Contact Details

Alexander Architectural Archive, University of Texas Libraries,
The University of Texas at Austin
PO Box P (BTL200 S5430)
Austin, TX 78713-8916 USA
Telephone: 512-495-4621
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/apl/aaa/

Alexander Archive Stacks

Beth Dodd's Office

Mission

The Alexander Architectural Archive at the University of Texas at Austin is an architectural research center of national importance. As a unit of the University of Texas Libraries within the Architecture and Planning Library, the Archive supports research and education about the history of the built environment by acquiring and preserving research collections and by making them accessible. The Archive also supports learning opportunities and scholarly activities for students studying preservation of the cultural record and archival enterprise.

Scope and Research Support

The Alexander Architectural Archive is a repository of over 100 collections of material preserved to enrich and serve our architectural heritage. Holdings include documentation involved in the management of a firm, the development of a project design through the finished product, and other activities occurring in the lives of architects, landscape architects, planners, designers, preservationists, historians, educators, and related businesses. These documents may also reflect personal travel, writings, educational activities, professional associations and other related interests.

The Alexander Architectural Archive supports instruction in the School of Architecture through the doctoral level in architectural design, history, preservation and community and regional planning; and the bachelor level in Interior Design. The Archive also supports research in history, art history, American Studies, anthropology, and engineering, as well as that undertaken by design professionals, governmental agencies, and others involved in the preservation and restoration of properties. The Alexander Architectural Archive is available to all serious inquirees for research and scholarship.

Preservation activities and issues are essential to the mission of the Alexander Architectural Archive. The Archive currently oversees and performs archival preservation work with assistance from the Kilgarlin Center for the Preservation of the Cultural Record. Additionally, the Archive offers storage and care guidelines to other institutions, caretakers of architectural records, and the general public. The Archive also supports the preservation of architectural records by sponsoring the Texas Committee for the Preservation of Architectural Records (TxCOPAR), which serves as a cooperative resource for institutions containing architectural, planning, and landscape records in Texas.

Origins

Blake Alexander started what has become known as the Alexander Architectural Archive in 1958, after he directed a team of student architects recording historic buildings in Pennsylvania for the Historic American Buildings Survey. Professor Alexander adapted the HABS format to his own course at UT, requiring students in his architectural history class to measure and draw historic Texas buildings as one of their assignments. Known as the Texas Architecture Archive, this rapidly expanding collection soon outgrew his office and was moved into a small storage room, otherwise known as “Alexander's closet. ”

In the mid-1960s, one of Professor Alexander’s students arrived with large paper sacks filled with tattered, water-damaged drawings. As Professor Alexander examined them, it became apparent that they had in fact been through a flood - the great Galveston hurricane of 1900. These drawings, by the well-known Galveston architect Nicholas Clayton, had been given to the student by Clayton's granddaughter and became the first professional records to be deposited in his collection.

The Clayton drawings opened up the prospect of seeking original drawings of other important Texas architects whose records needed to be preserved. In 1979, the General Libraries (now the University of Texas Libraries) became the repository of the records, and it was moved to the Architecture and Planning Library and named “The Architectural Drawings Collection.”

Other collections became available as word spread of this new resource. The family of Robert Ayres generously donated the records of the San Antonio firm of Ayres and Ayres. About the same time, Professor Alexander contacted a descendant of James Riely Gordon, one of the premier designers of Texas courthouses to obtain his vast collection of documents. Professor Alexander also helped secure the acquisition of the original design drawings for The University of Texas campus by Paul Philippe Cret.

Today, the Alexander Architectural Archive is the largest such resource in Texas, containing over a quarter of a million drawings and nearly 2,000 linear feet of papers, photographic material, models and ephemera, representing thousands of projects in Texas as well as New York, Chicago, California, Great Britain, and some Latin American countries. Professor Alexander was a pioneer in recognizing the importance of preserving architectural records. The resources he collected have played an important role in the restoration of many of Texas' most important buildings and continues to be essential for the study of American architectural history.

In 1997, the Texas Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians sponsored a campaign to name this valuable archive after its founder. The University, in support, recognized that without Alexander’s initiative, records of our architectural heritage would have perished from neglect. It is with great appreciation and celebration that the collection he founded is named the Alexander Architectural Archive.