Columbia's digital library collection websites are a gateway to digital reproductions and descriptions of photographs, posters, drawings, objects, ephemera, and manuscripts as well as other archival material from Columbia's rare and special collections.
- View List of Collections -1968, Columbia in crisisA.J. Downing & his legacyAlbert Field Collection of Playing CardsAPISArchibald Cox oral historyArthur MitchellAvery Library architectural trade catalogsAvery's architectural ephemera collectionsAvery's architectural noveltiesThe Barbara Curtis Adachi Bunraku Collection at C.V. Starr East Asian LibraryBarney Rosset and ChinaThe Biggert collection of architectural vignettes on commercial stationeryThe book undoneButler 75Carnegie Centennial ExhibitionCarnegie Corporation Oral History ProjectCaste, Ambedkar, and contemporary IndiaThe Chamber of Commerce of New YorkCharles A. Platt's Italian garden photographsChildren's drawings of the Spanish Civil WarChinese paper godsChoosing sidesA church is bornColumbia College Today (CCT)Columbia historical corporate reportsColumbia Library ColumnsColumbia spectator archiveColumbia University recordComics in the curriculumCommunity Service Society photographsConstruction and evolution of Union Theological Seminary CampusCore curriculum: Contemporary civilizationCore curriculum: Literature humanitiesCornelius Vander Starr, his life and workCuneiform Digital Library InitiativeDigital scriptoriumDramatic museum realiaEarly modern futuresFord Foundation International Fellowships Program ArchiveFrances PerkinsG.E.E. Lindquist Native American photographsGreene & Greene architectural records and papers collection, ca. 1896-ca. 1963Hebrew manuscriptsHubert H. Harrison papersHugh Ferriss, (1889-1962)Human rights web archiveIconography of Manhattan IslandItalian Jewish Community RegulationsJewels in her crownJohn H. Yardley Collection of Architectural LetterheadsJoseph Pulitzer and The WorldJoseph Urban stage design models & documents stabilization & access projectJudging a book by its coverKorean independence outbreak movementThe Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic JewryLehman special correspondence filesLing long women's magazineMechelen Hospital ArchiveThe melting potMissionary Research Library pamphletsMusic at ColumbiaNaked lunchNathaniel Fish Moore photograph exhibitionThe New York real estate brochure collectionNotable New YorkersOur tools of learningThe papers of John JayThe people in the booksPhotographs from the Community Service Society records, 1900-1920Political ecologies in the RenaissanceThe Quran in East and WestThe reading of books and the reading of literatureReal Estate Record and Builders GuideRussian and early Soviet sheet musicRussian Imperial Corps of PagesSebastiano Serlio -- On domestic architectureSergei Diaghilev and beyondSeymour B. Durst Old York LibraryShakespeare and the bookStonewall and beyondSydney Howard Gay's "Record of Fugitives"Type to printUlysses KayThe unwritten history : Alexander Gumby's African AmericaThe Varsity ShowViewbooksWilbert Webster White papersWWI Pamphlets 1913-1920Yul phyogs so soʾi gsar ʾgyur me long
1968, Columbia in crisis
Drawing upon its extensive holdings of 1968-related materials, the University Archives has created an exciting and informative exhibit about these turbulent times on Columbia's campus. Through the use of original documents, newspaper articles, dramatic images and audio from WKCR and the 1968 commencement ceremony (not heard since 1968!) 1968: Columbia in Crisis provides a broad overview of the causes, events and after-effects of these events from more than forty years ago. The University Archives invites you to learn about these events for the first time or to re-live them once more. This online exhibition is based upon a physical exhibition of the same name which was on display in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library from March 17 to August 1, 2008.
A.J. Downing & his legacy
Alexander Jackson Downing is known as the "father" of the American architectural pattern book. Not an architect, nor a trained artist, Downing was an avid reader of British horticulture publications, some of which illustrated ideal houses for the country. Through the British publications, Downing saw both how books could transmit design ideas in words and pictures, and how modest houses with Romantic Revival design gestures could form the basis for an improved American housing for its middle classes, particularly in rural and small town settings. To further that end, he published three important works: A treatise on the theory and practice of landscape gardening (first issued in 1841); Cottage residences (first published 1842); and The architecture of country houses (first issued in 1852). Each ran to several editions, and remained in print for some thirty years. Earlier architectural design books showed buildings in stiff and barren elevation drawings, where in Downing's images, the house, landscape, and inhabitants become part of one happy, desirable image. This exhibition, originally mounted in Avery Library's Classics Reading Room to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth, showcases several editions of Downing's publications and those of his many successors. It offers a glimpse into the world of mid-19th century architectural publishing in the United States and reveals how Downing's distillation of design ideas came to influence American housing for half a century.
The Albert Field Collection of Playing Cards contains more than 6300 individual decks of playing cards as well as extensive ephemera and a library of reference books. The decks, ranging from the 16th through the 20th centuries, and across the world, are a rich vein of primary source material in popular imagery, costume, advertising, propaganda, as well as elite culture. Holdings are especially strong from early modern England, revolutionary France, the early American Republic, across a broad range of nineteenth-century national styles, and especially in transformation cards. Cards digitized in 2018 represent most of the pre-1801 cards, as mounted by scholar-collector Albert Field (1916-2003; CC '38). Decks (in their entirety or just the most interesting parts) were mounted onto 16" x 20" sheets of black paper, generally four suits across; including, if useful, samples of the backs, and/or pip cards, any instructions included with the deck; and noting interesting aspects such as makers' marks and tax stamps with yellow dots.
APIS links together in a single environment various sources of information about texts written on papyrus and the society that produced them. It contains descriptions of the papyri and other written materials in the collections of the participating institutions, digital images of many of these texts, and connections to databases with the texts themselves in their original languages and with bibliography about the texts.
Archibald Cox oral history
This oral-history interview focuses on Archibald Cox's tenure as solicitor general from 1961 to 1965, when he argued many landmark civil-rights cases before the Supreme Court. The website contains transcripts, audion files and background on the interviewee and the interview.
