Category Archives: special collections

library, special collections

APL Spotlight Interview: Tony Tomasello

Tony in the Battle Hall Reading Room

Back in 2014, Stephanie Phillips interviewed APL’s interim Architecture and Planning Librarian, Katie Pierce Meyer, who has since accepted the permanent position at APL as the Humanities Librarian for Architecture and Planning. We have not shone the spotlight on anyone else since, and we decided it was time to recognize the amazing work Tony Tomasello does by caring for APL’s physical collection!

Tony is our local book preservation technician, working in conjunction with Wendy Martin’s team at PCL in Preservation and Digital Curation Services. As a preservation technician, he works 19 hours for UTL. He explains rather modestly the nature of his job:

Ah well,  [my role is] the same as everyone’s at the libraries I suppose. Just to see to it that the collection material here is made available to anyone who needs it now and into the future. So more particular just make sure the books are in good shape and can be read without risking its availability for future patrons.

He continues discussing the day to day of his job:

I pretty much just do it – the ones that need the most repair, I give my fullest attention so I pretty much just fix them as they come in. I do the most severe ones first or if someone just really needs the book, you know, if it’s in rough shape I’ll do that one really quickly. Special Collections materials, I can say are my highest priority. They’re the most fragile. They’re the ones that are most at risk for long term use, and they’re probably our most valuable materials as well.*

His interest in preservation stems from his love of the relics and experiences of the past – the connections made through the experience of the books themselves.  Tony explains:

I guess it starts from my character. I have always had a fondness for old things – old music, old furniture, old books, old ways of doing things, riding bicycles instead of driving cars, looking nostalgically back on trains.

While Tony had worked for the library for several years prior to assuming his current role, he jumped at the chance to become our local preservation technician when the position opened. He was initially trained by his predecessor, Lorrie Dong – a Ph.D. graduate from School of Information at UT. When asked how he developed his expertise, Tony notes:

I had excellent teachers. First Lorrie who trained me before she left. She just taught me all the basics, the procedures I still do the most often which are rebacks, end paper replacements, and tip-ins for pages that have come loose or need to be replaced, and doing minor repairs on tears and things like that. Then I got help from the larger preservation department, and they taught me even more procedures like how to make custom housing for books that we’re really not allowed to repair without ruining their value in someway.

Tony also taught himself other skills that he needs to tend to the collection –

Then there are things I picked up on my own – I watched YouTube videos to learn how to sew. The rest of it is doing it, doing as many repairs as I can everyday I’m here.

When asked about his favorite aspect of the work, Tony explains:

Apart from getting my hands on some really old, rare books from time to time, there are certain satisfactions from the job…like being able to work slowly, take my time in a world that mostly rewards speed. I get to take my time and really care for what’s in front of me. And then there’s a certain satisfaction in the math, just measuring things, drawing straight lines. I think there must be something but not really close to the satisfaction that Kepler must have had when he looked up at the sky and saw that the celestial bodies were moving in a way that his math predicted. I get the same satisfaction when I measure out a new case and find that it fits the books.

In his final thoughts, it was evident that conservation and preservation are less a job and more a calling. He concludes:

I have some vague philosophical ideas about the importance of my work – just about maintaining enduring objects that are the basis of our culture that are ignored by the larger part of the populous. I think it’s important to have little monuments – like little physical reminders of the past. I’m glad that I get to have some part in maintaining those objects. He continues: It would be horrible to loose the paper, the board, and the glue, and the sewing, and the little mementos of past people’s work.

 *I asked Dan Orozco to comment upon all the work Tony does for APL, knowing that his contributions are wide ranging. Dan writes of Tony’s work:

It has truly been awe inspiring to see the growth of Tony’s knowledge and abilities at doing book repair.  I was very alarmed at the demise of the Kilgarlin Program at the iSchool. We had an impressive run of conservators come through to practice their craft in this position.  My fear abated when I saw the skill with which Tony takes care of our Special Collections materials. He also does our pest monitoring and dehumidifiers in Special Collections – very important in a 105 year old building.

If this wasn’t enough, Tony can also provide back up for every position at Architecture. He can create reserve lists, undertake ILS scanning, and he knows our collection as well if not better than most.  Recently, Tony created lists in Sierra to oversee a massive weeding project to free up about 300 linear feet in the stacks of the circulating collection.  He has also been here to help with extra events in our reading room, from symposiums to filming chancellor McRaven’s interview to hosting first lady Laura Bush. This young man can truly do it all.

library, special collections

Special Collections Capstone

This semester is my last at the iSchool, which means I am working on my Capstone project. I am sure it comes as no surprise that I have elected to develop a project at the Architecture and Planning Library!

