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, please email avery-drawings@library.columbia.edu.
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 is available for use by appointment in the Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. For further information, 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.
Edgar A. Josselyn papers. Located in the Dept. of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.
Source of acquisition--Gift of Howard DeVoe. Accession number--2008.013.
Columbia University Libraries, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library
Collection Processed AvR 09/11/08.
Edgar Alonzo Josselyn was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1861. He was the fourth recipient of the Rotch Travelling Scholarship and studied in Europe from June 1887 to September 1889. He was admitted to the atelier of Jean-Louis Pascal in Paris in July 1887 and passed the entrance examinations for the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in March of 1888. After his return to the United States, Josselyn was a founding member of the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects, an important early group of American architects who had studied in Paris at the École and who sought to improve the quality of architectural education in the United States. Josselyn later returned to the United States, practicing in New York City from 1897 until circa 1933. He died in Mt. Kisco, New York, in 1943.
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.
All links open new windows.