Arthur Mitchell: Harlem’s Ballet Trailblazer celebrates the extraordinary career and legacy of the New York City Ballet’s first African-American star and the founder and longtime director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem.
Avery Library architectural trade catalogs
Select architectural trade catalogs from Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library. Trade catalogs, also known as manufacturer's or commercial catalogs, are an important primary source of information on building materials, supplies, decorative elements and industry trends during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Avery Library has a large collection of these original catalogs, most of them in our rare book collection called "Classics."
Avery Classics is one of the largest collections of rare architectural books in the world. Among its thousands of volumes are the first printed book on architecture--Leon Battista Alberti's De re aedificatoria of 1485--and over one hundred editions of Vitruvius, who wrote the lone surviving classical text on the subject. In addition to printed books, the collection also includes manuscripts, photographs, and broadsides that reflect the library's scope. However, certain items in Avery Classics have distinctive forms that fall outside all these categories. Such items, which we will call Architectural Novelties, are best explained in images. This exhibition highlights a selection of items from the Avery Classics collection that are both comprehensive and eccentric in their treatment of architecture.
The Barbara Curtis Adachi Bunraku Collection at C.V. Starr East Asian Library
The Barbara Curtis Adachi Collection, given to Columbia's C. V. Starr East Asian Library in 1991, is one of the most extensive collections in the world visually documenting this rich performance tradition. The collection represents four decades of close contact and respectful collaboration between Ms. Adachi and the Japanese National Bunraku Troupe, the leading performance group of Bunraku in the world, and documents the significant revival of Bunraku's popularity in the second half of the twentieth century.
Barney Rosset and China
The photographs in this exhibit were taken from 1944-1945 by Barney Rosset, then a young American Army photographer. Rosset documented the Chinese Army in their pursuit of Japanese troops following the Battle of Henan-Hunan-Guangxi. The Japanese Army was pulling back from the Ichi-Go operation, the largest Japanese land campaign of the war, and Rosset joined Chinese troops at the deepest point of Japanese penetration (Kweiyang).
The Biggert collection of architectural vignettes on commercial stationery
The Robert Biggert Collection of Architectural Vignettes on Commercial Stationery was donated to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library by Robert Biggert in honor of Lisa Ann Riveaux. This unique collection of printed ephemera contains over 1,300 items with architectural imagery spanning the dates 1850 to 1920, in more than 350 cities and towns in forty-five states, as well as the District of Columbia and U.S. possessions. The collection's billheads, letterheads, envelopes, checks, and business cards document the rise of the United States as an industrial nation, in often elaborate vignettes of factories, warehouses, mines, offices, stores, banks, and hotels.
The book undone
In 2001, fifteen years in to its operation, Granary Books published When Will the Book Be Done?, an illustrated, annotated catalog of their books. The title refers to an early joke between Steve Clay and printer/publisher Ruth Lingen, who included the question clipped from a magazine headline when delivering recently completed copies of Comeundone by Henrik Drescher to Clay. That clipping adorns the Granary offices to this day. This 2015 exhibition reviews that halfway point and reaches back to the press's origins in Minnesota in the mid-1980s. It then follows Granary's work to the present. This exhibition differs from previous exhibitions of the press's work by including material from the press's archive held by the Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the building of Butler Library, an exhibit of more than 100 photographs decorate the bulletin board display on the third floor of Butler Library. The photographs span the decades and showcase the excavation and rise of South Hall (as it was originally named), design details throughout the building, reading rooms, services such as research assistance and student activities -- which include sleeping as well as studying!
Carnegie Corporation Oral History Project
The video, audio, and transcripts of the Carnegie Corporation of New York Oral History Project available on this page are for videotaped portions of the interviews. Some interviews were conducted solely on video, others were conducted on a combination of audio and video. Transcripts are also available. Interviewees include Omar Badsha, Fikile Bam, Geoffrey Budlender, James E. Carter, Arthur Chaskalson, Joan Ganz Cooney, John Dugard, Sara Engelhardt, Barbara D. Finberg, David A. Hamburg, Dudley Horner, Helene L. Kaplan, Clark Kerr, Dorothy Knapp, Mary-Jane Morifi, Lloyd N. Morrisett, Alan J. Pifer, Mamphela Ramphele, Desmond Tutu, David Weikart, and Francis Wilson.
Caste, Ambedkar, and contemporary India
This exhibit complements the conference, "Caste and Contemporary India," taking place on October 16th and 17th, 2009, at Columbia University in honor of alumnus Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. ... The exhibit features a sampling of resources on issues of caste with reference to gender, politics, constitutional history, and religion in contemporary India. We highlight resources available in the South Asian Studies Collections at Columbia University Libraries and reference research carried out by our faculty and students on these themes. The exhibit includes limited views of copyrighted works, many full-text works freely available online, and links to subscription resources available only to Columbia faculty, students, and staff. Many of the subscription resources may be available in other research libraries. We also feature links to the extensive network of non-governmental organizations dedicated to issues of caste and Dalit rights.
The Chamber of Commerce of New York
Digital exhibition on the history of the Chamber of Commerce of New York. The digitized images and documents are drawn from the New York Chamber of Commerce and Industry records collection held by Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Charles A. Platt's Italian garden photographs
In 1892, Charles A. Platt traveled to Italy with his brother, William, to view Italian Renaissance villas and gardens. Many of the photographs he took were used to illustrate his Italian Gardens (Harper & Brothers, 1894). Additional images were included in the 1993 reissue of Italian Gardens, with an overview by Keith Morgan (Sagapress/Timber Press). The remainder of these images remained unpublished. The images displayed in this exhibition have been photographed from the original 8" x 10" glass plate negatives held in the Charles A. Platt Architectural Records and Papers Collection, Drawings & Archives Collection, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library.
