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McKim Mead and White Architectural Records Collection (ca. 1875 - 1950)
RepositoryNew York Historical Society, Patricia D. Klingenstein Library - Dept. of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections
Collection IDPR 42
Size286 linear feet (677 boxes, 13 drawers, etc.)
Collection Description
Charles McKim (1847-1909), William Rutherford Mead (1846-1928), and Stanford White (1853-1906) established their partnership in New York City in 1879 and soon became the premier architectural firm in the United States. Between 1879 and 1912, the firm received nearly 1,000 commissions, for a wide array of residential, institutional, commercial, and public buildings in New York and other cities. Influenced by their extensive travels (and training) in Europe, the partners designed primarily in the Beaux Arts style, becoming the leading proponents of a return to classicism as an expression of American architectural character. Among the firm's many notable buildings are New York's Pennsylvania Station (1910, razed 1963), the Morgan Library and Museum (1903, expanded 1928), the Brooklyn Museum (1895), and the Municipal Building (1909-1915).

While associated primarily with the Gilded Age, McKim, Mead and White continued to be an important force in the design world for more than three decades after the death of the last founding partner (Mead) in 1928, and trained many significant 20th century architects. The firm turned away from pure neoclassicism to embrace more modern aesthetics, such as the streamlining associated with the Art Deco era of the 1920s and 30s.

Newark's Pennsylvania Station, an outstanding example of Art Deco style, was designed by the firm and dedicated on March 23, 1935. The station's imposing waiting room, 175 feet in length, includes walls wainscoted with Montana rose-yellow travertine (used here for the first time in the East). Wall plaques illustrate the various forms of American transportation. The benches are of gray walnut, inlaid with aluminum. Four large light fixtures are hanging globes of white bronze and flashed opal glass, encircled with pierced bands displaying the signs of the Zodiac. A large West window is composed of sheets of translucent Alabama marble.
Collection Contents
The McKim, Mead and White Architectural Records Collection is very large. In addition to the boxes and drawers noted above, it includes 15 shelves of bound volumes and 3,046 rolls of architectural drawings. The material represents the major portion of the firm's records, consisting of more than 61,000 architectural drawings, including ink on linen, blueprints, and other media; 1,500 photographs, including prints and glass and film negatives; 700 boxes of correspondence and specifications; 54 ledgers, including 17 bill books (1878-1947), 10 cash books (1894-1944), 8 contract books (1903-1930), and 9 journals (1882-1942); 30 photo albums and scrapbooks; and more than 300 original line drawings made to illustrate "A Monograph of the Works of McKim, Mead & White, 1879-1915" (all numbers are approximate). The material contains extensive documentation of the firm's operations and of individual buildings, although most information about the firm's early years can be found in the photograph albums, clippings scrapbooks, and financial ledgers.

The collection is organized into series by format: architectural drawings, correspondence, specifications, photographs, scrapbooks and photograph albums, newspaper and journal clippings, financial records, and publications.

Newark's Pennsylvania Station appears in the series containing project specifications: Box III.47, Folders 5 and 6; Box III.48, Folders 1 and 5; and Box III.49, Folders 1 and 2.

Items in the Photographs series are housed by size (small, medium, and large), and within each size category are arranged alphabetically by project. Only the large photographs are listed at the item level, and in Box IV.67 there is a large photograph of Newark Penn Station's waiting room. For the small and medium-sized photographs there is a detailed inventory at the Library; these may include more Newark images.

The Correspondence series consists of approximately 665 Hollinger boxes of documents - primarily letters, but also a large amount of billing correspondence and some contracts - arranged by project. The online finding-aid does not describe this series in detail, but a detailed box list is available on-site, and it is likely to include some files on the Newark Penn Station project. The Financial Records series consists of 54 volumes, divided into the following seven categories: bill books, cash books, journals, ledgers, contract books, and miscellaneous financial record books. These documents are arranged chronologically and are dated through 1944; again, there is likely to be material on the Newark project here.
FormatsGraphics; Photographic materials; Textual materials
SubjectArchitecture / Building
Time Periods19th Century; 20th Century
LanguageEnglish
Access policyOpen for research
ProcessedYes
Finding AidYes
Finding Aid URLhttp://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/nyhs/mckim/mckim.html