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This collection includes primarily original etchings, engravings, and lithographs, as well as published images from a variety of sources, of individual architectural structures or the built environment. Most of the images are uncolored. The collection is especially strong in images from the United States and England. A significant number of images are plates from Walter Harrison's "A new and universal history, description and survey of the cities of London and Westminister, the borough of Southwark, and their adjacent parts." (London, J. Cooke, 1776). A small portion of the collection depicts decorative arts and interiors. Also included are a few ephemeral items--such as tickets, letterhead, receipts, and bills--that include architectural imagery.

Correspondence, documents and manuscripts from late seventeenth and eighteenth century France, especially from the French Revolution, collected by Sam Schaefler. Authors include J.B. Colbert Torcy and the Duchesse Du Lude. Many of the items from the French Revolution represent the work of the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security. French Revolutionary leaders represented in the collection include François-Antoine Boissy D'Anglas, Jean-Baptiste-Noel Bouchotte, Pierre Joseph Cambon, Lazare Carnot, Jean-Marie Collot D'Herbois, l'Abbʹe de Fauchet, Philippe-Antoine Merlin de Douai, Jean Victor Moreau. C.A. Prieur-Duvernois, and Antoine Joseph Santerre. In addition, the collection includes a letter from the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted to Sir John Herschel, a letter by the French poet Romain Rolland, a document of the Philadelphia Artists' Fund Society of 1846 with signatures of its officers, and an autograph letter and a photograph of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.