Children's drawings of the Spanish Civil War
During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) children were evacuated from the war zones to colonies in the war-free areas of Spain and in the south of France. Drawings by these children were collected from throughout Spain in a concerted effort of the Spanish Board of Education and the Carnegie Institute of Spain. A large group was assembled by Joseph A. Weissberger. Those presented here consist of a collection of 153 made by children aged 7 to 14. They were willed to the Department of Art History and Archaeology of Columbia University by Martin Vogel.
Chinese paper gods
The images in this collection were assembled by Anne S. Goodrich (1895-2005) in 1931, when as a Christian missionary in Peking she became interested in local folk religious practices. She studied the paper gods in this collection for much of her life. After publishing her research conclusions in 1991, she donated these prints to the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University. The images are divided initially by usage: Those which were purchased to be burned immediately and serve as emissaries to heaven; and those which were purchased to be displayed for a year while offering protection to the family in a variety of ways, before being burned. The images are further divided by display locations and by the deities they represent.
Choosing sides
The Group Research, Inc. Records, housed in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University, comprise a rich resource documenting the organizations, people, and campaigns of conservative activists in the United States from the early-1960s to the mid-1990s. Drawn from that collection, the items in this exhibit highlight the important role that illustrators, cartoonists and designers played in the dissemination of conservative points of view during this formative period for modern US conservative ideology.
A church is born
This film and commentary, originally produced by the India Committee of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, provides a brief overview of the history of Christian Missions to India, explains the appeal for unity amongst Protestant denominations in India, and shows the inauguration of the Church of South India.
CCT is the alumni magazine of Columbia College, the undergraduate liberal arts college at Columbia University in the City of New York. First published in 1954, it is now published quarterly by the Columbia College Office of Alumni Affairs and Development for College alumni, faculty, parents, students and friends. Issues include profiles of alumni, professors and students; College news; book excerpts; letters from senior staff; Class Notes; Bookshelf; Obituaries; and first-person accounts, along with event coverage (e.g., reunion, Homecoming). Thanks to a gift from the board of the Columbia University Club Foundation, CCT and the Columbia University Libraries recently digitized back issues from 1954 through and including Summer 2016 and made them available on the Internet Archive. This donation was made in recognition of the 18 and half years that Alex Sachare CC 1971 was CCT's editor (1998-2016). The issues have been indexed so you can easily search for articles, names and topics or just browse through individual issues.
Columbia historical corporate reports
In 2007 a project was undertaken to digitize a selection of corporate reports from the Columbia Business Library's extensive collection of historical corporate annual reports. The selection targeted corporations that operated in and around New York City. Approximately 36 companies are represented with a total of approximately 770 individual reports (ca. 17,300 pages) ranging from the 1850s through the early 1960s.
Columbia Library Columns
Columbia Library Columns was published from 1951 to 1997 by the Friends of the Columbia Libraries. The digitized collection comprises some 6,900 pages in 46 volumes (135 issues). Over the years contributors included faculty, University adminstrators, writers, historians and collectors, as well as Columbia librarians. Articles focused on individual collections, special acquisitions, literary topics and issues relating to the growth of Columbia's libraries and special collections generally.
The Archive of the Columbia Daily Spectator, the newspaper of Columbia University and Morningside Heights preserves the second-oldest college daily paper in the country. When completed, the Archive will include the complete run of the newspaper from 1877 to the present. The goals of the Archive are to provide a public resource for Columbia University history and to preserve the Spectator's past work. It is the result of a partnership between the Spectator and Columbia University Libraries.
Columbia University record
The Columbia University Record is university-wide publication that serves as a rich resource of past Columbia activities, events, scientific research, trustee and faculty appointments, awards and honors, libraries news, departmental achievements, budget and financial reporting, faculty and staff updates, as well as containing informative profiles of campus personalities from 1973 to the present.
Comics in the curriculum
Graphic novels and comics are, for the most part, a recent addition to the Columbia University Libraries collections, and this addition reflects both the variety and sophistication of the medium as well as critical and academic interest. The "graphic novel" is a format--narrative conveyed through sequential art--not a genre, and as such these works encompass a myriad of genres and artistic styles, as you can see in the images here. While these materials can be read for entertainment--as can much of the literature in the libraries' collections--they can also be incorporated into research and curricula to illustrate a variety of themes. The examples that follow merely scratch the surface. Each theme begins with a familiar image from traditional art, one likely to be used to illustrate that theme in teaching or scholarship. Each image is matched with selections from graphic novels that can be used in a similar way.
Community Service Society photographs
Community Service Society Photographs is an online presentation of almost 1400 photographs (and a few illustrations) from the Community Service Society Records at Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library. They offer representations of urban poverty, unsafe tenement housing, inadequate hygiene in public areas, and other pressing social issues in late-19th- and early-20th-century New York. The images range from the 1880s through the 1950s.
Construction and evolution of Union Theological Seminary Campus
This digital exhibit features images from a small collection of photographs documenting the construction of Union Theological Seminary located in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City. The third location for the Seminary, the buildings were constructed from 1908-1910.
Core curriculum: Contemporary civilization
Columbia University's commitment to the Core Curriculum extends to the University Libraries' special collections. Columbia University Libraries preserve and provide access to important editions of, and in some cases autograph manuscripts by, many of the authors taught in the Core Curriculum. Additionally, the collections include subsequent editions, translations, and adaptations, which demonstrate the transmission and reception of these works across centuries and attest to their continuing importance.
Cornelius Vander Starr, his life and work
Born on October 15, 1892 in Ft. Bragg, CA, Cornelius Vander Starr (also known as Neil Starr) was the son of a railroad engineer of Dutch decent, whom he was named after. He briefly attended college at the University of California, Berkeley in 1910-11, enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private in 1917-18, and worked for a short time for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in Yokohama, Japan, before setting out on his own in Shanghai, China. During his 76-year life-span C.V. Starr, the founder of the predecessor companies of American International Group, Inc. (AIG), had a diversified career as a journalist, a lawyer, an international businessman, a publisher and a philanthropist.
