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 the Avery Hall on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University in New York City . It is the largest architecture library in the United States. The library, which serves Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the "Institute for Art History", collects books and journals on architecture , monument preservation , art history , painting ,Sculptures , drawings , handicrafts , urban planning , real estate , and archeology , as well as archival material documenting American architecture in the 19th and 20th centuries. The architecture, fine arts collections and archival material are not loaned. The Ware Collection , mainly books on urban planning and real estate development, is available to borrow.
The Avery Library is named after New York City architect Henry Ogden Avery , a friend of William Robert Ware , who was named Columbia University's first professor of architecture in 1881. Shortly after Avery's untimely death in 1890, his parents, Samuel Putnam Avery and Mary Ogden Avery, established the library in memory of their son. They donated his collection of 2,000 books, mostly for architecture, archeology and handicrafts, many of his original drawings, as well as funds to round off the book collection and set up a foundation. The library now has over 400,000 volumes and currently holds around 900 journals, with the legacy copies around 1,900 titles. The historic reading room on the first floor of the library is a prime example of the work of the New York architects McKim, Mead, and White .
collection
The Avery Library's collection of architectural literature is one of the largest in the world and contains gems such as the first printed book on architecture De re aedificatoria by Leon Battista Alberti (1485), the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna (1499) and works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi . Modern classics by Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier can also be found here . The rarest copies are in the Classics (Rare Books) section.
In addition, Avery's drawings and archives department is one of the largest and most important architectural archives in the world. The inventory includes more than a million architectural drawings, photographs, manuscripts, business records, audiovisual recordings and other materials, primarily the documentation of the architectural history of New York City and the surrounding region, with significant examples of American and other international architecture to the work of New York-based architects and graduates of Columbia's School of Architecture.
The most notable architects in the collection include:
The archive also holds records from the Empire State Building , Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company, New York Architectural Terra-Cotta Co., and Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York, and works by artist and writer Kenyon Cox , des Journalist Douglas Haskell, editor of the Architectural Forum, and drawings of murals and stained glass by artist John La Farge . The department also has significant archives of architectural photography , including works by CD Arnold , Cserna George , Samuel Gottscho H. , and Joseph W. Molitor . Finally, Antonio Lafreri's section contains "Speculum romanae Magnificentiae".
Avery index
The Avery Library is also home to the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, a program of the Getty Research Institute . Started by Avery in 1934, the index offers citations on the articles in around 300 current and over 1000 retrospective architecture and related magazines, with a focus on architecture and history as well as archeology, landscape architecture, interior design, furniture and handicrafts, garden art, Preservation of monuments, urban development and planning, real estate development, environment and studies. The index also includes a variety of architects' obituaries.
Web links
Coordinates: 40 ° 48 ′ 29.6 ″ N , 73 ° 57 ′ 39.4 ″ W.