Looking Back and the Path Forward

Architecture, Conferences, Leadership, Planning, Uncategorized

Stephanie Beene and I (Kai Alexis Smith) have enjoyed serving as co-moderators for the Architecture and Planning Section. The time has come for us to step down and allow for new leadership of the Section as we take on new adventures within ARLIS/NA. While we both plan to remain active in the Section, I will be joining the Executive Board as the Advancement Liaison, and Stephanie will be serving in a variety of upcoming initiatives on behalf of the Antiracism Task Force and the Documentation Committee, as it prepares for ARLIS/NA’s 50th anniversary in Chicago next year. I have enjoyed being your co-moderator over this past year, and Stephanie has enjoyed serving as the Urban & Regional Planning Special Interest Group (SIG) Coordinator and then my fellow co-moderator since 2018. 

 

In the short time we have served together as co-moderators, we have successfully led the membership in a vote to dissolve the Urban & Regional Planning SIG and merge it with the Architecture Section after an initial discussion at the 2019 ARLIS/NA Conference in Salt Lake City. Dissolving the Urban and Regional Planning SIG and merging it with the Architecture Section aligns shared knowledge and resources between the groups, amplifies the status and agency of Planning within ARLIS/NA by dissolving the SIG and making it a Section, and allows our members to benefit from one annual meeting at conferences rather than multiple meetings. Stepping into the co-moderator positions, we had high hopes for lots of engagement and programming, but the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic  slowed everything down considerably, including the administrative work that comes with merging these two groups. A component of this work included joining the two separate listservs into one. Unfortunately, this work came at a time when the association was changing management companies so there has been a delay. We see a path forward with the help of McKenna Management and the transition to the new Humanities Commons platform. This work will be continued with new leadership.

 

Despite these transitions and the pandemic, we were still able to accomplish quite a bit.

  • We updated the policy manual to reflect the change in both the Urban & Regional Planning SIG and Architecture Section and the merging of the two, in conjunction with the Executive Board, the Documentation Committee, and Editorial Board.
  • We restructured the Section’s moderators governance by editing the bylaws, in conjunction with the Executive Board. Previously the Architecture Section had vice-moderators and moderators; with the new Section, the leadership has been restructured to have two co-moderators that overlap one year with each other to support transition and continuity. 
  • We updated the Architecture and Planning webpage on the ARLIS/NA website to reflect these changes and align with other documentation, in conjunction with the Editorial Board and the Executive Board. https://arlisna.org/organization/sections/95-architecture-section. We also retroactively documented leadership  positions for the Section and updated the conference presentations on the webpage.
  • The Architecture and Planning Section Blog was renamed Arch/Plan Sec (http://archsec.arlisna.org/). We worked with McKenna Management on a seamless transition of the url, look, and style of the blog. 


We want to thank each of you for your patience, flexibility, and hard work through what has been a trying year for everyone! Throughout this merge, members were engaged and excited about the future prospects and opportunities.

Some highlights of what was accomplished in the last year include: 

  • In collaboration with the previous moderator of the Architecture Section, Rachel Castro, we submitted a panel for the St. Louis conference, “Preserve, Enhance, Reimagine: Examining architecture and urban planning through a social justice lens,” which was accepted for the 2020 Annual conference in St. Louis. This panel featured local architecture and planning experts in St. Louis as panelists and was intended to re-evaluate and re-imagine our roles as critical information professionals in this local, conditional optimism. In particular, as art and architecture librarians contributing to local communities, visual and information literacy instruction and programming, and social justice frameworks, this panel would have thoughtfully reflected upon our roles as information professionals and proponents of social justice.  
    • Unfortunately, the 2020 conference was canceled due to the pandemic. We had a virtual event planned with the speakers in April 2021, but each of our speakers had other obligations and were not able to commit to the timing of this event.

 

Image provided by Karen Bouchard
Image Provided by Aimee Lind

In addition, Reference Librarian at Brown University Karen Bouchard will be stepping out of the role as Blog Coordinator after serving for two years. Reference Specialist for Architecture Collections and Manager of Interlibrary Loan at the J. Paul Getty Trust Aimee Lind served as Social Media Coordinator, mainly managing the Facebook group, since she was the Architecture Section Moderator in 2018. Both the Blog Coordinator and Social Media Coordinator positions will be recruited by the new co-moderators of the Section.  

