History of the Collection
The Jefferson Architecture Collection was begun by Clarence Ward, the first director of Oberlin’s famous Allen Memorial Art Museum and the school’s first PhD-bearing art historian. Arriving in 1916, one of his first projects was to found an art library in what is now the museum’s East Gallery. Inspired by his friend I.T. Frary — the architectural critic, historian, photographer, and author of Thomas Jefferson, architect and builder (Richmond, 1931) – Ward looked to Thomas Jefferson’s library as a model.
He began the painstaking process of reconstructing Jefferson’s library as a means of pulling together an authoritative basis for modern artistic and technical knowledge about architecture, landscape, decorative and mechanical arts, and fine arts. In 1943, the bicentennial of Jefferson’s birth, Ward designed a “Jefferson Room” for the study of American architecture and to house his “Jefferson Books.” A seminar room, the Jefferson Books were “on shelves open to public inspection and handling.” … “This expression of trust in human integrity has not been violated to date.”[1]
In addition to securing Jefferson’s library, the room was used for seminars and contained the library’s American architecture titles, journals, and blueprints. The room also contained “mounted pictures of Renaissance architecture and the large collection of American architectural photographs for the Ward and I.T. Frary collections [2] as well as a lantern slide projector and screen [3].
When he retired from the college in 1949, the art library collection totalled nearly 25,000 books, prints, and photographs. By adding one or two titles a year the collection had grown to 46 titles in 1952.
1. Sims, Elizabeth Florence.
The Allen Memorial Art Museum Library, Oberlin, Ohio; a study, by Elizabeth Florence Sims.
[Cleveland, Ohio] School of Library Science, Western Reserve University, 1952. p. 33
2. Ibid
3. Sims p. 32