Ryan Rare Book Room

The Ryan Rare Book Room (RRBR) is an extensive collection of early architectural publications including first editions of some of the most important treatises on architecture. It holds the largest known collection of titles from the Helen Park List, architecture books available in the U.S. prior to 1775, along with selections from the Henry Russell Hitchcock’s “American Architectural Books: A list of Books, Portfolios, and Pamphlets on Architecture and Related Subjects Published in America Before 1895.” Other collections housed in the RRBR include Roman Architecture & Vedute, French Architecture, American Pattern Books, British Pattern Books, Greek Architecture, and Rome Outside of Rome. Notable holdings include the first published architecture book, Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria (1485), the first illustrated architecture book, the Fra Giocondo Vitruvius (1511), and the first full architectural treatise in English, Five bookes of architecture: translated out of Italian into Dutch and out of Dutch into English, by Sebastiano Serlio (1611).