The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture records, bulk 1979-2012

Planning for a "Study Center for American Architecture" at Columbia University began as early as 1979. Major early proponents included Phyllis Lambert, James Polshek, Edgar Kaufman, Adolf Placzek, Robert AM Stern, Ada Louise Huxtable, Vincent Scully, and IM Pei. Securing funding, space, and an identity distinct from Avery or GSAP [Preservation had yet to be added] were of primary concern.

Members of the Advisory Board searched for donors to supply the $5 million necessary to establish the center. Initial funding was provided by the Kaplan Foundation, Phyllis Lambert, and Columbia alumnus and architect Temple Hoyne Buell. Columbia offered space for the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture in the building known as the Maison Française. The oldest building on Morningside campus, it had housed several departments and organizations over the 20th century, and required extensive renovation.

Robert AM Stern served as the Center's first director, from 1983 to 1988. The Center's inaugural project was American Architecture: Innovation and Tradition, an exhibition showcasing the diversity of America's regional architecture. Stern oversaw symposia on Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, architectural publishing in America, Hispanic traditions in American architecture, and the first "Buell Talks." He secured funding for an oral history project (the Johnson Tapes), and published Vincent Scully's Architecture of the American Summer: The Flowering of the Shingle Style (Rizzoli, 1987). In 1989, philanthropist Arthur Ross donated money for conversion of the building's first floor to exhibition space.

Gwendolyn Wright served as the Center's second director, from 1989 to 1992. Among other projects, she oversaw a symposium about German influences on American architecture and organized the Center's first major seminar series, "History of American Architecture." Lectures from leading architects and historians were published in The History of History in American Schools of Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press, 1990).

Joan Ockman served as director for over a decade, between 1993 and 2008. Under her directorship, the Buell Center worked to fundraise in support of more substantial projects and fellowships that would further define its identity as a premier institution in American architecture. Ockman's tenure began with a 1994 symposium on Frank Lloyd Wright, and her early directorship was characterized by several lecture and seminar series: "Constructive Criticism" (1995), "Public Space" (1995), "Landscape As Social Space (1996), "Imagining America" (1997), "Culture Is Our Business," (2001) "Out of Ground Zero," (2002) and "Modern Architecture American Modernity" (2004-2005). Her later directorship was characterized by publications, panels, and conferences as opposed to series. Notable publications included Out of Ground Zero: Case Studies in Urban Reinvention (Prestel, 2002), Symbolic Essence and Other Writings on Modern Architecture and American Culture (Yale University Press, 2005), Architourism: Authentic, Escapist, Exotic, Spectacular (Prestel, 2005), and the FORUM series with Princeton Architectural Press.

Reinhold Martin began his directorship in 2008 with the exhibition Utopia's Ghost: Postmodernism Rediscovered. The Center's recent projects, including "Public Housing: A New Conversation" (2009), The Buell Hypothesis, and Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream (2012) have formed part of a larger effort to convene issue-oriented conversations around matters of public concern, such as housing.