeans' view of their American contemporaries—such as Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, and Charles and Ray Eames—shows a desire to see beyond mere surface and find within the same ethical components celebrated in Europe, thus ignoring the Americans' overwhelming preference for formal concerns.
Sroat, H. K. (2003). The humanism of brutalist architecture: The Yale art and architecture building and postwar constructions of aesthetic experience in American universities and architecture
(ProQuest document ID: 305292073)
Abstract: An investigation into the initial significance of brutalism in the United States, the study situates this architectural style within a broader cultural undertaking in which architects, critics, educators, social scientists, and architectural clients attempted to theorize and construct the optimal conditions for human well-being. Taking the commissioning, design and reception of Paul Rudolph's Yale Art and Architecture Building (the A&A) as a central case study, it provides an explanation for the demanding character of this and many other brutalist buildings. In the process it documents the incorporation of humanist ideals and social critiques, human science research, and aesthetic theory into the architectural profession's goals and formal experimentations of the 1950s and 1960s.
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Review of the major American professional journals of the period establishes that brutalism emerged out of a search for a more “human” and artistic modern architecture. The study inquires into the conceptions of human beings and art underpinning this search and charts their influence on architects, clients, magazine editors, and critics. A close look at the A&A's university art center program proves informative about postwar efforts to advance humanist values through art and the promotion of an intense edifying notion of aesthetic experience. In this context the monumental concrete masses, spatial complexity, startling vistas, emphatic textures, and dramatic lighting effects featured by brutalist buildings like the A&A were intended to shape an engaging architecture that would gratify and benefit users by exercising their physical, perceptual, emotional and intellectual capacities. However, as critics and clients soon began to note, these features tended more often to confuse and bother users. Analyzing the early reception of several brutalist buildings, the study narrates how this style was enthusiastically greeted by architects and critics first as “human” and then deemed problematic and even egregiously inhuman as alternate understandings of and ideals for people, society, and architecture came to the fore in the 1960s. Given the antipathy this architecture still provokes in many users and a current revival of interest in brutalist buildings in architectural circles, it is valuable to reconstruct the postwar period's own conception of what brutalism accomplished.

Celebrating the Centenary of American Architect Paul M. Rudolph
A Picture This blog introducing a day-long symposium on Rudolph’s life and work which was held at the Library of Congress on Friday, Oct. 26, 2018, just a few days after what would have been his 100th birthday. It includes a description of the Rudolph collection and includes selected images (September 19, 2018).
Building Access to the Paul Marvin Rudolph Archive
A Picture This blog introducing two 2023 junior fellows' experience and findings after going through ca. 4,000 items of the Paul M. Rudolph Archive. (July 19, 2023).

The following videos include presentations from a day-long symposium that celebrated the 100th birthday of noted architect Paul M. Rudolph at the Library of Congress on October 26, 2018. The Library's webcasts provide opportunities to learn more about the Library collections and special subjects, through recording of talks by creators, authors, and Library specialists. About 400,000 programs have been recorded and nearly 10,000 are available online.

Acquisition, Preservation, Organization, Access & Use of the Paul M. Rudolph Collection
Various speakers shared perspectives on the life of Paul M. Rudolph and his archives, housed at the Library of Congress. Presented in cooperation with Paul Rudolph Foundation.
Discussion & Response to Three Architects' Work with Rudolph Structures
Practitioners Andrew Bernheimer, Toshiko Mori and Steven Harris discussed their respective work responding to and intervening to Paul Rudolph residential projects. Robert Bruegmann moderated the discussion.
Paul M. Rudolph's New Space Concept
Sean Khorsandi and Dan Webre of the Paul Rudolph Foundation discussed the role of the Foundation and shared recent research on Paul Rudolph.
Paul Rudolph's Standing in Architectural History
Kurt W. Forster discussed Rudolph's standing in architectural history and his legacy today.
The Yale School of Architecture During the Rudolph Years
In the keynote speech, Robert A.M. Stern, former dean of the Yale School of Architecture, discussed the life and work of Paul Rudolph from his perspective as one of Paul Rudolph's former students.
US Modernist Radio - Architecture You Love: The Legacy of Paul Rudolph: Kelvin Dickinson + Musical Guest Tierney Sutton External
Kelvin Dickinson, President of the Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture, talks about Rudolph and his design.
Paul Rudolph's Modernist Campus Tour External
Virtual tour of Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute campus (now UMass Dartmouth) designed by renowned international architect Paul M. Rudolph.

