This collection is available for use by appointment in the Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. For further information and to make an appointment, please email avery-drawings@library.columbia.edu.
This collection contains materials related to Platt's personal and professional lives, the bulk originating from Platt's office in the form of project drawings, photographs, and records documenting architectural projects from 1901-1933. Several earlier projects and projects completed by Platt's office after his death are also documented. A small group of drawings was created for publication only, and some drawings may have served as both project records and presentation drawings.
The archive also contains typescript transcriptions of correspondence from Platt's travels to Europe in 1879 and from 1882-1886, as well as transcribed letters to his wife, Eleanor Hardy Bunker Platt, and a diary kept during his brief engagement as a member of the Food Administration in Italy after World War I. Additional papers include limited personal and professional correspondence.
Lastly, the collection contains original glass plate negatives of photographs of Italian Renaissance gardens taken by Platt and/or his brother William Platt in the spring of 1892. Platt incorporated some of these images in ITALIAN GARDENS, published by Harper in 1894.
Series I: Architectural Drawings
The Architectural Drawings are divided into 3 subseries: Working Drawings, Presentation and Publication Drawings, and Standard Drawings.
Subseries 1: Working Drawings contain drawings created by Platt's office in the course of work on a given project. Te majority of the projects contain a full set of architectural plans. Each project was catalogued separately in the online catalog CLIO. This finding aid provides a link to each project's associated catalog record. Sheet level description can be found in these project-level records. Each sheet is individually accessioned with numbers ranging from 1974.002.00001 through .03729.
Subseries 2: Presentation and Publication Drawings consist of drawings initially made in preparation for the Monograph of the Work of Charles A. Platt, published in 1913. According to a note from William Platt that accompanied the donation of the drawings in 1976, the drawings continued to be made after 1913 "since they had become of inestimable value for purposes of study and comparison as new work came along. They also provided an exercise in drafting and lettering for aspiring office boys." Dates that appear on the drawings reflect project dates, not drawing dates, and usually reflect only the year of project completion.
Subseries 3: Standard Drawings consist of drawings that were originally created by Platt's office in the course of work on a given project but were later selected by Platt as standard sheets or examples of various architectural or landscape elements. Platt stored these drawings by type of element. The Standard Drawings were also part of the 1974.002 accession, and thus have complete cataloging information as well as in CLIO, but they remain physically separated.
Series II: Project Photographs
This series includes project photographs as well as copy photographs separated from the Keith N. Morgan Papers, also held by Avery Library's Department of Drawings & Archives.
Projects are arranged geographically by state and then city. Domestic projects are listed first, followed by international projects. Projects with no specified location are listed last.
This series includes non-visual project-related material, including contract records, invoices, notes, and calculations. A small number of the files date after Platt's death, and relate to the activities of William & Geoffrey Platt.
Projects are arranged geographically by state and then city. Domestic projects are listed first, followed by international projects. A group of invoices for projects with no other documentation in the files are arranged alphabetically at the end of the series.
This series contains 8"x10" glass plate negatives documenting Charles Platt's 1892 trip to Italy. Platt traveled with his brother, William, to view Italian Renaissance villas and gardens and used many of the photographs he took to illustrate his publication Italian Gardens (Harper & Brothers, 1894). Additional images were included in the 1993 reissue of Italian Gardens (Sagapress/Timber Press). This series also includes 50 unpublished images.
Access is restricted to the original glass plate negatives, which are housed in off-site cold storage. However, a digitized postive photograph has been made for each negative and is linked in the finding aid. The negatives are arranged geographically by city and the listed alphabetically by the name of the villa. Unidentified villas are listed are listed last.
The series is divided into 3 subseries: Photographs, Biographical Information, and General Papers. Material is arranged chronologically within each subseries, with undated material at the end of each subseries.
This series consists of personal correspondence between Platt, his family, and social and professional associates. Platt's travels as an art student in Europe, most of which he undertook from 1882-1886, are well documented in transcribed correspondence. Some of the letters from this period appear to have been transcribed twice by independent typists. No original letters from this period were found, though sketches from some of the letters appear to have been clipped and pasted into one set of the transcriptions.
Abbreviations Used in the Series Inventories: ALS (Autograph letter, signed); CAP (Charles Adams Platt); EHBP (Eleanor Hardy Bunker Platt); TC (Typed carbon); TL (Typed letter); TLS (typed letter, signed)
Series VI. Professional Papers
The series is divided into 4 subseries: General Papers, Reference Files, Exhibitions, and Awards, Degrees, and Tributes. Material is arranged chronologically within each subseries, with undated material at the end of each subseries.
This collection is available for use by appointment in the Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. For further information and to make an appointment, please email avery-drawings@library.columbia.edu.
Columbia University is providing access to the materials in the Library's collections solely for noncommercial educational and research purposes. The unauthorized use, including, but not limited to, publication of the materials without the prior written permission of Columbia University is strictly prohibited. All inquiries regarding permission to publish should be submitted in writing to the Director, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. In addition to permission from Columbia University, permission of the copyright owner (if not Columbia University) and/or any holder of other rights (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) may also be required for reproduction, publication, distributions, and other uses. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of any item and securing any necessary permissions rests with the persons desiring to publish the item. Columbia University makes no warranties as to the accuracy of the materials or their fitness for a particular purpose.
Charles Adams Platt architectural records and papers. Dept. of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.
