Architectural History

The Fowler Collection of Early Architectural Books

The original Fowler Architectural library was made up of four hundred and forty-eight items, featuring Vitruvius (40 editions, from 1495) and the five great protagonists of Renaissance architecture: Alberti (14 editions, from 1485), Serlio (33 editions, from 1545), Palladio (32 editions, from 1554), Vignola (39 editions, from 1563), and Scamozzi (13 editions, from 1583), as well as works by English, French and German architects. The collection is fully described in The Fowler Architectural Collection of the Johns Hopkins University, compiled by Laurence Hall Fowler and Elizabeth Baer (Baltimore: The Evergreen House Foundation, 1961). The volume was reprinted in 1991 in San Francisco by Alan Wofsy Fine Arts.

In the 1970s, William A. Gumberts and others significantly augmented Fowler's collection with their gifts. A microfilm edition of the expanded Fowler collection is available from Primary Source Media. The Fowler Collection is one of the most important collections of early works on classical and Renaissance architecture in the United States. The library continues to add titles to the Fowler Collection, which now numbers 569.

Laurence Hall Fowler Papers

Complementing Fowler's book collection are most of the working papers from his architectural practice which specialized in residences and public buildings in Baltimore from 1906-45. Included also are Fowler's photographs documenting other architects' work in the area from 1915 to 1920. An on-line database of his work may be accessed here.

Peabody Collection

The core of the Peabody Library collection was assembled between 1867 and 1916, and the architecture portion resembles the library of a practicing architect containing contemporary books and periodicals. The collection is strong in the area of British and American domestic architecture of the period 1800 through 1910. The Peabody collection also supplements the Fowler Collection with materials on European architecture from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Also included in the Peabody are many subjects complementary to architecture such as travel literature, topography and furniture design with books by Manwaring, Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton, as well as early twentieth-century handbooks on ceramics, textiles, and metalwork.

Manuscript Collections

Manuscript collections that focus on architecture include a holographic notebook on drawing (MS 457); the Charles Center Collection (MS 487), which documents the development of the Charles Center complex; and the Urban Planning Conference Collection (MS GAR023) which documents the work of architects, builders, civic leaders, and government officials brought together to prepare for functional city-planning in the post-war years.