Joseph S. Allen Collection
Photographs of American architecture
Collection digitized? No.
In 1977 and 1978 Joseph S. Allen, who retired as editor in
the Library's Subject Cataloging Division after thirty-two
years of service, presented to the Library 11,427 architectural
photographs dating chiefly from the period 1945 to 1967. Inspired
by the Historic American Buildings Survey,
Mr. Allen methodically photographed churches, colleges, government
buildings, residential structures, and historic monuments in
twenty-seven eastern and mid-western states. He used a 1935
Jiffy Kodak camera to take all of the photographs.
One building type that Allen documented particularly well
is the county courthouse. The collection includes photographs
of almost nine hundred courthouses, including all the courthouses
in fourteen states. The 2,400 photographs of Washington, D.C.,
constitute the most comprehensive regional survey in the collection
and include views of all public monuments and outdoor sculpture,
government buildings, churches, high schools, and colleges
as well as most grade schools, libraries, fire and police stations,
large apartment buildings, chanceries, banks, department stores,
hotels, theaters, bridges, large office buildings, and a selection
of smaller commercial structures and houses. Maryland, Ohio,
Pennsylvania and Virginia are also well represented with over
750 photographs each.
The black-and-white negatives are numbered and reproduced
as contact prints, mounted in albums. They are listed in a
geographically arranged card file in the Prints
and Photographs Reading Room.
U.S. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, "Former
Employee Gives Architectural Photographs to LC," U.S. Library
of Congress Information Bulletin, (Z733.U57I6) v.
37, October 6, 1978: 607-608.
Note: Information for this entry was compiled
in the late 1970's for inclusion in: Special Collections
in the Library of Congress: A Selective Guide. Compiled
by Annette Melville. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1980.
The entry was revised in 2000.
|