Ryerson & Burnham Archival Collections

The Ryerson & Burnham Archives collect artists' and architects' papers that complement and extend the permanent collections of the museum's curatorial departments. The Archives' collections are notably strong in late 19th- and 20th-century American architecture, with particular depth in Midwest, Chicago School, Prairie School and organic architecture. Architects such as Edward Bennett, Daniel Burnham, Bruce Goff, Bertrand Goldberg, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright and events such as the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition are represented in a broad range of graphic and textual records. The Archives also collect the papers of artists, designers and scholars such as Ivan Albright, Irving Penn, André Mellerio, and Richard Ten Eyck.

Descriptions of all Ryerson & Burnham archival collections may be found here.

Ryerson & Burnham Digital Collections

The Ryerson & Burnham Digital Collections are comprised of various searchable digital image and text collections. These collections include only limited selections from our archival collections, and represent a relatively small portion of our total holdings; the majority of our collections are not digitized. These digital collections include:

1. Electronic surrogates of selected original archival materials from Ryerson & Burnham archival collections. Such materials may include photographs, slides, architectural drawings and prints, correspondence, printed papers and other materials.
[HALIC, Magic of America, Archival Image Collection]

2. Ryerson & Burnham archival finding aids, which are text resources that describe the holdings of our archival collections along with related biographical, administrative and access information.
[Finding Aids Collection]

3. Digital editions of other architectural image and text resources from the collections of the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries.
[Chicago Architectural Sketch Club, Chicago Architects Oral History Project]

For example, a keyword search across all collections for "Daniel Burnham" will retrieve portraits of Burnham, archival images of buildings designed by the architect, some correspondence to Burnham, a list of the years in which Burnham participated in the Chicago Architectural Sketch Club competitions, mentions of Burnham from several oral histories, as well as descriptions of Burnham-related archival holdings from all collections.

Given the breadth of collections in this digital archive, you may wish to limit your searches to either image or text collections.