 

Image provided by Jeff Alger

We pass the baton to the newly elected co-moderator for 2021 to 2023, Jeff Alger. Jeff is a Librarian II at Iowa State University and was elected to the position with 95.4% (21 of 22) of the Section members that voted. 

 

Election results for Jeff Alger

Scholarly Resources Librarian at The University of Texas at San Antonio Diane López was elected to the 2021 to 2022 co-moderator position with 91% (20 of 22) of the Section members that voted. However, Diane has withdrawn from consideration. This leaves an opportunity to fill this one-year term. The new co-moderator would serve with Jeff and this is a terrific opportunity for networking and professional development.

Election results for Diane Lopez.

While Stephanie and I set out to do a lot this past year, the pandemic taught us to scale our expectations and learn the limits of what we are able to do while valuing each other and our families. What we accomplished as a Section was plenty, and we are excited for the next year and what it may hold. We enjoyed the work with the Architecture and Planning Section and now move on to contribute to the society in different ways.         

This is not good bye. It is see you around,  

 Kai (and Storm) and Stephanie (and Hayley)

 

Image left provided by Kai Alexis Smith of Kai holding her puppy Storm.

Image right provided by Stephanie Beene of Stephanie holding her dog Hayley.

CAUSEWAY: Collaborative Architecture, Urbanism, and Sustainability Web Archive

Architecture, Websites

By Karen Bouchard, Arts & Humanities Librarian, Brown University.

The Collaborative Architecture, Urbanism, and Sustainability Web Archive, or CAUSEWAY, is the brainchild of the Ivies Plus Art and Architecture Group, acting under the auspices of the Ivies Plus Libraries Confederation. As part of its mission, the confederation has instituted a collaborative collection development initiative for freely available, but at risk, web content. This content, currently available on the Archive-It platform, consists of thematic, curated collections, covering many areas of interest from Belarusian politics to contemporary composers to queer Japan.

The Ivies Plus Art and Architecture Group has curated several collections so far, including the Collective Architecture and Design Response to Covid-19 Website Archive and the Latin American and Caribbean Contemporary Art Website Archive. CAUSEWAY is “a joint initiative by the art and architecture librarians at Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale universities, and the universities of Chicago and Pennsylvania.” Its goal is to preserve websites about architecture, urban and sustainable design, public spaces, and related topics.

Homepage of CAUSEWAY collection

As one of the librarians involved in the project, my mission was to locate and nominate websites from the state of Rhode Island. These include sites from well-established organizations such the Providence Preservation Society as well as grassroots efforts such as the Fox Point Community Garden. Many of the students I work with at Brown University take an interest in the Providence community, as well as that of the state. My goal was to create a record of current sites that are of interest now and are likely to continue to be so in the future, not only to History of Architecture students but also to those in Public Humanities, Urban Studies, Ethnic Studies, and other areas of scholarship.

Nominations for sites to be added to CAUSEWAY, or seeds, are forwarded to the confederation’s Web Resources Collection Librarian, who reaches out to site owners to ask for their permission. In most cases, permission is readily given and sometimes the owners even suggest other sites to add! A record is created for each site with a link, metadata describing the site, and subject headings. Sites are regularly crawled and updated after they are added.

Although it continues to grow, CAUSEWAY currently includes 389 sites from 38 states and provinces. Among the featured subjects are Historic Preservation, Community Development, Housing, Environmental Protection, Neighborhoods, Transportation, and more. I hope that this post will encourage you to take a look at CAUSEWAY and, even better, to add it to your library catalogs in order to enhance discovery. A collection level record can be downloaded from Worldcat, as well as individual seed-level records. There is much here of use and interest to anyone interested in the urban environment.

How I Flipped During the Pandemic

Teaching, ,

From the Association of Architecture School Librarians column on the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture website.

By David Eifler, Environmental Design Librarian, University of California, Berkeley.