The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) is an effort by Assyriologists, museum curators, and science historians to make available through the Internet cuneiform tablets dating from circa 3200 B.C. to the third millennium B.C. The project receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Digital scriptorium
The Digital Scriptorium is an image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts, intended to unite scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research.
Dramatic museum realia
James Brander Matthews (1852-1929), America's first professor of dramatic literature, created a Dramatic Museum at Columbia in 1911 to supplement his teaching. He insisted that material objects and images were crucial to understanding drama, and that theater knew no geographical or chronological bounds. The differences in national style visible on the contemporary stage had their origins, he argued, in ancient local rituals and religious practice. So in addition to considerable manuscript collections and a large collection of printed books, the Dramatic Museum included 34,500 theatrical portraits (prints and photographs); 2,350 speech recordings; 35,000 eighteenth-, nineteenth- , and twentieth-century playbills; approximately 600 artworks, including costume and scenic designs and posters; 392 puppets and 128 masks; 12 models of historical theaters; and 29 stage sets. The Museum was formally dissolved and its collections dispersed in 1971. By the 1990s, the collections had all gravitated to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML). ...Now, thanks to a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, RBML is creating a new collection and finding aid. Dramatic Museum Realia consists of puppets, masks, theater models and stage sets. The puppets and masks have all been photographed, and these images are presented here. The puppets come from around the world: Africa, Burma, China, England, France, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, Russia, and the U.S. There are 40 large (over five feet tall) shadow puppets and approximately 350 other puppets, including six oversize marionettes made by the prominent artist Remo Bufano. Most were collected by the 1930s; many date from the nineteenth century. The masks have a similar range: they come from Africa, Ceylon, Europe, Japan, Java, Mexico, North America, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.
Early modern futures
How did early modern literature conceive the future? Scholarship of early modern literature has paid ample attention to the many ways in which time was perceived and understood, frequently emphasizing retrospective forms of historical thinking, such as memory and nostalgia. Early Modern Futures seeks to spark a conversation about the many ways in which early modern literature also thought about where things were headed. How did beliefs about future events (from the eschatological to the economic to the genealogical) shape people's actions in the present? How did early modernity understand the past in relation to the future? How was prospective historical thinking practiced through various textual and literary forms? That is, how did records, scripts, manuals, genres, or editions represent the future or anticipate their own reception? How do the modes of early modern prospection as suggested by terms like prophecy, speculation, and progression point to different theorizations of futurity? How does present scholarship receive and use the past's ideas about the future? This conference aims to explore early modernity's uniquely literary means for projecting its future, and through this to advance scholarly debates about the role and forms of historicism in early modern culture.
Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program Archive
The IFP archives cover the issues of social justice, community development, and access to higher education, and include paper and digital documentation and audiovisual materials on the more than 4,300 IFP Fellows as well as comprehensive planning and administrative files of the program.
This exhibit features correspondence, manuscripts, notes, drafts of speeches, photographs, and memorabilia from RBML's extensive collection of Frances Perkins' papers. The physical exhibit opened on November 5, 2009 and runs through March 26, 2010.
G.E.E. Lindquist Native American photographs
Greene & Greene architectural records and papers collection, ca. 1896-ca. 1963
The American architectural firm Greene & Greene was a partnership between the brothers Charles Sumner Greene (1868-1957) and Henry Mather Greene (1870-1954). The Greene & Greene Architectural Records and Papers Collection spans the years ca. 1896 - ca. 1963. The collection chiefly consists of architectural drawings (approximately 5,000) and also includes photographs, personal papers, and other manuscript material. Access to digital images of all the architectural drawings and to selected photographs are provided in the finding aid and through seven indexes: Images, Genre/Form, Geographic, Persons, Subjects, Corporate Names, and Projects.
Hebrew manuscripts
Hebrew and Judaica manuscripts from Columbia University's Rare Book & Manuscript Library in full text.
Hubert H. Harrison papers
Harlem's first great soapbox orator, Hubert H. Harrison was a brilliant and influential writer, educator, and movement builder during the early decades of the 20th century. In the words of civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph, he was "the father of Harlem radicalism." Born in 1883, on the Caribbean island of St. Croix, Harrison moved to New York City in 1900, where he worked low-paying jobs, attended high school, and then earned a living as a postal clerk - all the time engaging with radical political causes. By 1911, he had become a leading activist and theoretician for the Socialist Party in New York City and soon thereafter he began actively supporting the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1917, Harrison founded the first organization (The Liberty League) and the first newspaper (The Voice) of the “New Negro Movement” and he published his first book, The Negro and the Nation. He opposed positions taken by Joel E. Spingarn and W.E.B. Du Bois of the NAACP during the First World War and, along with William Monroe Trotter and others he organized the 1918 Liberty Congress. The Congress, the major Black protest effort during the war, demanded enforcement of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments and federal anti-lynching legislation. Beginning in 1920, he became the principal editor of Marcus Garvey's Negro World, which he reshaped into a leading political and literary publication of the era. In its pages, he discussed history, politics, theater, international affairs, religion, and science. He also created a "Poetry for the People" feature, a “West Indian News Notes” column, and what he described as the first regular book review section by a Black author in “Negro newspaperdom.” In 1920 he also published his second book, When Africa Awakes: The “Inside Story” of the Stirrings and Strivings of the New Negro in the Western World. Later, he would criticize Garvey's methods and actions. Harrison was a prolific speaker and writer in the 1920s during which time he also founded the broadly unitary International Colored Unity League and edited The Voice of the Negro. Harrison's unexpected death following an appendectomy on December 17, 1927, left behind his widow, four daughters, and a young son. A massive Harlem funeral spoke to his contemporary importance, but Harrison's work eventually faded from prominence. His radicalism on questions of race, class, religion, war, democracy, literature and the arts - and the fact that he was a forthright critic of individuals, organizations, and ideas of influence, were major reasons, along with his early death and the fact that he had no long lasting organizational ties, for his subsequent neglect.