Smith (Chloethiel W.) & Associated Architects Archive (1957-1975)

Smith (Chloethiel W.) & Associated Architects Archive
View digitized content from the Smith Archive
View finding aid for the Smith & Associated Architects architectural drawing archive (LC acquisition portion)
1,053 items, chiefly architectural drawings for urban planning projects in the Southwest Urban Renewal Area of Washington DC (selections digitized), created by Chloethiel Woodard Smith (1910-1992) & Associated Architects between 1957 and 1975. Items are organized into twenty two groups (called UNITs) which are usually based on separate building projects. Additionally, more than 200 tubes of rolled drawings, photograph albums, office records, and correspondence for other projects are found in the Chloethiel Woodard Smith Collection in the AIA/AAF Collection.
[Image: LC-USZC4-3770]

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

Chloethiel Woodard Smith & Associated Architects : architecture, urban design, planning by Chloethiel Woodard Smith & Associated Architects.
Call Number: NA737.C46 A4 1970z
Published/Created: 1970s

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

The Public Historian
Gillette Jr., Howard. “A National Workshop for Urban Policy: The Metropolitanization of Washington, 1946-1968.” The Public Historian, vol. 7, no. 1 (Winter, 1985): 6-27

Remy, J. E. (2010). Principles of a sustainable and successful mixed-use streetscape-based urban renewal project: Emphasis on redevelopment of southwest Washington, D.C .
(ProQuest document ID: 504769866)
Abstract: Urban renewal promised rejuvenation of cities—cites that were increasingly losing inhabitants to the perceived security and safety of the suburbs. In its purest form, it was designed to sustain and support a metropolis, helping reduce the exodus of inhabitants in the population battle with the suburbs. In reality, it has been used as a tool for gentrification, a source of blind federal funding, and slum clearance. The urban renewal plans of the 20 th century promised a rejuvenated city, but in essence destroyed communities and missed the populations' needs and desires; the plans had the opposite effect and past urban renewal projects are being redesigned and rebuilt today. The failure of the 20th century renewal projects are explored and applied by studying Southwest Washington, D.C.
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Urban renewal projects of the 20th century promised the replacement of a section of a city—a locale, district, or neighborhood that was no longer deemed adequate—such as tenement housing, alley dwellings, or obsolete public buildings. The alternative designs or reuses of the city section were thought to be renewed, recharged, and modernized post redevelopment. City planners attempted, through the displacement of individuals, businesses, and communities, to reenergize cities and compete with suburban life. However, many of these new designs were not sensitive to regional issues and focused heavily on centralized planning without thought for long-term consequences or sustainability. In most instances the natural rhythms of the streetscapes were displaced and destroyed. The Southwest Waterfront redevelopment destroyed 5,700 structures in the 1950s and must be revamped for today's needs.

Through documented industry standard texts, interviews with urban planners, planning commissioners, population data sources, and site travel, the new, old, and alternative plans of development are investigated for their longevity, success, and use of existing and rejuvenated neighborhoods. A major focus on the importance of streetscapes and mixed-use properties is discussed.

The results attempt to show that a well-planned and executed urban renewal project, integrating multi-use facilities and a corresponding streetscape, can be successful and sustainable.

The factors of past and future developments in Southwest Washington, D.C. are studied, critiqued, and compared to one another as well as to other planning philosophies. It is theoretically shown that a well-planned urban design, one that understands and anticipates the needs of current and future diverse populations, could be successful. Site analyses and literature research result in a conclusion of what defines a sustainable and successful urban renewal project in Southwest Washington, D.C.

Vogel (Jack K.) Drive-in-Theater Drawings (1940s-1960s)

Vogel (Jack K.) Drive-in-Theater Drawings
View digitized content from the Vogel Drive-in-Theater Drawings
Approximately 1,940 drawings of ca. 468 drive-in movie theaters (selections digitized) designed by architect and engineer Jack Kenneth Vogel (1948-1999), one tenth of the drive-in theaters which existed in the United States during the peak of popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. Collection also includes theaters, schools, shopping plazas and businesses for clients in the mid-west and northeast, and the first drive-in-theater in South America, the “Auto-Cine” in Lima, Peru in 1954. Each drawing includes name of the theater and location.
[Image: LC-DIG-ppmsca-51796]

Articles & Blogs

Rediscovering Drive-Ins with the Vogel Collection
A Picture This blog introducing the Vogel Collection. Drive-In-Theater was revitirized during the COVID pandemic (November 25, 2020).