As of mid-September, UC Berkeley’s Environmental Design Library will have been closed for six months and it’s unlikely we’ll be able to welcome back faculty and students before mid-spring. As librarians, we are very accustomed to “pivoting”, doing more with less, and adapting our work and services in the face of uncertainty. However, as architecture librarians, we rely on physical spaces to foster pedagogy and intellectual exchange among our diverse community. We design our libraries to reflect contemporary practice, to inspire creativity, to embody warmth, and to create engaging environments outside the studio. The COVID pandemic has separated us from the foundational physical elements of our libraries including print collections, casual office visits, and event programming of exhibits, lectures, and book talks. Worst of all, we’ve lost face-to face-instruction and reference interactions with our patrons. Although we have Zoom to engage remotely, in reality, it is a simulacrum for in-person instruction.

In-person meetings with students in classrooms, small groups, or one-on-one provide opportunities to gauge research needs and communicate the breadth and utility of resources without succumbing to the temptation to overwhelm with too much information. Establishing rapport in the physical classroom and gauging the mood of participants helps ensure pedagogical strategies successfully engage students. We might be relaxed and jocular with undergraduates, more serious and contemplative with graduates, and reassuring with panicked transfer students. With Zoom, however, our ability to assess students’ emotional state is severely limited. Are those Zoom tiles listening, multi-tasking, bored, overwhelmed, or dealing with rambunctious siblings or pets? We’ve lost the ability to set the instructional stage and adapt teaching to “meet them where they are.” They are literally all over the place. It only took only a few Zoom sessions to understand that traditional in-class teaching approaches do not translate well in the virtual world. When I realized this, I flipped.

I mean that I changed my teaching modality to a flipped instruction model. Previously piloted in select classes, this model allows students to do the bulk of hands-on learning prior to attending a session. For introductory classes I now create a “library worksheet” that is assigned by the professor to coincide with an initial research assignment. This prescriptive worksheet — which includes links to short videos — allows students to progress at their own pace, exploring critical learning objectives such as how to avoid plagiarism, accessing resources from off campus, employing search strategies in various databases, and refining a research topic. Using examples relevant to the course content, the worksheet explains, step-by-step, how to access e-books, identify databases by discipline or function, and allows students to explore select databases in greater depth to better understand their unique features. The principle learning objectives are to expose students to the wealth of available resources in ways that are relevant to their needs, and to impress upon them my willingness to provide support. When a paper is required for the course, the worksheet is tailored to have students first identify their research topic, write a thesis statement, perform searches on that topic, collect citations, and then revise their thesis statement based on these initial searches. In this way, students are encouraged early on to create a focused thesis and develop a list of relevant scholarly citations from quality databases. Critical to the success of this approach is the follow-up Zoom session where students can ask well-informed questions and I can share additional resources and search strategies.

Flipped instruction allows students to get a productive start on their research, while teaching them how to access topically relevant library resources. Students engage with information literacy concepts and make headway on what can be an intimidating project, particularly for those who have little research experience. Students for whom English is not their first language no longer flounder through my fast-talking, “fit it all into 50 minutes” style and while developing the worksheet I’m forced to clearly describe the databases. The assignment also allows students with learning accommodations to take as long as they need to digest the material and complete the exercise. Perhaps most important, using the worksheet encourages students to “get lost” in the databases they find useful, exploring interfaces as diverse as Avery Index, Artstor, Art & Architecture Source, and JSTOR with their topic in mind. Instead of a boring didactic march through a slew of databases, students learn by doing and they arrive to class with a common understanding of the resources.

Recognizing I no longer control the library’s space or teaching environment, I’ve pivoted. My instructional performance is less central to the students’ learning experience. Instead, it’s been replaced with an engaged learning worksheet and reinforced with a “guide by the side” style Zoom instructional session. I long to return to our library to again create community in the space designed for it. But when I do, I plan to continue having flipped “pre-assignments” prior to in-person instruction.

 

The Architecture Librarian’s Role: Open Data at the Intersection between Architectural Design Education and Data Literacy

Data

From the Association of Architecture School Librarians column on the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture website.

By Vanessa Viola, Art & Architecture Librarian, New York Institute of Technology.

 

Architecture Librarians, increasingly encounter design students who need geospatial information.

“Is there a ‘topo’ map of this location?”

“I need to know the population distribution around Jamaica Bay.”

“I’m looking for the change in population” in Brooklyn”

“How many trees are in this neighborhood?”

