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Correspondence, specifications, contracts, invoices, financial statements, memoranda, and architectural drawings pertaining to the construction of St. Paul's Chapel (Columbia University, New York, N.Y.), a project designed by Howells & Stokes, and by Stokes independently. Correspondence is between Howells & Stokes and Columbia University officials, contractors, and suppliers, including Nicholas Murray Butler, R. Guastavino Co., Tiffany Studios, Coppède, Paul Manship, and McKim, Mead & White, as well as Stokes' aunts Olivia Egleston Phelps Stokes and Caroline Phelps Stokes.

Architectural drawings for projects designed by Howells & Stokes, and by Stokes working independently, particularly, residence for Stokes' father, financier and philanthropist Anson Phelps Stokes (1838-1913) at Collender's Point, Darien, Conn., 1902-1905; a house for himself"High-Low House" Greenwich, Conn., 1901-1917; house for his wife at Indian Harbor, Greenwich, Conn., 1927, undated; outdoor pulpit for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, 1912-1915 (built in 1916); proposal for an apartment house at 953 Fifth Ave., New York, 1924-1926; competition entry for the Chicago Tribune Tower, undated (the competition, 1922, was won by Raymond Hood); and St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University, New York, 1904-1930. Also, miscellaneous designs; competition entries; designs for unidentified buildings; designs for apartment buildings and housing projects; photographs of buildings by Stokes; landscape designs done by the Olmsted Brothers firm for Stokes for an unidentified project or projects. Also included are documents relating to the planning, construction, and, later, repairs and the addition of memorial tablets to St. Paul's Chapel, Columbia University, which was designed by Howells & Stokes and built in 1907. Correspondence, with related memoranda, estimates, specifications, accounts, contracts between Howells and Stokes or Stokes with Columbia University officials, and contractors and suppliers date from 1903 to the 1930s.

These albums contain mounted black-and-white photographic prints documenting historic sites and structures along the East Coast of the United States, from the South to New Hampshire, created and collected by architect and historian John Mead Howells. These albums appear to have been created as reference sources for Howell's publications LOST EXAMPLES OF COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE (New York, W. Helbrvn, 1931), THE ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE OF THE PISCATAQUA (New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1937), and THE ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE OF THE MERRIMACK (New York: Architectural Book Publlishing Company, 1941). However, many additional images may be found in these albums than were used in these publications. The images were taken during the second half of the 19th-century and the early 20th-century of historic buildings and sites constructed during the 18th- and 19th-centuries. Most images have annotations and caption information in typescript or in Howell's own hand. Howells collected most of the images from a variety of sources, including the Frank Cousins image collection at the Essex Institute, the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, architect Ogden Codman, and the Historic American Buildings Survey. The remainder were taken by Howells himself.

The collection includes 1134 images (photographs and postcards, with some duplicates) of approximately 60 buildings, including some earlier photographs, plans, and renderings that Morris copied to add context to her own contemporary photographs. Of properties with identified architects, the great majority were designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, with a few examples of the work of Richard Upjohn, James Renwick, and several other lesser-known architects. Major sites depicted include Lyndhurst, Tarrytown, N.Y.; Fonthill Castle, Bronx, N.Y.; Lovat, Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.; Hurst-Pierrepont, Garrison, N.Y.; Belvoir, Yonkers, N.Y.; Beechwood, Yonkers, N.Y.; Mount Ida, Troy, N.Y., Llewellyn Park, Orange, N.J.; and Malbone, Newport, R.I. Some 18th-century buildings, and one 17th-century building (the Christopher Billop House, near Tottenville, Staten Island, built circa 1699), are also depicted.

Architectural drawings for three projects; photographs of architectural drawings and models; photographs of sites before construction, buildings under construction, and interiors and exteriors of completed buildings; and related clippings. The three projects, with original drawings, arethe McGraw-Hill building, New York, 1929-1934, by Raymond Hood, Godley & Fouilhoux, and alterations, 1942-1944, by Harrison, Fouilhoux, and Abramovitz; Hood's first studies for Rockefeller Center, drawn by Walter Kilham, Jr. in 1929; and the Daily News Building, New York, 1929-1947, by Hood and John M. Howells. Also included are the Chicago Tribune Tower, Chicago (Hood won the competition for the project in 1922 - a photograph of the drawing submitted to the competition by architect Eliel Saarinen is included); photographs of models for Rockefeller Center buildings; and miscellaneous and unrealized projects. Also, two albums containing interior and exterior photographs of completed buildings designed by Hood including his American Radiator building, New York, the Chicago Tribune Tower, and others. Biographical material on Hood includes clippings of obituaries, 1934; photographs of Hood and his family, ca. 1890s-1930s, and travel photographs, early 20th century; clippings of articles by and about Hood; and biographical notes on Hood. Of interest is a photograph by Berenice Abbott of the McGraw-Hill building showing the Sixth Avenue El, demolished in 1940.