|
Unidentified
Photographer, Apamea (Syria), ca. 1860-1885. Albumen
print photograph. 15/5/3090.00610. Andrew Dickson White Architectural
Photographs Collection, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections,
Cornell University Library.
|
| History of the Collection |
|
Andrew
Dickson White and The Instruction of Architecture at Cornell |
|
 Andrew
Dickson White (left, 1832-1918), Cornell
University’s first president, had a lifelong passion for
architecture. He spent many years amassing a sizeable library
of architectural books, photographs, drawings, plaster casts
and models—a collection he called his “pet extravagance.”
Soon
after the founding of Cornell University, White proposed to
the university trustees the establishment of a program for the
instruction of architecture. “Outside of the great metropolitan
cities,” he maintained, “there are very few architects
who are really instructed in their profession [in America].”
The principal reason, he believed, was that Americans had few
opportunities to develop a sophisticated taste for architecture:
“No one who has observed at all closely the condition of
our larger towns and villages, especially those remote from
the greater centers, can have failed to observe the great
lack, not merely of architectural beauty in residences and
public buildings, but also waste in expenditure, inconvenience
and often unhealthiness coming from careless plans or lack of
plans.” White’s
arguments for the founding of a college of architecture were
persuasive, but his pledge to transfer his own library to the
university proved to be the deciding incentive. The trustees
happily agreed to his proposal, and in 1871, the
Cornell University Department of Architecture was established
as the first four-year course in architecture at an American
university. Charles
Babcock (1829-1913), who shared many of White’s opinions
about architecture, was appointed the first professor of architecture
in the United States. As
promised, A. D. White donated his architectural library—then
considered one of the finest in the country—to the Department
of Architecture. During his lifetime, he saw the small Department
with one professor and twenty-three students evolve in 1896
into the College of Architecture, which by the time of the First
World War boasted twelve professors and nearly 200 students.
Read
further details about the scope of the Andrew Dickson White Architectural Photographs Collection |
| Andrew Dickson White, Collector |
|
White particularly admired the theories of the critic John Ruskin, and acquired photographs that illustrate the edifices Ruskin had pronounced masterpieces. Like Ruskin, White preferred Classical, Romanesque and Gothic to Renaissance and Baroque architecture. He also purchased sets of photographs that depicted contemporaneous American architecture, including most of the work of Henry Hobson Richardson (see the A. D. White Architectural Photographs Collection’s H. H. Richardson Gallery for a selection). A. D. White collected photographs of medieval British, French, German and Italian architecture as well as images of Near Eastern and Classical structures by important photographers and photographic studios. Two particularly large gifts came in 1880, while White was Minister to Berlin for the first time, and in 1886. After his retirement from the Cornell University Presidency in 1885, White continued to purchase photographs for student use, especially during his frequent trips abroad. In a letter to President Charles Kendall Adams (his successor as President of Cornell University) from Florence, Italy, dated May, 17, 1886, White states “I send you...about 300 photographs...of important public buildings in England, France and Italy. The same to be held as a gift to the University for the purposes of the department of architecture and the general instruction of the students, under the agreement already made that the entire collection shall be preserved in the galleries reserved for that purpose...” In a subsequent letter to Adams, dated May 28, 1886, White instructed, “Have [the photographs] put instantly into the cases...I have a natural wish that all students and the friends of the University shall see in these an ‘outward & visible sign’ of my state of ‘inward & spiritual grace,’ which is a continual devotion to the University which time & distance & nominal separation only make stronger...I wish the returning students to see those empty cases filled with these beautiful new things.” The photographs White so carefully selected as pedagogical tools serve today as historical documents. In many cases, they illustrate buildings and urban spaces now destroyed or significantly altered. |
|
Purchasing Photographs |
|
On
a trip to the Champagne region of France in 1886, A. D. White
made his customary stop at the local photographer’s establishment
to purchase images of the town’s famous medieval churches.
The photographer, Gustave Lancelot (1830-1906), sold him several
dozen photographs and a piece of medieval sculpture, all of which
White shipped back to Ithaca for the students of architecture
at Cornell. Read A. D. White’s description
of his photograph-gathering trip to Troyes, France and discover
what he bought from the photographer.
|
|
The
A. D. White Project is funded by a grant from the The
participation of the Cornell
Insititute for Digital Collections |
| Inquiries about the A. D. White Architectural Photographs Collection or information on this page |