“I need to know how many rental properties are in this area”

These are the questions often heard during reference desk conversations and research appointments. In some cases, students gather what they can from articles and conclusive analysis by other authors. However, I realized these requests are an opportunity to challenge my love of maps and learn alongside students. Design students need not only to locate maps but also to utilize geospatial data to visualize spatial conditions. David Stuart validates this hunch and recognizes geodata is not exactly exciting for everyone, however, “librarians play an important role in promoting these data sets, beyond responding to user requests (Stuart, 2011).

During the International Open Access Week of October 2018, we presented open data to architecture students while promoting open access principles. Librarians from each branch promoted OA principles and focused on open applications, open data, and open educational resources. Subsequent demonstrations of gateways included NYC Open Data, NYC Population Factfinder, and how to locate and parse local GIS clearinghouses. After emphasizing the ability to access and use open data freely during a library workshop, the education and collaboration activities continued. In the Fall of 2019, the Art & Architecture library hosted, Locating Geospatial Information. This workshop began by defining open data, recognizing the building blocks of geospatial data sets, and then selecting and manipulating quality visualization such as Living Atlas by ArcGIS and Social Explorer.  Each iteration of these demonstrations addressed stages of precedent analysis, site analysis, and thesis research.

The ‘Opening Up’ of geospatial information is relatively new. We have gone from several siloed municipal data sets on data.gov (2009) to today where 30 global adopters of Open Data Charters such as Find Open Data in the United Kingdom. The Open Data Barometer measures governmental open data initiatives globally. This means it has become easier for students to discover, navigate, and generate analysis themselves.

Continuing the open data discussion does not aim to “treat data as unquestionable . . . rather as a proxy for things we want to understand or probe” (Haque, 2014). The open data and geospatial workshops serve as a backdrop for more complex design thinking.  Countering this notion of government data as the end-all of data requires developing a student’s geospatial data skills with a critical lens. Usman Hague argues that investigating the building blocks of geospatial data should emphasize people at the center analyzing data (Hague, 2014). Exposure to and understanding the access, evaluation, format, and analysis of open data sources lead to student participation in the evolving open data infrastructure.

Haque, U. (2014). Making Data, Making Sense. A + U: Architecture & Urbanism, 530, 110–113.

Stuart, D. (2011). Facilitating access to the web of data: A guide for librarians. Facet.

 

About the Images:

Heidi Abrahamsen developed these visualizations during the Community Design course at the School of Architecture and Design, New York Institute of Technology. The project considered revitalizing the Westchester Creek edge, by creating usable space and easy access for residents. The data research involved mapping the existing information and designing to expand limited space.

Ms. Abrahamsen explains, “The ‘personal public’ map refers to the parts of the city that the residents use personal vehicles versus public transportation more and relating to the areas that are more residential versus commercial.”

ARLIS/NA Architecture Section and Urban Planning SIG to Merge

Uncategorized

In May,  survey was recently sent out to all members of the Architecture Section and the Urban Planning SIG of ARLIS/NA. The questioned posed asked if they agreed with the proposal to merge the two groups.

Forty-five members voted. Of these, forty-four votes were in favor of the merger, with only one vote against it.

Please find the breakdown below:

 

Thank you to all who participated in the survey!

They Stepped Up: Vendors During the Coronavirus

Uncategorized, ,

From the Association of Architecture School Librarians column on the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture website.

By Barbara Opar, Architectural Librarian, Syracuse University.

It is a changed world out there. We in academia have had to adjust very quickly—faculty to preparing lectures with the resources on hand and then recording them online using newly prescribed software; librarians to dealing with reference queries that were once easy to answer in the print world but now with limited online content. And what about our students? They can no longer presume that they can consult older periodical issues or study structural systems on actual drawings. Many are unaware of what they cannot access. All of us have had to make quick adjustments to different resources and content.

But we have had support. Many vendors have stepped up and offered free content for the duration of the pandemic without the expectation of purchase. Examples are numerous and often surprising. By March 25, RedShelf and VitalSource opened access to hundreds of textbooks for free to faculty and staff at qualifying colleges and universities impacted by this crisis. Proquest is offering access to 150,000 titles. Sage Knowledge and Project Muse are on board as well as presses like Duke University and the University of Michigan. Brepolis and DeGruyter are among more commercial vendors expanding their access to nonsubscribers. Want to keep current with periodical literature? Then you can turn to Flipster or RBDigital. Streaming video content is being offered up by ArtFilms Digital, Kanopy, and Swank. The list goes on. Academic libraries with such access have often listed it right on their home pages. Your architecture librarians have taken this one step further and tailored this information for your own institution.