For my project, I will undertake an assessment of APL’s Special Collections so that we might better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the collection. Moreover, I hope that the process undertaken here can serve as model for other collections on campus.

In working with Special Collections, my goal has always been to raise the visibility of the collection, even if it was book by book through the Friday Finds post. I always enjoy sharing the materials that I find within. The project will hopefully raise the visibility of the collection on a much larger scale. Throughout the semester I will post about the project to keep you updated and in the end I will point you to the resources I create about Special Collections!

Friday Find!, special collections

Friday Finds: New Special Collections Materials

We’ve recently added material to Special Collections, and I wanted to share two of the items. They will be on display in the foyer of the Architecture and Planning Library until October. Stop in to see them!

Saltire Society. Exhibition of work by Charles Rennie Mackintosh: architecture, furniture, paintings, specially made scale models: illustrated catalogue. Foreword by Thomas Howarth. Edinburgh: Veitch & Hadley, 1953.

Mackintosh_1953

The Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, February 9, 1956.
Bartlesville, Oklahoma: H.C. Price Co., 1956.

special collections

Friday Finds: The Books of a Thousand Homes vol. 1

Smith, Henry Atterbury, ed. The Books of a Thousand Homes.  vol. 1. New York : Home Owners Service Institute, 1927.

ThousandHomes_1
Front Cover

While doing a little bit of research on  our collection, I came across this title and was intrigued by it – The Books of a Thousand Homes. I thus pulled it from Special Collections this morning. (The book was also reprinted by Dover, as 500 Small Houses of the Twenties.) When I pulled our copy from the shelf, I was delighted by the house on the cover. I also loved that reproductions of blueprints are included in the section, “From Plan Book to Finished Home.”

The AIA Historical Directory of American Architects has a brief biography of the editor,  Henry Atterbury Smith. The Acknowledgement by the President of the Home Owners Institute, preceding the collection of plans and drawings, provides greater background on Smith. He writes:

Henry Atterbury Smith has become internationally known for his unusual and successful work in the development of practical forms of multi-family housing, being the originator and designer of the open-stair type of apartment and tenement housing the masses at low rental. The East River Homes designed for Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Sr., at a cost of over $2,000,000 to house originally 400 tubercular families, are a monument to his efforts. (Acknowledgment)

While the book is valuable for those researching American homes in 1920s and 1930s, I am curious about the origins and history of our copy. When we think about books as objects, we see them as  distinct from other copies of the work, each with their own histories and stories – though sometimes hidden. For this reason, I am always excited to stumble upon one of the works for which we know the former owner.

The Books of A Thousand Homes at Architecture and Planning:

Several different types of tape have been used to repair the pages of A Thousand Homes, while other significant tears were left untreated.  Someone created a thin bookmark that I missed on my first pass through the book, because it was tucked neatly into the spine. The note on the bookmark reads: 110 comfortable + pretty.  Some of the pages have been torn away and are missing, while  several of the houses have been checked in pencil. A book plate for the Library of the University of Texas has been affixed to the front cover’s end papers and the call number is Dewey, suggesting it was not a recent addition to the collection. No record exists for how this copy came into our collection, however. I can only speculate about who might have been responsible for the additions and subtractions to this work.

special collections

Friday Finds: Domestic Architecture

North American Construction Company. Aladdin Homes. Bay City, Mich. : The Company, [1916].

Special Collections houses catalog no. 28 (1916) from Aladdin Homes. The catalog offered “Readi-Cut Houses” in which one would purchase the material and plan directly from the company. The company offers several arguments for purchasing an Aladdin Home.

An appeal to modernity:

“The Aladdin System of Construction is Built on This Principle”: Modern power-driven machines can do BETTER work at a lower cost than hand labor. Then every bit of work that CAN be done by machines SHOULD be so done. The steel worker with a  little hack-saw trying to cut and fit the steel girders of the modern skyscraper should be no more out of place than the modern carpenter cutting sills, joists, and rafters. The skyscraper framework is cut to fit by machines in the steel mills, marked and numbered ready for erection. The lumber in the Aladdin house is cut to fit by machines in the Aladdin mills, marked and numbered ready for erection. The steel system is twenty years old – the Aladdin system eleven years old. (pg. 3)

Man’s ability to conquer nature:

“Waste- and What It Means to You”: Our buyers go actually into the woods, confer with the owners and cutters of the timber and buy the right lengths that will come out of the woods, through the sawmills and into our own mills in the right lengths. We don’t take raw material in lengths and sizes as chances to come, but as it should come to conform to our standards. In many instances the cross-cut saw in the hands of the woodsman is directed by our needs so that no other saw is touched to the lumber at any time. (pg. 6)

An appeal to family:

The Thelma: Home! Who loves their home more than the American family? Every day, father is looking forward to the time when he can provide a home for his loved ones – a place of comfort and enjoyment, shelter and protection. Mother has it all planned, has everything arranged. Her highest ambition is a home and its comforts. And every mother should have a home. The children – the ruddy faced kiddies – are anxious too for the great day. They want a home of their own and will love it and prize it as much as mother and father.