Hugh Ferriss, (1889-1962)
The digitized images from the Hugh Ferriss Architectural Drawings and Papers Collection depict Ferriss' original architectural renderings of buildings by various architects, ca. 1918-1960, including variant designs for the United Nations buildings; the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York; Rockefeller Center in New York; La Guardia Airport in New York; National Airport in Washington, D.C.; the New York Times Building in New York; the 1939-1940 and 1964-1965 World's Fairs; the Chicago Tribune Tower; Hoover Dam; and three Frank Lloyd Wright projects including Fallingwater in Bear Run, Pa., Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the Johnson Wax Administration Building in Racine, Wisconsin. Also included are Ferriss' renderings of imaginary buildings, ca. 1920s-1930s, some of which were published in The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929). Ferriss' drawings of important buildings in the United States were created as a result of a nationwide tour sponsored by a Brunner grant from the Architectural League of New York in 1941. Many of these renderings were later published in Power in Buildings (1953).
Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (1867-1944) was a housing reformer, real estate developer and architect from a prominent and wealthy New York family who trained at Columbia and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris after receiving his bachelor's degree from Harvard. In partnership with John Mead Howells, it was Stokes who designed St. Paul's Chapel on the new Columbia campus at Morningside Heights between 1903 and 1907. Earlier, he had served on the New York State Tenement House Commission, which wrote the ground-breaking New York Tenement House Law of 1901. One of Stokes' longest-lasting legacies, however, came as a consequence of his enthusiasm for collecting prints, which he began to do in 1899. His collecting activity intensified along with his interest in the history of New York, which together resulted in his monumental work, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909, a six-volume pictorial history published between 1915 and 1928.
Italian Jewish Community Regulations
This collection contains about forty broadsides regarding communal and governmental regulations imposed in various Jewish communities throughout Italy from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Cities mentioned include Florence, Venice, Ferrara, Padua, Ancona, and others. Topics addressed are synagogue behavior, market regulations, municipal workers such as firefighters, and more.
Jewels in her crown
The first major exhibition of treasures from the Special Collections Libraries at Columbia in over 50 years and gives the public a glimpse of the unique resources gathered by the University since its founding in 1754. Mounted in conjunction with the 250th anniversary of Columbia, this exhibition celebrates a rich collection of original books, manuscripts, individual and corporate archives, architectural drawings, ephemera, musical scores, works of art, and artifacts, embodying over 5,000 years of human history. Draws together an unprecedented array of 250 rare and unique items from eleven Special Collections - including a Buddhist sutra dating from the year 1162 C.E., Mrs. Alexander Hamilton's wedding ring, a set model for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's application for study at Union Theological Seminary, a fragment of the Iliad on papyrus, and a 1906 photograph of Czar Nicholas II with his family.
The John H. Yardley Collection of Architectural Letterheads provides a unique view of New York City's evolution during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Selected for their illustrations of buildings in lower Manhattan, these pieces of stationery include rare images of the city's commercial architecture, much of which is no longer extant. Because the letterheads are organized by street, users can chart a path through the city, one address at a time, and see New York City as it was in another era. The Yardley Collection was donated to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library by the wife of Mr. John H. Yardley in memory of her husband. Assembled over many years, the Yardley Collection reflects a sensitivity to New York's geographic and architectural heritage. These images of distinctive buildings now join the Avery Library's other strong holdings in architectural ephemera, a reflection of Avery's commitment to preserving ephemera as an essential and irreplaceable visual record of the historic built environment.
Joseph Pulitzer and The World
To celebrate the publication of James McGrath Morris's new biography of Joseph Pulitzer, Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power (HarperCollins, 2010), the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, 6th Floor East, is presenting an exhibition of the papers of Joseph Pulitzer and of his newspaper, The World, held by the RBML. The exhibition contains a variety of materials that show the working life of this truly remarkable individual. On display are letters, documents, ledgers, newspapers, photographs, and realia concerning his life, as well as material documenting Pulitzer's role in the founding of Columbia's School of Journalism and the creation of the Pulitzer Prizes. Running through July, this is the first time that this material has been shown to the public.
Joseph Urban stage design models & documents stabilization & access project
Project focused on materials relating to Urban's New York theater career from 1914-1933, specifically the documentation of his productions for the Ziegfeld Follies and other theater producers, and his productions for the Metropolitan Opera.
The advent of gold-stamped decoration, circa 1832, was the most important factor in the acceptance of publishers' bindings. Gold stamping brought to the mass-produced book some of the prestige associated with gold-tooled leather bindings of the pre-industrial era. In fact, stamping often imitated the decorative styles and motifs of the hand-finished book. However, gold stamping also developed its own styles and imagery that reflected the period's taste and culture.
Korean independence outbreak movement
Commonly referred to as the Samil Movement (literally "three one") for its historical date on March 1, 1919, the Korean Independence Movement was one of the earliest and most significant displays of nonviolent demonstration against Japanese rule in Korea. The Records of the Korean Independence Outbreak, currently forming part of the archives in The Burke Library, were sent from Shanghai to Charles Fahs, the librarian of the former Mission Research Library in New York, by Korean Independence leaders in exile during 1919. The typescript reports here describe events in March/April 1919 and are accompanied by a pamphlet with rare and sometimes disturbing black and white photographs illustrating the events.
The Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry
The Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ), is an extraordinary resource for research in Yiddish studies. The data that constitutes the LCAAJ was collected from 603 locations in Central and Eastern Europe carefully chosen to reflect the distribution of the Yiddish speaking population on the eve of World War II. This digital collection contains images of the written data portion of the archive. The written data is mostly single word answers, as would have been necessary for use by the project directors.
Lehman special correspondence files
The Special Correspondence Files of the Herbert Lehman Papers contain correspondence with nearly 1,000 individuals from 1864 through 1982. Beginning with letters from Lehman's family in the late nineteenth century, the series documents the range and scope of Lehman's long career in public service. In addition to family letters, the Special Correspondence Files contain letters from every President of the U. S. from Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, as well as from notables such as Dean Acheson, Benjamin Cardozo, Paul Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, W. Averill Harriman, Harold Ickes, Robert F. Kennedy, Fiorello LaGuardia, Henry Morgenthau, Alfred E. Smith, Adlai Stevenson, and Robert Wagner, among many others.