But there are two other important sources of content that I wish to bring to your attention. The first is Hathi Trust which was initially designed as a collaboration of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the University of California system and the University of Virginia to establish a repository for archiving and sharing digital collections. Many other libraries have joined. As a repository, Hathi Trust contains both public domain as well as copyrighted material. By request, member libraries now have temporary digital access to over 50 percent of copyrighted print holdings. Libraries must meet standards such as no physical access to print collections and adhere to the Trust’s copyright guidelines. Check your libraries’ database menu. There are also ways to access some content as a guest at the organization’s site.

Everyone has also heard about the Internet Archive. But you may not know much about its latest initiative which some consider very controversial. The Internet Archive is a 501c 3 non-profit organization based in San Francisco and founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle. To date, it has captured 20 petabytes of data. It partners with libraries to preserve and make accessible 20th-century resources in a broad array of topics and formats. The mission of its Open Library is “universal access to all knowledge”. In early March as the United States was beginning to understand the pandemic, the Internet Archive launched the National Emergency Library. Instead of controlling the number of copies of a title circulating at a time, the Library decided to remove limits. Traditionally, the number of copies available for circulation was based on the number of print copies in its own collection, and a waitlist was created for additional borrowers. That feature has been removed, allowing for unlimited access. The Internet Archive does not claim to include everything, but a quick search of the late Michael Sorkin’s writings shows some interesting content. One of two titles available here, but not commercially through any vendors, is the popular Variations on a Theme Park, making the Internet Archive another valuable source of online content. Initially well received and endorsed by a significant number of libraries including MIT, the Archive is now facing lawsuits and backlash from groups including the Authors Guild.

Life as we knew it has changed overnight. We are all proceeding as best as we can and making use of what is at hand and easily obtainable. What is certain is that each of these initiatives has helped in some way. Library suppliers have been offering deferred payments and cost reductions. The free albeit temporary content has made a tremendous difference in the past month and a half and will continue to do so as we all work to provide the services for which we are responsible.

Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) Virtual Conference, April 30-May 1, 2020

Architecture, Conferences

By Aimee Lind, ARLIS/SAH Liaison

The 73rd Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, scheduled to take place in Seattle, WA from April 29th-May 3rd, promised to be one for the ages, with a full roster of paper sessions, roundtables, workshops, seminars, social events, and tours of Seattle and the surrounding areas. On March 10th, however, the SAH Board of Directors announced their difficult decision to cancel the Seattle conference due to the COVID-19 crisis. SAH leadership quickly pivoted to a new online model, a virtual conference with a registration fee of $100 featuring 36 paper sessions, with many papers recorded and available to registrants after the conference.

A welcome from the conference chairs Victoria M. Young, Ann C. Huppert, and Thaisa Way, SAH President Sandy Isenstadt’s State of SAH address, the keynote [“Seattle’s Inventions and Reinventions” delivered by Margaret O’Mara, University of Washington], and the Eduard F. Sekler talk [“The Home of the Oppressed”: Democracy, Slavery and American Civic Architecture, delivered by Mabel O. WIlson, Columbia University] are accessible online to all. Paper sessions as they were delivered live and, through May 31st, as recordings, require a registrant log-in. Roundtables will be held via Zoom from May 19th-May 28th and are free and open to the public. 

While it is regrettable that so many roundtables, seminars, tours, etc. did not survive the transition to the virtual model, there were many unexpected benefits to attending SAH online: fewer paper conflicts due to the ability to watch recordings later, a more accessible registration fee that led to many first time attendees, and the ability to follow along at your own pace to a certain degree. Moving forward, I would appreciate a hybrid model where the in-person conference takes place but there is a less expensive registration fee for virtual-only access to select aspects of the conference and all registrants have the ability to go back and review recorded sessions for a limited period of time. 

While it is difficult to know what we all have in store for us in the coming year, the 2021 SAH conference is scheduled for April 14-18 in Montreal, Canada.

As mentioned above, the State of SAH address is available in its entirety online but I have included my notes below.

