Jefferson Architecture Collection

The Jefferson Architecture Collection is listed in OBIS along with other early works on architecture from the Art Library Special Collections.

The Art Library’s collection of Jefferson’s architectural books was initiated in the 1940s by Clarence Ward, former Professor of Art History and Director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum.  Ward created a room in the Art Library (which was in the museum at that time) as both a memorial to Jefferson and a study room for American architecture. The Jefferson Collection was a focal point of the room.

Jefferson possessed 63 books on architecture that, in combination, were an excellent collection of early treatises on the subject. They also provide unique insights into the designs of this central figure in early American architecture. Important books in the collection include Stuart and Revett’s The Antiquities of Athens, which was instrumental in starting the Greek Revival, as well as early editions of Alberti and Palladio. Two-thirds of Jefferson’s personal library was destroyed in a fire at the Library of Congress in 1851. Oberlin’s collection of his architectural volumes is a rare assemblage of that portion of his personal library.

The Art Library now owns all but 8 of the 63 titles listed in Thomas Jefferson: Architect (1916) with an essay and notes by Fiske Kimball who assembled "the various books on architecture and gardening which Jefferson owned at one time or another, with the dates of their acquisition and of their disposal by him or his heirs, so far as these dates are ascertainable." (p. 91-91).

Two recent additions to the Jefferson Architecture Collection are the 1655 Rome edition of Filippo de Rossi’s Ritratto di Roma Antica (acquired in 1999) and, thanks to the generosity of the Friends of the Library, the first edition of Claude Perrault’s abridged version of Vitruvius' De Architectura (Paris 1674) acquired in 2005. This edition of Vitruvius was purchased with a Friends of the Library fund for special collections materials that become available on the rare book market.