Architecture: Image Resources

Current Holding List of Visual Resources

ARTSTOR has added significant architectural content to its database of over 300,000  images.

ARTSTOR is a major provider of quality images for use in the teaching and study of art, architecture and archeology. Specialized image collections include Asian art, Native American art and culture from the Smithsonian, the MoMA collection for architecture and design and the Schlesinger photograph collection on the history of women in America. But now it will be of increased value to the architecture and design communities. Artstor, the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP), and the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library are now sharing approximately 10,000 images of architectural plans and sections and related materials in the database.

Curated by Professors Mary McLeod and Kenneth Frampton from Avery's immense resources, the collection will eventually include 20,000 images. It is based on GSAPP's history of modern architecture curriculum and covers the history of modern buildings, focusing primarily on 20th-century modernism. The Plans and Sections project comprises 1,000 projects from 44 countries, the majority of them of built works, and also includes documentation of unbuilt projects and of competitions. This is the first time this rich body of visual material and related scholarship is available online.

Database: AP Images

Vendor: Associated Press 

Description: AP Images is one of the world's largest collections of historical and contemporary imagery. As an essential source of photographs and graphics for professional image buyers, AP Images strives to meet the needs of todays global customer through superior image quality, selection and service.

Access Note: Ten simultaneous users only.

Database: ARTSTOR

Vendor: ARTSTOR

Description: Collection of 300,000 images for use in the teaching and study of art, architecture and archaeology. Specialized image collections include Asian art, Native American art and culture from the Smithsonian, the MoMA collection for architecture and design and the Schlesinger photograph collection on the history of women in America.

Database: Digital Sanborn Maps

Vendor: ProQuest 

Description: Digital access to more than 660,000 large-scale maps of more than 12,000 American towns and cities.

Database: Syracuse Archivision

Vendor: Archivision

Description: Archivision is a core architecture collection representing major Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, 18th & 19th Century and Modern sites. The collection also includes gardens & parks, city skylines, cityscape

Access Note: Click on Guest Login

• Archigram Archival Project

  The Archigram Archival Project makes the work of the seminal architectural group Archigram available free online for public viewing and academic study. The project was run by EXP, an architectural research group at the University of Westminster. It was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and made possible by the members of Archigram and their heirs, who retain copyright of all images.
• Bertrand Goldberg Archive

  Art Institute Chicago
• Frank Lloyd Wright Digital Image Collection

  The Digital Image Collection documents the buildings of Wright’s early career, changes made to some of his most important early structures since construction, clients and residents of the homes designed during the architect’s Oak Park years, and the Wright family. The photographs provide visual access to Wright’s impact on the built and social environment of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Chicago.
• Greene & Greene Digital Archives

  The Greene and Greene Digital Archive (GGDA) contains images of drawings, architectural plans, rooms, furnishings, books, sketches, photographs, correspondence, and other historical documents related to the life and work of the architects Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene, who headed the southern California design firm of Greene & Greene (active 1894-1922) that is often associated with the finest architecture and craftsmanship of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.
• Julia Morgan Papers

  Digitized architecture drawings, plans and other records from Morgan's practice.
• Marcel Breuer Digital Archive

  The Marcel Breuer Digital Archive represents a collaborative effort headed by Syracuse University Libraries to digitize over 30,000 drawings, photographs, letters and other materials related to the career of Marcel Breuer, one of the most influential architects and furniture designers of the twentieth century. The first phase of this NEH-funded project culminates in the headquarters complex designed for UNESCO in the mid-1950s. UNESCO represents a transitional moment between the early Bauhaus-inspired designs and the monumental, sculptural concrete buildings of his later career.
• Moshe Safdie Hypermedia Archive

  Documents the progress of Safdie's career from his University days through Safdie Architects' latest projects.

SAH Digital Resources

The King + King Architecture Library staff has been working to convert a large collection of analog slides into digital format.

In the selection process, there was an emphasis on original photography, technical drawings, and process sketches, whenever available. Material ranges from international architects such as Mies van der Rohe and Rem Koolhaas, to structural systems and technical details as well as documentation of cities.

To access these new images, please go to the SoA G drive and look for g:\ARCH\Archive\Architecture Slide Collection\

DVDs are also available for check out.

• Canadian Architectural Archives

  The Canadian Architectural Archives (CAA) was established in 1974 as a joint venture between the University of Calgary Library and the Faculty of Environmental Design. With a mandate to collect the works of twentieth century Canadian architects, the Archives has emphasized the documentation of the total output of architectural firms in an attempt to provide an accurate historical profile. Collections may consist of drawings, project files, correspondence, slides, photographs, aperture cards, oral history tapes and transcripts, and architectural models.
• Canadian Architecture

  Toronto Public Library
• Columbus, Indiana Architectural Archives

  The Columbus Indiana Architectural Archives (www.columbusarchives.org) was created to collect, conserve, preserve, and promote the use of records that document the architecture, engineering, and arts associated with the built environment of Columbus, Indiana and Bartholomew County.
• David Rumsey Historical Map Collection (LUNA Commons)

  The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection focuses on 18th and 19th century North and South American cartographic materials. The collection includes atlases, globes, school geographies, maritime charts, and a variety of separate maps including pocket, wall, children's and manuscript maps. The online selection is an expanding cross section of images designed to highlight the depth and breadth of the collection. The digital images and associated descriptive data are © Cartography Associates.
• Greene & Greene Digital Archives