State of SAH Address [Sandy Isenstadt, SAH President]

  • Switch to virtual conference
  • SAH Data Project
    • Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant assessing the field of architectural history in higher education  in order to finetune commitments of SAH
    • Survey response rate started strong but dropped off after COVID-19 hit; Sarah Dreller adopted a snapshot questionnaire and extended time on original survey
    • Report should be available in 2021
    • More info on SAH website https://www.sah.org/publications-and-research/sah-data-project
  • SAH Affiliate Groups:
    • Meet in person or remotely to pursue common interests
    • SAH board approved 4 inaugural groups
      • Asian American Diaspora Architectural History
      • Historic Interiors
      • Minority Scholars
      • Race in Architectural History
  • SAH IDEAS Initiative
    • Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accountability, and Sustainability
    • Sparked by November 2019 Membership and Diversity meeting; further developed by Pauline Saliga and Carolyn Garrett
    • Among other efforts, SAH is co-organizing a summer teachers institute with Lakeforest College to enhance humanities education through deep engagement in issues of race; urban field trip program for underserved youth; events sponsored by the global architectural history and teaching collaborative; graduate student scholarships; childcare subventions for annual conference; formation of SAH affiliate groups (see above); SAH Data Project (see above).
  • Establishment of David B. Brownlee dissertation award; $1000 stipend to attend conference
  • Gill Family Foundation : Multi-year grant for $5000 in research travel for a doctoral candidate in architectural history. NB: The Gill Family Foundation also sponsored the $100 registration fee for the virtual conference for 160 graduate students.

Top Ten Checkouts for 2019 at the Boston Architectural College Library

Architecture, Books

Submitted by Robert Adams, Director of the Library, Boston Architectural College

At the end of December the Boston Architectural College Library compiles data on the items with the highest circulation numbers from that year. A look at this year’s top circulated items reveals a trend we commonly see – Practice. The BAC was founded as a practice-based education and this is reflected in the materials that are checked out each year; as can be seen in the number one item checked out for 2019 – The Architecture Students Handbook of Professional Practice.  Additional numbers…

We had over 2185 items checked out a total of 6,304 times.

Our school student population is just shy of 700.

 

Reconstructing Adler and Sullivan’s Stock Exchange Trading Room

Architecture, Exhibits

Submitted by Autumn L. Mather, Head of Reader Services, The Art Institute of Chicago

The exhibition Reconstructing Adler and Sullivan’s Stock Exchange Trading Room is on view weekdays from 10:30 until 5:00 through Friday, March 6, in the reading room of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryerson & Burnham Libraries. The Trading Room was the centerpiece of the Chicago Stock Exchange building, one of the most distinctive commercial structures built by the architectural firm of Dankmar Adler and Louis H. Sullivan. The exhibit explores that space’s journey through changes in appearance and function as well as place. Drawing on the rich resources in the Ryerson and Burnham Archives and two private collections, the exhibit features architectural fragments from the Trading Room and adjacent spaces alongside press accounts, photographs, building plans, and correspondence to tell the story of the design, construction, remodeling, demolition, salvage operations, and eventual reconstruction of the space.

Terry Birck of Reed Construction surveys the completed Trading Room, 1981. John Vinci Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Archives.

In 1893 wealthy Chicago businessman Ferdinand W. Peck commissioned Adler and Sullivan to design a metal-framed, 13-story speculative office building to be located at the southwest corner of LaSalle and Washington streets. Work began that summer and was completed in spring 1894. The Trading Room was added to the design in order to encourage office tenancy by brokerage firms and related professions. The Chicago Stock Exchange, from which the building took its name, soon signed on to a 15-year, rent-free lease.

The Trading Room served its original function for just 14 years. When the original lease expired in 1908 the Stock Exchange moved, and Foreman Brothers Banking Company leased the space, hiring the architectural firm Frost & Granger to remodel the interior for a working bank by installing tellers’ cages, customer counters, and chandeliers. Foreman Brothers remained in the space until the bank failed in the 1929 stock market collapse. Subsequent tenants subdivided the space and installed a suspended ceiling over Sullivan’s elaborately stenciled design. The owners of the building declared it “economically unviable” in 1971 and, despite pressure from Chicago’s preservation community, members of the public, and prominent journalists, the City Council declined to intervene and demolition was scheduled.

Chicago Stock Exchange Building About 1971. Richard Nickel Archive, Ryerson & Burnham Archives.

