Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library

The Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library is one of 25 libraries in the Columbia University Library System, and is located in Avery Hall on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University in New York City. It is the largest library for architecture in the United States. The library, the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the " Institute for Art History " is used, collects books and magazines on architecture, historic preservation, art history, painting, sculpture, drawing, crafts, urban planning, real estate, and archeology, as well as archived documenting the American architecture in the 19th and 20th centuries. The collections of Architecture, Fine Arts and the archive material will not be borrowed. Goods Collection, mainly books on urban planning and real estate development can be borrowed.

The Avery Library is named after the architect Henry Ogden Avery from New York, a friend of William Robert Ware, who was appointed in 1881 to the first professor of architecture at Columbia University. Shortly after the untimely death of Avery in 1890, founded his parents, Samuel Putnam Avery and Mary Ogden Avery, the library in memory of her son. They donated his collection of 2,000 books, mostly for architecture, archeology and crafts, many of his original drawings, as well as funds to round out the book collection and the establishment of a foundation. The library now has over 400,000 volumes and has currently received about 900 journals, with the copies of the legacy is about 1,900 titles. The historical reading room on the ground floor of the library is an important example of the work of New York architects McKim, Mead, and White.

Collection

The collection of architectural literature of the Avery Library is one of the largest in the world and contains gems like the first in the western United States printed book on architecture De Re Aedificatoria ( 1485 ), by Leone Battista Alberti; Hypnerotomachia of Francesco Colonna Poliphili ( 1499 ); Works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi; and modern classics by Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. The rarest copies are located in the Department of Classics (rare books).

In addition, Avery is one of the Department of Drawings and Archives of the largest and most important architectural archives in the world. In stock there are more than one million architectural drawings, photographs, manuscripts, business documents, audiovisual recordings and other materials primarily documenting the architectural history of New York City and the surrounding region, referring to significant examples of American and other international architecture, on the work of New York-based architects and graduates of Columbia 's School of Architecture.

Among the most notable architects in the collection include:

  • Hector Guimard
  • Charles Coolidge Haight
  • Talbot F. Hamlin
  • Wallace K. Harrison
  • Herts & Tallant
  • Raymond Hood
  • Robert Allan Jacobs
  • Norman Jaffe
  • Philip Johnson
  • Ely Jacques Kahn
  • Charles R. Lamb
  • Thomas W. Lamb
  • Morris Lapidus
  • Frances Henry Lenygon and Jeannette Becker Lenygon
  • Jac Lessman
  • Detlef Lienau
  • Harold Van Buren Magonigle
  • John J. McNamara
  • Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
  • Hermann Muthesius
  • Paul Nelson

The archive is also in possession of the documents of the Empire State Building, the Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company, the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co., and the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York, as well as works by the artist and writer Kenyon Cox, the journalists Douglas Haskell, editor of " Architectural Forum ", and drawings of wall paintings and stained glass windows by the artist John La Farge. The department also has important archives of architectural photography, including works by CD Arnold, Cserna George, Samuel H. Gottscho, and Joseph W. Molitor. Finally, the department Antonio Lafreri contains "Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae ".

Avery Index

The Avery Library is also home to the " Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals ," one of the Getty Research Institute program. Started by Avery in 1934, the index provides citations to articles in about 300 current and over 1000 retrospective architectural and related journals, with a focus on architecture, history and archeology, landscape architecture, interior design, furniture and handicrafts, garden art, historic preservation, urban design and planning, real estate development, environmental and studies. The index also includes a number of obituaries of architects.

McKim, Mead & White Integrated Authority File
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