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The collection consists of papers related to the personal and professional life of American architect Ely Jacques Kahn. A small amount of personal papers was transferred from the Arendts Library at Syracuse University in 1992. Additional personal papers, including two large scrapbooks, were donated by Liselotte Kahn, wife of Ely Jacques Kahn, in 1992 and 1993. Also found in this collection are student drawings and an incomplete autobiographical essay, donated to Avery Library by Kahn himself in 1963. Completing the Kahn holdings are personal materials from Ely Jacques Kahn, including drawings done while Kahn was a student at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris (1907-1908), sketchbooks, diplomas, autographs from fellow students, a typescript of Kahn's autobiography, and scrapbooks containing clippings, photographs, telegrams and other ephemera. Additionally, there is a small holding for Liselotte Kahn within the collection, including her unpublished memoirs, some correspondence, and a watercolor painting. Liselotte Kahn's memoirs describe her childhood in Germany; her marriage to Dr. Ernst Müller and the birth of their sons; Nazi anti-Semitism; their emigration to Greece; her husband's medical practice in Athens; the Italian and German invasion of Greece; their escape to Palestine; and their emigration to and experiences in the United States.

Included are drawings made by Avery while studying under Jules Andre at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and sketchbooks containing sketches made in Paris and on excursions, 1872-1879. Architectural drawings and photographs of architectural drawings for proposed or executed residential and commercial buildings, churches, art galleries, monuments, and other structures, 1880s; competition drawings for public monuments, 1883-1887; experimental studies, 1885, for the pedestal of Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty; and 39 studies and finished drawings, 1888-1890, made for a competition for a memorial for Ulysses S. Grant which he did not win. Also, magazine articles by or about Avery and his work, 1883-1890; obituaries and death announcements, 1890; miscellaneous photographs, certificates, and papers; and invitations, clippings, illustrations, and photographs, circa 1892-1894, relating to the founding of the Avery Architectural Library at Columbia University.

Included are photocopies of Cret's architectural drawings for the Hartford County Building, Hartford, Conn., 1926-1927; the Federal Reserve Building, Washington, D.C., 1936; the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., 1929; and miscellaneous projects. Also, Cret's sketches for monuments (including studies for the Quentin Roosevelt Fountain, 1919), covers and title pages for publications, a bridge, a bas-relief, a map, a medal, and a bookplate, circa 1901-1931. Includes one student drawing from the Ecole des Beaux Arts.

This collection primarily contains original correspondence--including letters, telegrams, and postcards-- to California architect Robert D. Farquhar from Chester A. Aldrich. Also included is a small group of letters from Amey Owen Aldrich to Farquhar. Most letters are accompanied by envelopes; a very few contain photographs, clippings and other ephemera. Matters discussed in the correspondence vary widely from intimate personal subjects to observations and reports on the work of Carrère & Hastings and Delano & Aldrich, the American Red Cross and its work with soldiers in Italy during World War I, the rise of Fasicsm in Italy, economic hardships during the Depression, and the state of American and European architecture.

Also, a variety of professional and personal miscellany, such as correspondence, clippings, pamphlets, flyers, postcards, invitations, menus, receipts, a diploma, caricatures of colleagues, and Sawyer's monocle

Also, typescripts of lectures delivered by Boring in architecture courses at Columbia, 1932-1933, miscellaneous typescripts of articles and printed materials, 1930-1933, and a typescript of Boring's autobiography, MEMORIES OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF WILLIAM A. BORING, circa 1937. Also included are four sketches by Henri Gauthier, Edward Tilton, Maurice Sashin, and Joseph Laudin.

Included are approx. 7,000 architectural drawings, circa 1910s-1940s, for projects designed by Delano & Aldrich, including La Guardia Airport in New York; several buildings at Yale University; Willard Straight Hall at Cornell University; various buildings at United States Military Academy at West Point; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; alterations to the White House; numerous residences throughout the New York City metropolitan area, particulary the Dwight W. Morrow house in Englewood, N.J., the J.A. Burden house in Syosset, N.Y., and the Willard D. Straight house on East 92nd Street in New York City; and various schools, churches, and residential structures throughout the United States. Rendered competition drawings are included. Drawings made by William Adams Delano while a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, circa 1900. Also, 6 boxes of photographs of Delano & Aldrich completed projects, chiefly residential structures.

Three sketchbooks; the first, 1893-1894, containing sketches from his student years at the Columbia School of Mines, Department of Architecture (he received his degree in 1894); the second, 1894-1896, containing sketches made as a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris; and the third, circa 1896-circa 1905, containing sketches for a variety of projects and designs. Buildings and other structures depicted include the Academy of Music on 14th Street, New York City (a seating plan); Wells Fargo Bank Building, Portland, Oregon, 1910; Reunion Hall, Princeton University, 1902; lantern for the Aetna Building, Hartford, Connecticut; Woodland Street entrance to Kinney Park, Hartford, Connecticut, 1905 (some drawings are by others). Program notes from the classes of Paul Blondel and J. Gaudet at the Ecole des Beaux Arts are included. Also, designs (some done in partnership with Joseph Urban) for proposals for the Metropolitan Opera Company on various sites in New York City, circa 1920s; and designs for shopping and music centers in New York City, to 1936.

This collection includes a menu card with signatures of many of the members of the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects and three photographs depicting students in an atelier in Paris associated with the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. The menu card, dated in Josselyn's hand "Feb. 22, 1889", is from a dinner at the Cafe d'Orsay in Paris, during which preliminary discussions about forming the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects were held. On the verso of the card are the signatures of Thornton Floyd Turner, Austin W. Lord, Louis de Sibourg, T. R. Plummer, William A. Boring, Whitney Warren, Stephen Bonsal, Jr., S. B. P. Trowbridge, Ernest Flagg, John P. Benson, Evans Preston, Juan Guillermo de Lavalle, A. L. Brockway, Joseph H. McGuire, John W. Bemis, Edward L. Tilton, George Cary, and J. Donaldson, Jr. Mr. Josselyn's name also appears on the card, although not in his handwriting. According to correspondence from John Benson held in the Phillips Library in Salem, Massachusetts, the three photographs, taken by Benson, depict the students and instructor of a watercolor class in Paris in early 1889. In the first photograph, Josselyn has identified on the verso the sitters as follows: de Sibourg, McGuire, Josselyn, Lord, Flagg, Brockway, Cary, de Lavalle, Leteurtre, and Saglio. The second and third photographs depict the same men in the same atelier, although they appear to have been taken on a different day than the first image.

This collection contains architectural photographs, drawings and records related to the architectural projects and designs of Warren and Wetmore, principally in the United States, but also representing commissions in Canada, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, the bulk of architectural drawings produced by the firm are no longer extant. Additionally, it holds a variety of photographs and other records used as reference materials in the course of Warren and Wetmore's professional work. Lastly, a small group of student and personal papers and photographs from Whitney Warren completes the collection.