To this type of American family is dedicated the Aladdin home. (pg. 15)

Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University maintains the company’s archive and has digitized the catalogs and additional records, if you find ours intriguing.

Enger, Kristen. Hytta Mi. Oslo: Mittet & Co., [1946].

I discovered Enger’s work near the Aladdin Homes and was intrigued by the log cabin on its cover. Google Translate informs me that Hytta Mi translates from Norwegian to My Cabin. The work is a collection of 65 cabins designed by architects for summer, weekend, hunting, or fishing cabins. Most of the designs have the rustic exterior of log construction; however, a couple appear to have the clean lines of  mid-century design.

 hytta_mi

special collections

Friday Finds: Grotesque Architecture or Rural Amusement

Wrighte, William. Grotesque Architecture; or, Rural Amusement: Consisting of Plans, Elevations, and Sections, for Huts, Retreats, Summer and Winter Hermitages, Terminaries, Chinese, Baths, Mosques, Moresque Pavilions, Grotesque and Rustic Seats, Green Houses, &c. Many of which may be executed with Flints, Irregular Stones, Rude Branches, and Roots of Trees. The Whole Containing Twenty-Eight New Designs with Scales to Each. To which is added an Explanation with the Method of Executing Them. London: J. Taylor, 1802.

Wrighte_Frontispiece

April is World Landscape Architecture Month, and I realized today that I have nearly let April slip by without recognizing it. I thus selected William Wrighte’s work which includes designs for follies, bridges, baths, and water features. The style of the designs reflects rustic and Gothic architecture as well as an influences from Eastern cultures. Each plate is accompanied by a brief description to aid in the construction of the structures with tips on its ornamentation or siting.

special collections

Friday Finds: Built in USA

Museum of Modern Art. Built in USA since 1932. Edited by Elizabeth Mock. Forward by Philip F. Goodwin. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1945.

Museum of Modern Art. In USA Erbaut, 1932-1944. Edited by Elizabeth Mock. Forward by Philip F. Goodwin. Wiesbaden: Metopen Verlag, [1948].

While I was in Special Collections, pulling books for a class  visit in a few weeks,  I came across MoMA’s Built in the USA, both the American and German editions. Each still had its original cover. What I found particularly striking about the covers was the different representations of American architecture. The American cover is a black and white photograph of Heckendorf House (1939) in Modesto, CA by John Funk. The German cover rather has a stylized drawing of a modern skyscraper.

special collections

Southern Architect and Building News: Update

In the summer of 2010, Amanda Keyes blogged about the journal  Southern Architect and Building News housed in APL’s Special Collections  (for reference: Architectural Drawing, Now and Then). I wanted to provide an update regarding the work that was done, as researchers pepper us with questions now and then.

Ms. McDougal’s kind gift provided APL the opportunity to build and test a prototype database to index the material in Southern Architect and Building News. Additionally, a cataloging manual based upon the guidelines established by the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals was also written. Unfortunately, the initiative to index and digitize the journal was never fulfilled. APL has not had the resources to either digitize or create article level metadata around the journal content. We are excited to have the opportunity to revisit this project by applying for CLIR’s Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives: Enabling New Scholarship through Increasing Access to Unique Materials grant competition.

special collections

Friday Finds: Fireplaces

For the past couple of weeks, I have been contemplating the transmission of ideas as it relates to architecture. While browsing Special Collections, I found several books on fireplaces – two catalogs, one a history, and the last a reprint of an eighteenth-century pattern book – that provide another opportunity to think a bit further about ideas on the move.

Architectural Decorating Company (Chicago, Ill.). Fireplaces: catalog no. 101. Chicago: Architectural Decorating Company, [19–].

The writer of the catalog proclaims the importance of the fireplace to any American home:

For ages at the twilight hour humans have drawn together at the firelight’s cheerful glow. In habitations throughout the centuries, the fireplace has received special attention, and some of the loveliest art of all ages has been lavished upon it.