Ling long women's magazine
Ling long women's magazine, published in Shanghai from 1931 to 1937, was popular during a time of dramatic material, social, and political change in China. Today, the magazine offers researchers a unique glimpse into women's lives in Republican-era (1911-49) Shanghai. This site features Columbia University's collection of Ling long magazine, one of the most complete holdings outside China.
Mechelen Hospital Archive
At the very end of the 12th century, the prince-bishop of Malines (Mechelen in today's Belgium) funded a hospital to be run by a group of hospital sisters; these women in the coming centuries cared for the ill and ailing so well that several other dependent hospitals were funded out of this mother house in Malines. Their institution was protected by the pope, Honorius III (who also formally extended his protection to the Dominican, Franciscan and Carmelite orders), and a few years later by the local lord, Godefroid de Fontaines, bishop of Cambrai; the next pope, Innocent IV also issued a bull to the sisters (in 1234), as did pope Nicholas IV (in 1288), and pope Clement V (in 1310, from his residence in Avignon). To these five founding documents, the collection adds two more of a slightly later date. The combination of the crucial materials, all present and in outstandingly good condition, allows one to form a view of the opening moments of a women's civic and religious organization, in ways that are hardly possible in the United States.
This online exhibition catalog contains materials from the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture exhibition held at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library from April 4, 2006 to July 30, 2006. The exhibition featured more than 150 photographs, personal documents, posters, original artworks, and books on the New York Russian Jewish immigrant community held at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and Bakhmeteff Archive. The exhibition explores many of the issues and personalities discussed in the April 4-6, 2006, international conference on Russian Jewish New York.
Missionary Research Library pamphlets
Select pamphlets from the Missionary Research Library (MRL) founded in 1914 by John R. Mott in connection with the Foreign Missions Conference of North America. In 1929 the Library was housed in the Brown Memorial Tower of Union Theological Seminary, its Board of Trustees composed of Foreign Missions Conference of North America and Union Theological Seminary members. In 1967, its unique collections, heritage of Ecumenical Protestantism, were transferred into the care of the Union Theological Seminary Library. These pamphlets have been digitized and are now freely accessible on the Internet Archive.
Music at Columbia
The 1996 Centennial Exhibition of Columbia University's Department of Music, Music at Columbia: The First 100 Years, mounted at Low Library as part of the department's celebration, was a highly varied and eclectic collection of items from many different sources.
Naked lunch
This exhibition celebrates the 50th anniversary of William S. Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch and Columbia University's extensive holdings of rare books and original manuscripts related to the novel's creation, composition, and editing. The exhibition includes Burroughs's original manuscript of Naked Lunch, and correspondence from Lucien Carr, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.
Nathaniel Fish Moore photograph exhibition
Nathaniel Fish Moore was a student at Columbia (AB 1802, MA 1805), a professor of Greek and Latin (1817-1835), an honorary degree recipient (LLD 1825), the first College Librarian (1837-1839) and the eighth Columbia President (1842-1849). This exhibition focuses on his life outside of Columbia as he devoted his time to the nascent art of photography, in particular the salt print paper-based photographic process. As an early amateur photographer, Moore prepared his own chemicals and papers. He captured views of New York City and the Highlands of the Hudson area, his family and even a few self-portraits. Because salt prints are fragile and unstable, they have been digitized for long-term preservation.
The New York real estate brochure collection
Notable New Yorkers
The Notable New Yorkers Web site offers audio recordings and transcripts of interviews with ten influential New Yorkers, drawn from the collections of the Oral History Research Office of the Columbia University Libraries. These interviews, conducted by the Office between 1955 and 2001, open an imaginative portal into twentieth-century New York City and the ways in which it has deeply affected the culture and history of the United States and the world beyond. With three background essays and a briefer methodological introduction for each oral history, this site also provides a revealing look at the art of the biographical interview--a methodology developed by the Office over its four and a half decades of existence--in which individuals who have shaped history reflect upon their lives and accomplishments. The site also includes biographical sketches and photographs of the interview subjects, as well as indexes and tables of contents to the material. The texts of the transcriptions are fully searchable.
Our tools of learning
George Arthur Plimpton (1855-1936) was a publisher, author, and book collector, born in Walpole, Massachusetts. He assembled a remarkable collection of manuscripts and books illuminating the history of education. Describing his sixty years of collecting in the preface to his first book, The Education of Shakespeare, Plimpton wrote: "It has been my privilege to get together the manuscripts and books which are more or less responsible for our present civilization, because they are the books from which the youth of many centuries have received their education." The collection was given to Columbia in 1936. Drawn exclusively from the Plimpton Collection, the exhibition includes manuscripts and books from medieval times through the early 20th century, including many of the manuscripts and books that were used to illustrate Plimpton's The Education of Shakespeare and The Education of Chaucer, and David Eugene Smith's Rara Arithmetica. Additional sections of the exhibition deal with handwriting and education for women, two of Plimpton's particular interests.
The papers of John Jay
The Papers of John Jay is an image database and indexing tool comprising some 13,000 documents (more than 30,000 page images) scanned chiefly from photocopies of original documents. Most of the source material was assembled by Columbia University's John Jay publication project staff during the 1960s and 1970s under the direction of the late Professor Richard B. Morris.