Waggaman & Ray Archive (1896-1947, bulk 1909-1931)

Waggaman & Ray Archive
View digitized content from the Waggaman & Ray Archive
View finding aid for the Waggaman & Ray archive
7,571 items, primarily architectural drawings (selections digitized) by Clarke Waggaman (1877-1919) and George Nicholas Ray (1887-1959), and their firm Waggaman & Ray. Items cover 400 projects and organized into 418 groups (called UNITs), which are usually based on separate building projects. The bulk are for Georgian Revival, Colonial Revival, Federal Revival, and other styles of residential and small scale commercial buildings in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, DC.
[Image: LC-DIG-ds-12975]

Waterman (Thomas T.) Archive (1919-1951)

Waterman (Thomas T.) Archive
View digitized content from the Waterman Archive
View finding aid for the Waterman architectural drawing archive
Over 1,100 items, chiefly architectural drawings (selections digitized), by a pioneer of the historic preservation field Thomas Tileston Waterman (1900-1951) for and of historic buildings, and residential, religious, and education buildings in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC and Massachusetts. His work also represented reconstructions of buildings in Williamsburg, Virginia. Items are organized into 196 groups (called UNITs and LOTs), which are usually based on separate building projects.
[Image: LC-USZ62-133426]

Books

The following title links to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

The dwellings of colonial America by Waterman, Thomas Tileston
Call Number: NA707 .W42
Published/Created: 1950

Wood (Waddy B.) Archive (1852-1965, bulk 1894-1937)

Wood (Waddy B.) Archive
View digitized content from the Wood Archive
View finding aid for the Wood architectural drawing archive
634 items, primarily architectural drawings (selections digitized) by Waddy Butler Wood (1869-1944) for residential buildings, commercial buildings, and government buildings in Washington, DC, and surrounding suburbs, ranging from 1852-1965 (bulk 1894-1937). Items are organized into ninety one groups (UNITs or LOTs), which are usually based on buildings.
[Image: LC-USZC4-3757]

Related collections at LC (links go to catalog records):

Waddy B. Wood papers, 1885-1941 (Manuscript Division Collection): A finding aid for the Waddy B. Wood papers, 1885-1941.

Architecture, Design and Engineering Collections in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

Prints & Photographs: Ask a Librarian

Primary Archives

Adams (Wilbur Henry) Industrial design drawings and related material (1924-1957, bulk 1940s)

American Institute of Architects/American Architectural Foundation Collections (AIA/AAF) (ca. 1600-ca 2007, bulk 1860-2007)

Berla & Abel Collection in the AIA/AAF Collection (1941-1971)

Cappelmann (Eimer) Drawings (1928-1950)

Dominick (Theodore W.) Photographs and Drawings (1940-1980)

Dominick (William Francis) Drawings and Specifications (1900-1945)

Drayer (Donald H.) Archive (1931-1973, bulk 1945-1973)

Eames, Work of Charles and Ray (1885-1988, bulk 1940-1978)

Gilbert (Cass) Archive

Goodman (Charles M.) Archive (1935-1987)

Grubbs (Christopher) Architectural Illustrations (1981-2010)

Gruen (Victor), Visual materials from his papers (ca. 1903-ca. 1979)

Heaton (Arthur B.) Archive (1895-1950, bulk 1910-1950)

Hunt (Richard Morris) Collections in the AIA/AAF Collection (1841-1895)

Iron-Craftsmen Collection (1920-1955)

Jacobsen (Hugh N.) Archive (1964-1985)

Lamb Studio Archive (1869-2000, bulk 1890-1990)

Loewy (Raymond) Archive (1929-1989)

Lundy (Victor A.) Archive (1940-2008)

Peter (Walter G. & Walter G., Jr.) Collection in AIA/AAF Collection (1880s-1971)

Ray (Luther R.) Archive (1920-1968)

Rudolph (Paul M.) Archive (1940-1997)

Smith (Chloethiel W.) & Associated Architects Archive (1957-1975)

Vogel (Jack K.) Drive-in-Theater Drawings (1940s-1960s)

Waggaman & Ray Archive (1896-1947, bulk 1909-1931)

Waterman (Thomas T.) Archive (1919-1951)

Wood (Waddy B.) Archive (1852-1965, bulk 1894-1937)