Today, thanks to modern methods of production, the best of classic mantel designs from various periods are available to every home. For the bungalow or palace, there is an appropriate mantel in cast stone whose lines will focus the very spirit of the home into a glowing shrine about which the family may gather. (pg. 19)

Each page is dedicated to a single fireplace with a black and white photograph, measurements, molding profile, and an identified style. The styles include Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, Adam, Colonial, Tudor, Georgian, Italian, and several variations on the theme of Renaissance. The intended audience of the catalog is builders and architects. The writer notes “They [fireplaces] help close sales.” (pg. 1)

Young & Martin, Ltd., London. The HUE (Heat, Utility, Economy) adaptable barless fire; a book of designs for discriminating home-lovers. 15th ed. [London? 19–?].

The second catalog comes from a British company in which a new type of stove can be placed into an existing fireplace. Accordingly:

The “HUE” has been placed before the public as an Easy, Inexpensive and Efficient method of converting the old-fashioned, coal-wasting type of grate into a modern barless stove, possessing all the advantages of the very latest improvements in open grates without the necessity of pulling down mantelpieces and removing existing stoves. (pg. 2)

The models are assigned one or two to a page, accompanied by measurements, a rendering – some reproduced in color – materials and finish. Unlike the catalog from the Architectural Decorating Company, the target audience appears to be the general public. Some of the illustrations, for example, create atmosphere and context so that the customer would not have to imagine how the fireplace might look in their homes. The cover includes an illustration of the “glowing shrine” as described in the previous catalog. Furthermore, Young & Martin, Ltd. refrain from architectural styles, preferring to bestow names onto their fireplaces like “Hampton” or “Windsor.”

Our copy is well worn. A previous owner sketched a ruler onto the rendering of the “Henley.”

HUE_14_15
Pgs. 14-15

Rothery, Guy Cadogan. English chimney-pieces, their design and development from the earliest times to the nineteenth century; with an architectural notice by A. L. Kocher. New York, Architectural Book Publishing Co. [1927].

Guy Cadogan Rothery provides a brief history of the fireplace from the medieval period to the nineteenth century, followed by an extensive photo essay and accompanied with some architectural drawings of fireplaces. Our copy of English Chimney-Pieces belonged to J. A. Sherman of Ipswich with an associated date of August 1928. After a bit of research, I was not able to positively identify Sherman as an architect. A previous owner of the book, whether Sherman or otherwise, taped a drawing of a fireplace into the front end papers of the work.

Langley, Batty. 1750. The city and country builder’s and workman’s treasury of designs: or, The art of drawing and working the ornamental parts of architecture. Illustrated by upwards of four hundred … designs … engraved on one hundred and eighty-six copper-plates, for piers, gates, doors [etc.] … With an appendix of fourteen plates of trusses for girders and beams, different sorts of rafters, and a variety of roofs, &c. To which are prefixed, the five orders of columns, according to Andrea Palladio … The whole interspersed with sure rules for working all the varieties of raking members in pediments, modillions, &c. … By B. L. Boston: Boston Architectural Club, 1922.

Of the four books, the reprint issued by the Boston Architectural Club of B. Langley’s architectural drawings for various decorative elements – including fireplaces – is my favorite. Our copy is part of the Paul Cret collection.  While the work is a facsimile of an eighteenth-century work, it also includes extensive advertisements often associated with a trade publications. I find the juxtaposition of these two elements speaks to both historical practice and need.

special collections

Stuff and Things: Bethlehem Steel

Bethelem_SpecialCollectionsWhile in Special Collections last week, I happened to look up and I caught sight of the word “Bethlehem” on one the supporting beams.  And then I got super excited, which may not be everyone’s reaction.

Prior to the Architecture and Planning Library, I worked at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. Whenever I told people that I lived in Bethlehem, their reaction was usually: Oh like Mad Men.

If you are familiar with the episode, New Amsterdam (Season One), you might remember that Bethlehem, PA was home to Bethlehem Steel.  And I am madly in love with the factory ruins. The history of the steel mill is complicated, and I am an outsider. However, I care very deeply about the town and the factory. BSteel_LogoI recognize, however,  that my appreciation for the site comes from a different place than those that worked at the steel mill and lived in Bethlehem while it was in operation.  Whenever the weather was good, I would  walk home from the university and cross the New Street Bridge to the north side of town. I often would pause for moment, captivated by stacks. Occasionally, they would be artfully illuminated at night and would glow the like the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz.

If you are intrigued by the photos, Lehigh University Libraries has two projects that seek to document the history associated with the steel mill and Bethlehem, PA. The first is Beyond Steel: An Archive of Lehigh Valley Industry and Culture. The second is Still Looking for You: A Bethlehem Place + Memory Project. Or feel free to stop by and chat about the projects and the site.