  The Greene & Greene Digital Archives (GGDA) contains images of drawings, sketches, photographs, correspondence, and other historical documents related to the work of the architects Greene & Greene, the southern California design firm (active 1894-1922) that is often associated with the finest architecture and craftsmanship of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.
• Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) / Historic American Engineering Record (HAER

  This online presentation of the HABS/HAER collections includes digitized images of measured drawings, black-and-white photographs, color transparencies, photo captions, data pages including written histories, and supplemental materials.
• Kansas Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps (University of Kansas)

  The Sanborn Map Company, of Pehlham, New York created these maps for insurance purposes but can now be utilized for historical reference.
• Las Vegas

  Architecture Studies Library, UNLV
• Library of Congress: American Memory

  American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.
• New York State Aerial Photographs (Cornell University)

  This collection consists of a series of historical aerial photographs of the state of New York. Counties represented include Cayuga, Cortland, Onondaga, Seneca, Tompkins, and Wayne. Photographs range in date from 1938 to 1991 (varies county to county). The collection was produced under a Cornell University Library Faculty Grant to Eugenia M. Barnaba, Program Leader, Resource Inventory Cornell Institute for Resource Information Sciences.
• Philadelphia Architects and Buildings

  Philadelphia Architects and Buildings, part of the American Architects and Buildings database, provides authoritative information on three centuries of Philadelphia buildings and designers, incorporating data and images from the collections of more than 25 Philadelphia-area repositories. The database is added to and amended daily, and additional building and biographical information is welcomed through our user feedback page.

• Casselman Archive of Islamic and Mudejar Architecture in Spain

  This collection contains over four thousand color slides and black and white photographs of medieval Spain taken by the late Eugene Casselman (1912-1996) during his thirty years of travel throughout the Iberian peninsula. The images span over one thousand years of architectural history, from the seventh to the seventeenth century. The majority of the slides focus on the Mudejar style, an ornate court style largely inspired by Spanish Islamic architecture that was shared among Islamic, Jewish, and Christian cultures during the later Middle Ages in Spain. He even began writing a book-length manuscript on Mudejar architecture, which he never completed.
• Chartres: Cathedral of Notre-Dame

  This website provides access to a comprehensive collection of images and detailed descriptions of Chartres Cathedral.
• Chateau de Versailles
• CLAROS: Antiquarian Photographs Selection

  Hundreds of thousands of antiquarian photographs from the mid-19th century to the early 20th have survived. Although they provide a unique visual record of discovery, despoliation and restoration few have been digitised for public access on the web. This selection (winter 2011/12), showing sites in Greece (upper), Italy (lower left) and the Middle East, in photographs from the Beazley and Creswell Archives in Oxford, will stimulate new data providers to broaden the range.
• European Library: Exhibitions

  More than 300 pictures of the architecture of the great national libraries of Europe.
• Gothic Past: Visual Archive of Gothic Architecture & Sculpture in Ireland

  Gothic Past is an open-access resource for the study of medieval Irish architecture and sculpture. It is part of a research project in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin and is funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences
• Mapping Gothic France

  With a database of images, texts, charts and historical maps, Mapping Gothic France invites you to explore the parallel stories of Gothic architecture and the formation of France in the 12th and 13th centuries, considered in three dimensions: space, time, and narrative.
• Palladio's Italian Villas

  Eighteen Renaissance villas by the architect Andrea Palladio survive today in the Veneto area around Venice, Italy. Many of them are open to the public. They are visited each year by thousands of architects, art historians, tourists and others who want to admire their beauty, feel closer to history and better understand the foundations of the modern world.
• Paris 360

  Panoramic Views of Paris
• RIBApix

  Welcome to RIBApix, a growing database dedicated to providing you with exceptional and unique images from the collections of the British Architectural Library at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the world’s most extensive visual archive devoted to architecture.

• Arthur Erickson: The Middle East Projects

  Arthur Erickson, more than any other Canadian architect, explored and addressed cultural differences in his design and the work he has undertaken in the Middle-East is comparatively little known. Since 1975, Erickson undertook some forty projects in eight of the countries in the Middle East, most of them large-scale public projects. He designed masterplans, universities, museums, office buildings, residential complexes. Most of these projects provide an important insight into the challenges of designing buildings and cities in an environment and culture radically different from our own.
• CLAROS: Antiquarian Photographs Selection

  Hundreds of thousands of antiquarian photographs from the mid-19th century to the early 20th have survived. Although they provide a unique visual record of discovery, despoliation and restoration few have been digitised for public access on the web. This selection (winter 2011/12), showing sites in Greece (upper), Italy (lower left) and the Middle East, in photographs from the Beazley and Creswell Archives in Oxford, will stimulate new data providers to broaden the range.
• Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA)

  This collection contains over 150 maps and plans, primarily of Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of these maps were taken from travel guides. Every effort was made to smooth out folds and scan the page as straight as possible, but preventing damage to the original object was our highest priority.

• Asian Historical Architecture

  A photographic survey of Asia's architectural heritage. Here you can view over 17,500 photos of 844 sites in twenty-one countries, with background information and virtual tours. This website is a collection of photos from many different contributors.
• Japanese Historical Maps (UC Berkeley)

  The Japanese Historical Maps Collection of the East Asian Library contains about 2,300 early maps of Japan and the World. Represented in this online collection are a selection of maps and books from the collection. The maps were selected by Yuki Ishimatsu, Head of Japanese Collections at the East Asian Library, and scanned and put online by David Rumsey and Cartography Associates. The project was initiated by Peter Zhou, Director of the East Asian Library. Funding and project management was provided by the East Asian Library and David Rumsey.