The Art Institute of Chicago agreed to house a complete reconstruction of the Trading Room in its original state, which was complicated by the many renovations of the room and the urgency of completing salvage work prior to the building’s demolition. Despite time constraints and significant physical risk, the salvage crew went to great lengths to extract building materials from the Trading Room that could facilitate accurate reconstruction. Some of these artifacts—including windows, fragments of an artificial marble called scagliola, art glass skylight panels, wall sconces, and marble fragments—are displayed in the exhibition.

As salvage work took place, Vinci-Kenny Architects was hired to complete the reconstruction in the new East wing of the museum. They placed the room in its original orientation, allowing the skylights and east-facing windows to illuminate the space. Construction began in 1976, and the roughly 5,000-square-foot Trading Room was almost entirely recreated in just eleven months. The room opened to the public on April 8, 1977. The Trading Room is open for museum visitors to explore in the Rubloff Building, and the exterior entrance arch to the Stock Exchange Building can be seen just outside the Rubloff Building, on the southwest corner of Monroe and Congress streets.

Adler & Sullivan, original architects; American, 1883-1896, Vinci & Kenny, reconstruction architects; American, 1970-1977, Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room Reconstruction at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The story of the reconstruction of the space and the Trading Room’s rich history is illustrated with unique items from the collections of the Ryerson & Burnham Archives, a regionally-focused collection of primary-source materials on art, architecture, and design. The Ryerson & Burnham Archives hold the largest extant collection of documents—including architectural and design drawings—of Louis Henri Sullivan (1956-1924). The archive of architectural photographer Richard Nickel, who visually documented Sullivan’s oeuvre, salvaged hundreds of architectural fragments from buildings undergoing demolition, and was a key figure in Chicago’s emerging historic preservation movement, also is available in the Ryerson & Burnham Archives. More recently, the Archives acquired the John Vinci Papers, which include documents on Vinci-Kenny’s reconstruction of the Trading Room. All of these materials are available to the public without prior appointment during reading room hours (1:00 until 5:00 Monday through Friday, with materials pulled from the stacks until 4:00 on those days).

Preserving & Creating Access to Vladimir Ossipoff’s Architectural Collections

Architecture, Archives

Submitted by Malia Van Heukelem, Art Archivist Librarian for the Jean Charlot Collection and Archive of Hawaii Artists & Architects Collections at the University of Hawaii at Manoa

The University of Hawaii’s Hamilton Library has a well-established artist archive in the Jean Charlot Collection, which opened in 1983. What most people don’t know is that the library has selectively added collections of Hawaii artist and architects since that time. One such archive is the Ossipoff & Snyder Architects Collection, acquired in 2010. Vladimir Ossipoff (1907-1998) is Hawaii’s most prominent modernist architect. Hired as Art Archivist Librarian just two years ago, my first year necessarily focused on the public facing Jean Charlot Collection. The past year there has been a shift to physical processing and making hidden collections accessible online. Each artist and architect collection under my care has been added to our library’s instance of ArchivesSpace, at least at a very basic level.

Conceptual rendering for the University of Hawaii’s Administration Building, 1948

Architects

Ossipoff came to Honolulu in 1933 and launched his architectural career which spanned over 60 years. He was born in Vladivostok, Russia, and moved with his family to Japan when he was just a toddler; his father was a military attaché to the czar. They remained in Japan following the Russian revolution, until after the 1923 Japan earthquake, when his mother fled with her children to California. He completed high school in Berkeley before pursuing architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. Following college, he worked on a few projects before moving to Hawaii, and by 1936 he had established his own firm and practiced in Honolulu for the rest of his life. Heavily influenced by Japanese and Polynesian design, the use of local materials and positioning of architecture to the landscape and climate, his style is often referred to as “tropical modernism.” During the 1940s, the firm was called the Associated Architects and included other emerging talent: Alfred Preis from Austria, Philip Fisk, and Allen Johnson. Both Fisk and Johnson were classmates of Ossipoff from Berkeley. In the 1950s, Sidney Snyder, Alan Rowland and Gregory Goetz joined the firm and became Ossipoff’s partners for many years.

Sid Snyder joined the firm in 1956 and worked with Ossipoff for over three decades. He supported the Honolulu Museum of Art’s Hawaiian Modern exhibition and catalogue organized in collaboration with Yale University in honor of Ossipoff’s 100th birthday. In 2010, Snyder donated the firm’s project files along with several award display panels, which are highlighted in an online gallery created in Omeka (our library’s latest image platform).