The people in the books
A printed book and a manuscript codex may contain the same text, but one can argue that the latter is inherently richer. The printing press produced a multitude of identical copies, but each manuscript is unique and individual. In a manuscript, each page had to be carefully prepared and every letter required painstaking work. Ultimately, each manuscript contains more than just the text within it. Isaac Mendelsohn, author of the first catalog of the Hebrew manuscripts at Columbia, wrote, "An old Hebrew book is...more than a mere collection of bound sheets on which a given text is [written]. The notes on the flyleaves, the remarks on the margins the names of its various owners, and the countries in which it saw service actually make it into two books - one containing the text, the passive part, and the other the history of the persons who owned and used it. This exhibit attempts to show the second kind of book: the book that tells a story about its authors, its owners, and its users. Occasionally, the story is found within the main portion of the text, but it is also found in the paratext: in the wine stains on a Passover Haggadah, in the candle wax in a prayer book, or in an odd notation on a title page or in a colophon.
Photographs from the Community Service Society records, 1900-1920
This online exhibition contains materials from the Community Service Society Records housed at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University and accompanies the exhibition, Social Forces Visualized: Photography and Scientific Charity, 1900-1920 at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, November 9 to December 17, 2011.
Political ecologies in the Renaissance
Political Ecologies in the Renaissance brings together eleven scientific texts from Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It features canonical and non-canonical science books and covers seven topics: mining, magnetism, navigation, astronomy, the art of war, hydraulics and hydrostatics, and astrology. Each of the texts featured here focuses on human engagement with the natural world, whether it be through observation, experimentation, and/or the manipulation of natural resources. But the texts do not only represent early examples of scientific culture; rather, they are politically resonant, for man's use of natural resources and scientists' observations of the world around them had a profound impact on the early modern world, and provoked and/or enabled religious, social, and political controversies. Many of the papers in the "Commons and Collectivities: Political Ecologies in the Renaissance" conference home in on man's relationship with the natural world and its political implications, and this online exhibition is meant to complement those essays.
The Quran in East and West
During the month of Ramaḍān, Muslims commemorate the revelation of the Quran to the prophet Muḥammad. In Fall 2005, from October 4 until November 2, Burke Library exhibited some of its Qurans to explore during Ramaḍān 1426 AH how attitudes toward Islam are reflected in the books that give readers access to its revelation.
The reading of books and the reading of literature
This online exhibition is meant to accompany a day-long symposium at Columbia University on April 27, 2012. The exhibition, along with the conference, focuses on the relation between literature and the media in which it is conveyed. The symposium examines the extent to which the material forms of texts can contribute to the reading of literature as well as the construction of literary history, and, conversely, what literary analysis can contribute to the study of books as material objects.
Digitized volumes of The Real Estate Record and Builders Guide, a magazine detailing building activity in New York City and its environs that began publication in the late 1860s. The project website provides sales, mortgage, conveyance, and other data as well as illustrated articles on buildings and neighborhood development.
Russian and early Soviet sheet music
A collection of Russian and early Soviet music scores published from 1904 to 1938. Numerous composers and lyricists (primarily Russian but also European and American) are represented. Most scores were published in Moscow or Leningrad. Other imprints include Rostov-na-Donu, Kiev, Kharʹkov, and Tiflis. Most scores are popular music, jazz or dance music. The covers were designed by many different artists. The collection includes musical settings of poems by Esenin, Lebedev-Kumach and Mayakovsky among others.
A detailed introduction to this collection can be found in Academic Commons
Russian Imperial Corps of Pages
This online exhibition catalog contains selections from the Columbia University Libraries exhibition on view at the Bakhmeteff Archive, Butler Library from December 1, 2002 to February 28, 2003, timed to coincide with celebrations of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. The exhibition features objects drawn from the Imperial Corps of Pages collection, Bakhmeteff Archive. The objects include photographs, documents, theater programs, invitations and menus. The catalog also provides historical information about the Corps of Pages.
Sebastiano Serlio -- On domestic architecture
A sixteenth-century Italian architect and theoretician, Sebastiano Serlio was influential in canonizing the classical orders of architecture as the author of seven books on architecture, collectively known as Tutte l'opere d'architettura. The sixth book in the series, On Domestic Architecture, wasn't published in Serlio's lifetime but survived in manuscript form and was acquired by Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library in 1924. Significant not only for its rarity, the sixth book is arguably the most impactful as it defines the first typology of Western domestic architecture. Serlio's designs accommodate every strata of society from the poor, to the emerging bourgeoisie, to a palace for the King. His scheme for housing conceives a model for a new urban form -- the modern city based on an economic social construct. The digital files presented here comprise recto, verso and selected watermarks representing 73 original plates, and provide an exceptional opportunity to view this rare manuscript in great detail. The broader Digital Serlio Project provides online access to not only the unpublished masterwork but new research on topics as diverse as the materiality of the manuscript's paper and the creation of national typologies of domestic architecture in the form of essays contributed by a cohort of international scholars and students. Avery's significant holdings of the published editions of Serlio's complete works have also been newly digitized, and the entire corpus is accessible from the Project page.
Sergei Diaghilev and beyond
The diversity and splendor of Sergei Diaghilev's world of Russian ballet and opera seasons in Paris was on display at the Chang Octagon Exhibition Room. The exhibition features selections from the Bakhmeteff Archive and Rare Book and Manuscript Library collections. The exhibiton took place in the Chang Octagon Exhibition Room, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, March 16 through June 26, 2009.
Seymour B. Durst Old York Library
Website for The Seymour B. Durst Old York Library collection at the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library. The collection consists of more than 40,000 objects including historic photographs, maps, pamphlets, postcards, books, and New York City memorabilia from the 18th century to the 1980s.
Shakespeare and the book
On those occasions when the Shakespeare first folio, the 1623 first printing in folio format of the collected works of William Shakespeare, is placed on display, it is generally shown in splendid isolation as one of the great treasures of the library. Columbia's copy, a part of the 1881 bequest of Stephen Whitney Phoenix, is no exception, although over the decades it has been shown to a large number of classes, including recently many sections of Literature Humanities in the Columbia Core Curriculum. In this exhibition, inspired by the publication of David Scott Kastan's Shakespeare & The Book (Cambridge University Press, September, 2001) the Shakespeare first folio is on display not only with Columbia's copies of the other three 17th century Shakespeare folios. All four are shown within the context of the 17th century English printed play, along with copies of works known to Shakespeare. This exhibition draws heavily on the splendid collection of four centuries of English and American literature collected by Jack Harris Samuels and bequeathed to the University by his mother, Mollie Harris Samuels, in 1970. This collection is distinguished not only for the titles represented but also by their excellent condition and, in many cases, distinguished provenance.
