The Architecture Library has fully digitized several rare and early architectural publications in their entirety. These publications are out of copyright and available for educational fair use. Items may not be published without written permission by the Architecture Library.
Additionally, the Architecture Library provides access to the Architecture Image Collection, a searchable database of digitized plates from the rare book collections.
The Architecture Library will consider adding digitized content on a case-by-case basis. Inquiries may be submitted to Jennifer Parker.
The architectural firm of McKim, Mead, & White, comprised of principle partners Charles Follen McKim (1847-1909), William Rutherford Mead (1846-1928), and Stanford White (1853-1906), was one of the most prominent and successful architecture firms in America at the start of the twentieth century. McKim and Mead partnered in 1872 and in 1879 White joined the firm. Notable buildings designed by them include the Boston Public Library, the main campus of Columbia University, and the National Museum of American History.
William Comstock published this volume designed by Erick Kensett Rossiter and F.A. Wright in 1882. This work contains twenty chromolithographs illustrating potential color schemes to paint exteriors and interiors of houses. In addition it features ways that one can adapt these color schemes to a house that is not built in the "new" style of architecture.
This book was a gift from the School of Architecture's 2002 graduating class.
Robert Adam led the expedition to document the royal palace of the Emperor Diocletian in 1757 accompanied by the French architect Charles-Louis Clérisseau and two draftsmen. Adam's "Grand Tour" publication was instrumental in launching his career in Great Britain. The publication contains an engraved frontispiece and 60 plates including detailed plans, sections, elevations and views primarily based on drawings by Clérisseau.
Ionian Antiquities was the first publication sponsored by the Society of the Dilettanti. Chandler, Pars, and Revett traveled to Greece in 1764, with instructions to keep detailed journal records in addition to their drawings, and were to deliver them directly to the Society of the Dilettanti. While their original plan was to set up a base in Smyrna, on the Aegean coast, and make excursions to interesting sites, they were forced to change their plans due to an outbreak of the Plague. Their new base was Athens, and for the next ten months, Chandler, Pars, and Revett explored the important sites in Attica, building off of the work that Stuart and Revett had started a decade earlier.
Rules for Drawing is Gibbs' attempt at a practical handbook for architects and craftsmen. While on the surface this book appears to be another book on the five orders, what is notable about Gibbs' text is a method he proposes that allows one to determine the correct proportion for any order provided their is a particular height. Gibbs' method was recognized immediately and used by subsequent authors, including Batty Langley.
The fifth English edition to claim a relationship to Scamozzi is more of a guidebook to architecture than an interpretation of Scamozzi's treatise of 1615. It contains several images based on Scamozzi's original publication but is primarily original to this text. This particular publication contains two additional books on the "joynt-rule," by mathematical instrument maker John Brown, and the Art of Building by printer and publisher William Leyburn.
In 1748 Stuart and Revett were in Rome studying painting when they decided to visit Athens in order to draw the antiquities to publish. After gathering materials for the first volume, the pair went back to England to start working on the engraved plates to begin circulating, as a means to drum up enough financial support to complete the remaining volumes. Their attention to detail displayed in their volumes reveal the numerous mistakes in the depictions from Palladio and Serlio, not to mention that Stuart, in his text, was quick to point out all of the faults in Le Roy's drawings in Les Ruines des Plus Beaux Monuments de la Grece, published a few years prior in 1758.
Abraham Swan, c.1720-c.1765, was a carpenter and joiner who published The British Architect, along with A Collection of Designs in Architecture and Designs for Chimnies at his own expense. The British Architect promotes the architecture of Christopher Wren, at the expense of Italian architects, notably Scamozzi, Vignola, and most especially Palladio. Of all of Swan's self-published volumes, The British Architect was the most beautiful and successful, due to its large scale details and its emphasis on interior fitting, such as mouldings, staircases, and fireplaces. A tribute to its popularity is the fact that a later edition of this volume became the very first printed book of architecture in the United States, published in Philadelphia in 1775, with engraving by John Norman.
Taylor and Cresy's impressive collection of over 100 engraved plates depicting the Roman Forum is a crucial text for understanding the historical monuments of Rome as depicted in the nineteenth century. The carefully measured drawings and detailed views offer important insight into the current Roman Forum. Due to the condition of this particular publication it is only availabel electronically.
This early Italian translation of Alberti's seminial work on architecture is also the first time the text is illustrated. First published in 1485, Alberti's work is regarded as the first Renaissance treatise on architecture and laid the groundwork for many future publications. This particular edition contains 83 woodcut illustrations of architectural plans, section, elevations, and figural details and especially interesting marginalia.
Published posthumously, Borromini's Opera celebrates his Sant'Ivo Chapel at the University of Rome. 47 plates engraved after Borromini's drawings detail every aspect of the chapel's Baroque splendor. This scarce publication is a highlight of the Ryan Rare Book Room's collection on Baroque Rome.
Intended for architects, this three-part publication carefully and thoroughly documents Rome's modern architecture. Each of the three parts deal with a different typology: Part One, doors and windows; Part Two, chapels and funerary monuments; Part Three, decorative details.
In 1674, at the age of 21 and after capture by Algerian pirates, Desgodets spent 16 months measuring the most important Roman monuments and ancient buildings in greater accuracy and detail then had previously achieved. Twenty-five of these monuments were published in 1682 as Les Edifices Antiques. The text that accompanies the illustrations notes discrepancies with Vitruvius and mistakes made by Palladio, Serlio, and Freart de Chambray.
Jean-Nicholas-Louis Durand's scientific study and comparison of ancient and 'modern' architectural forms is presented through a careful study of plans and elevations comprising of more than 90 plates. Durand is the first to organize and present by their function. This publication contains hundreds of buildings in comparison and is extremely useful for studying typology.
Le Roy, the son of a court clockmaker, studied architecture with Jacques-François Blondel. Le Roy benefited from the good relationship between France and the Ottoman Empire, which provided him ready access to the sites he needed for his project, and therefore, the ability to publish his work before Stuart and Revett. After spending a mere three months in Greece, he published his Les Ruines in 1758, four years before the first volume of Stuart and Revett's volume was available.
Letarouilly's Edifices de Rome Moderne represents a 13-year project to document sixteenth and seventeenth century architecture in Rome. The resulting publication is the most comprehensive study on Roman architecture and crucial for any student of Rome. The scholarly publication is written from years of research compiled from major Italian libraries. It's most notable contribution to students is the plan, section, elevation, and details of nearly every major Renaissance building in Rome.