Contents

There are three major categories of materials in the Ossipoff & Snyder Architects Collection: the project files (drawings and specifications), award display panels, and architectural models. The largest group is the drawings which were all folded and are being moved to flat storage in map folders and drawers for long-term preservation and access. The specification files are housed by file number in archival folders and document boxes. The firm was involved with projects of all type and scale from the Honolulu International Airport, to private clubs like the Pacific Club and Outrigger Canoe Club, to the National Tropical Botanical Garden, University of Hawaii, residences such as the Liljestrand House and Goodsill House, to banks and libraries. Over 500 projects are represented in the collection, of an estimated 800 projects undertaken by the firm. Working from a preliminary inventory, researchers using the collections are asked to specify projects by name, date or type. For residential projects, they are easiest to locate by the original owner’s name.

In November 2019, the Library received an important gift of personal papers relating to Vladimir Ossipoff. These materials greatly complement the collection of project files by adding: Ossipoff’s scrapbooks with clippings and original photographs; magazines featuring his most prominent buildings; and personal items such as his school yearbooks and awards.

Ossipoff’s custom bound scrapbooks
Funding

Generous support from an anonymous donor enabled me to hire a highly experienced part-time processing archivist in 2018. She has worked with both artist and architect collections, most recently completing an inventory of preservation architect A. Spencer Leineweber’s papers. A Preservation and Access grant in the amount of $7,000 was just awarded by the Hawaii Council for the Humanities. This year additional archival supplies will be purchased with grant funds to continue re-housing Ossipoff materials and to scan selected conceptual drawings for an online gallery. Additional attention will focus on expanding an online guide to the Ossipoff collections and the information for the finding aid in ArchivesSpace.

Internship

An Archival Processing Internship has been arranged this semester with a student enrolled in our University’s Museum Studies Graduate Certificate Program. The student is interested in archives as well as architecture, so we have opted to work with two large architectural archives which need much attention to increase their preservation, access and use.

Students & Volunteers

I have one student assistant who is a graduate student in American Studies and pursuing a Museum Studies graduate certificate. She has helped with spreadsheets for the drawing inventory and capturing additional metadata, especially for project collaborators. My two volunteers are exceptionally well qualified to help on preservation projects such as unfolding and numbering the fragile drawings. They are both noted local artists and have extensive experience in museum collections management and conservation.

Volunteers Sanit Khewhok and Hiroko Sakurai unfolding delicate drawings for flat storage
Outreach

Until recently, there was very little online presence for the Ossipoff materials here at Hamilton Library. That didn’t stop our small community from spreading the word. Requests to study drawings have come from preservation architects, homeowners, students and faculty. September provided the incredible opportunity to partner with Docomomo on tours for the 2019 National Symposium in Honolulu. There were tours focused on Ossipoff buildings, which kept selling out, and more were added until I had committed to nine tours over three days. I wasn’t sure tour participants would appreciate the stop at the archives to view original documents related to the buildings they were visiting, but it turned out to be a big success. Each tour had a leader who rotated the visitors between the archival document stop here in the library and two Ossipoff buildings.

Docomomo Hawaii Chapter President Graham Hart bringing one of the tours through to view original drawings by Vladimir Ossipoff
Other Hawaii Architect Collections

Besides the Ossipoff Collections, the University of Hawaii also holds collections by the following architects: Hart Wood, Hego Fuchino, John Mason Young (engineer/planner), James Hubbard (landscape architect), Nancy Peacock (residential) and Spencer Leineweber (preservation architect). Managing architectural collections presents unique challenges. They require lots of space, special equipment to provide safe storage, large tables for viewing, and may consume vast amounts of archival supplies and staff time to process. There are no other local repositories known to collect architectural materials. Given these constraints, most archives are not equipped to handle the task. And this does not even take into consideration the astounding obstacles to preservation and ongoing access to digital design records created with a proliferation of unsupported and obsolete software.

Contact

The Vladimir Ossipoff architectural collections at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Hamilton Library are available by appointment Monday through Friday in the Jean Charlot Collection reading room. Please call 808-956-2849 or email charcoll@hawaii.edu, with any questions or stop in for a visit!