Stonewall and beyond
The online edition of a Columbia University Libraries exhibition held from May 25 to September 17, 1994 in conjunction with the international celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
In 1855 and 1856, Sydney Howard Gay, the editor of the weekly abolitionist publication, the National Anti-Slavery Standard and a key operative in the underground railroad in New York City, decided for unknown reasons to meticulously record the arrival of fugitive slaves at his office. The resulting two volumes, which he called The Record of Fugitives, sits in the Gay Papers at the Rare Books and Manuscript Library of Columbia University, where it has remained, until recently, virtually untouched. Gay interviewed the fugitives, who numbered well over two hundred men, women, and children and recorded their stories. More than half of them arrived by train via Philadelphia, and also appear in a similar set of records maintained there by the black abolitionist William Still, enabling the historian to check the consistency of the runaways' stories, and to combine the contents of the two documents. The Record of Fugitives is a treasure trove of information about how and why slaves escaped, who assisted them, and where they were sent from New York. It contains references to well-known individuals like Harriet Tubman, who passed through New York City twice during these years, and little-known figures such as Louis Napoleon, a black porter who worked in Gay's office and was the key operative in meeting fugitives who arrived in New York and assisting them on their journeys to freedom. But at its heart lie the arresting stories of the fugitives themselves, as Gay, an accomplished journalist, recorded them. This website reproduces the Record of Fugitives, both in high resolution images of all of its pages (as well as of a few separate sheets on which Gay recorded the experiences of additional runaway slaves), and in a searchable transcript. It also includes a spreadsheet compiled by Professor Eric Foner, that summarizes the information noted by Gay and William Still combined with data from other sources. For a full analysis of the Record of Fugitives, as well as a history of the underground railroad in New York City and the northeastern metropolitan corridor, see Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (W. W. Norton and Co., 2015).
An online companion to an exhibit celebrating the 60th anniversary of the American Type Founders collection at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
Ulysses Kay
Ulysses Kay (1917-1995) wrote more than one hundred forty compositions in a wide range of forms -- five operas, over two dozen large orchestral works, more than fifty voice or choral compositions, over twenty chamber works, a ballet, and numerous other compositions for voice, solo instruments or dancer, film, and television.
The unwritten history : Alexander Gumby's African America
More than 150 scrapbooks comprise the core of the Alexander Gumby Collection of Negroiana, part of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Columbia University. Together, these volumes contain a diverse array of manuscripts, photographs, pamphlets, artwork, clippings, and ephemera primarily related to African-American history from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. At the time of its creation from about 1900 to 1950, the collection's curator, L.S. Alexander Gumby, explained that this "History of the Negro in Scrapbook . . . could well be called 'The Unwritten History'" of the United States, due to the lack of general scholarly attention paid to African Americans by contemporary historians. This exhibition introduces visitors to the remarkable Gumby and situates his life and project in the context of the Harlem Renaissance--his acquaintances included luminaries such as Richard Bruce Nugent, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes--and in relation to other contemporary pioneers of African-American history such as Arthur Schomburg and Carter G. Woodson. Showcasing pages from nearly fifty of Gumby's scrapbooks, it highlights both the rare and the seemingly mundane items that Gumby argued could combine to document an otherwise forgotten history of the United States and its African American contributors.
The Varsity Show
Initially conceived as a fundraiser for the University's athletics teams, The Varsity Show has grown into Columbia University's oldest performing arts tradition. It is an annual extravaganza that has launched many students on their paths to careers in the arts and elicited cheers and blushes from those in the Columbia community who find themselves subject of its satire. This online exhibition is an expansion of a physical exhibit created in 2004 to mark the 110th anniversary of The Varsity Show. ... The distinguished roster of Columbians who have participated in The Varsity Show includes a who's who of show business talent and achievement. Among the more noteable alums are Oscar Hammerstein (CC 1916), Richard Rodgers (CC 1923), Lorenz Hart (CC 1918), I.A.L. Diamond (CC 1941), Herman Wouk (CC 1934), Terrance McNally (CC 1960), and Ed Kelban (CC 1960) who wrote the lyrics for A Chorus Line.
Viewbooks
With generous support from the CLIR Hidden Collections grant project, Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library was able to catalog its long-held, but long-hidden, collection of American viewbooks. This multi-year project revealed the depth of Avery's extensive viewbook collection -- more than 4,000 items representing big cities and small towns, famous landmarks and ones long since forgotten - a unique historic catalog of our nation's changing landscape. This online exhibit showcases a selection of 50 viewbooks from Avery's collection.
Dr White was the founder in 1900 and President, 1900-1939, of Bible Teachers' College, which was later known as Bible Teachers Training School, renamed the Winona Bible School, and then the Biblical Seminary of New York. In 1966, Biblical Seminary became New York Theological Seminary. Wilbert Webster White was renowned for his development of an inductive system of Bible Study, emphasizing knowledge of the Bible rather than knowledge about the Bible. His Papers contain an Address by him on the Biblio-centric Curriculum.
WWI Pamphlets 1913-1920
A collection of WWI Pamphlets 1913-1920 contributed by Columbia University Libraries.
Yul phyogs so soʾi gsar ʾgyur me long
The Tibet Mirror (Tib. Yul phyogs so so'i gsar 'gyur me long) was published from 1925 to 1963 in Kalimpong, and chronicles the most dramatic social and political transformation in Tibet during a time when vernacular writing was relatively scarce and a Tibetan media practically non-existent. The paper also relayed information about World War II, the independence of India, and other global news to Tibetan readers in Lhasa, Gyantse, Kham, etc., and to traders and aristocrats who frequently traveled from Lhasa via the Chumbi Valley to Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Calcutta.