A collection of books and photographs from Charles A. Platt's office is held by the Century Association Archives.
A small collection of Platt correspondence is held by the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art .
Also held in the Department of Drawings & Archives at Avery Library are the Keith N. Morgan Papers, which contain research notes and photographs relating to Platt, including a small number of original documents; and the collection of drawings and papers from Platt's sons and successor firm, William Geoffrey Platt, Architects. Additionally, records and drawings by Platt may be found in the Woodlawn Cemetery Records.
Source of acquisition--This collection is primarily comprised of a series of gifts from William & Geoffrey Platt. The first consisted of project drawings and was made in 1974. A second gift, primarily of publication and reference drawings, was made in 1976. The glass plate negatives and 38 composite presentation drawing boards were given in 1991. A fourth gift in 2006 from Charles A. Platt (grandson of Charles A. Platt), included photographs, correspondence, and personal and professional papers.
Columbia University Libraries, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library
The 1974 accession was processed by project staff of the Department of Drawings & Archives. The later accessions were processed by and integrated into the earlier collection by Julie Tozer, Platt Project Archivist, Dept. of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, from September 2007 to February 2008. The architectural drawings, project photographs, project records, and Italian Garden negatives were updated in 2020 and converted from excel inventories into EAD.
2008-04-18 File created.
2009-12-03 File revised.
2019-05-20 EAD was imported spring 2019 as part of the ArchivesSpace Phase II migration.
2020-05-08 Excel inventories converted into EAD.
Charles Adams Platt, the son of John Henry Platt and Mary Elizabeth Cheney Platt, was born in 1861 in Manhattan. Although best remembered today for his landscape and country house designs, he was also nationally known for his etchings, landscape paintings, commercial architecture, and institutional projects. He was largely self-taught in each of these disciplines, building his success on his ability to reconceive the classical tradition in architecture for the needs of his wealthy, powerful clients.
Born into a wealthy family with several artist relatives, Platt developed an early interest in art by enrolling in classes at the National Academy of Design in 1878 and joining the Art Students League in 1879. Vacationing in upstate New York that year, he met the painter and printmaker Stephen Parrish, who encouraged Platt to investigate the newly revived art of etching. Platt quickly became adept in the medium, earning the nickname "the boy etcher" and becoming a successful member of the etching revival by 1881. To advance his growing interest with painting, Platt traveled to Europe from 1882-1886. He studied in the atelier of Jules Joseph Lefebvre in Paris from 1884-1885 but often worked independently within a circle of friends including Henry Oliver Walker, Kenyon Cox, and Dennis Miller Bunker.
Platt met Annie Corbin Hoe in Europe and they married in the spring of 1886. Both of their fathers died that summer, and Annie died in childbirth in early 1887. Platt recovered slowly, returning to his work in earnest in the summer of 1889 when living at the Cornish Arts Colony, where he had been invited by Walker. Founded by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1885, Cornish provided Platt with a vibrant community of artists, writers, and intellectuals, including the landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman and sculptors Herbert Adams and Paul Manship, as well as the land on which Platt designed and built himself a residence and garden in 1890. The following year, Platt received a commission for a house and garden from his Cornish neighbor, Annie Lazarus. Platt sought initial assistance from friend Stanford White and designed for Lazarus a residence patterned after an Italian villa and sited to frame views of Mount Ascutney. Platt further explored his ideas on villa architecture during his 1892 trip with his brother, William Platt, to photograph Renaissance gardens in Italy, the results of which he published in Italian Gardens in 1894.
After returning from Italy, Platt received house and garden commissions from several neighbors in Cornish, many of whom would remain lifelong patrons. Thanks to positive attention in the architectural press and the ties of his family and friends to influential patrons, Platt began to attract commissions beyond Cornish, first for gardens and then for entire country estates. Platt was published in Guy Lowell's AMERICAN GARDENS in 1902, in which his classically influenced garden designs were printed alongside those of Wilson Eyre and McKim, Mead & White and in contrast to the naturalistic designs favored by Frederick Law Olmsted. Herbert Croly, editor of ARCHITECTURAL RECORD and a friend of Platt, published a positive review of Platt's work in 1904. By 1913, Platt's substantial body of work was published in the MONOGRAPH OF THE WORK OF CHARLES A. PLATT by the Architectural Book Publishing Company.
Platt continued to design country houses throughout his career, but he devoted much of his time to important urban and institutional commissions after 1920. Many of these commissions came from the Vincent Astor estate office, which employed Platt from 1906 through 1932, and from residential clients with institutional interests. For the Astor estate, most of Platt's work consisted of converting Manhattan tenements to more luxurious middle- and upper-class apartment dwellings. Previous patron Charles Lang Freer commissioned Platt to design the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 1913, the first of Platt's nine museum commissions. Platt also completed or consulted on several large-scale campus planning projects, most notably for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and for Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.
Throughout his life, Platt maintained his house and garden in Cornish, New Hampshire, and an office and residence in Manhattan. With his second wife, Eleanor Hardy Bunker, whom Platt married in 1893, Platt had five children. Among the children were William (1897-1984) and Geoffrey (1905-1985), who followed in their father's footsteps and practiced architecture in New York City; the Department of Drawings & Archives also holds the William & Geoffrey Platt archive. Charles Platt died in Cornish in 1933.
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches for other collections at Columbia University, through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, and through ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
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