Athenaeum of Philadelphia- Major Archival Collections

Major Archival Collections

The Athenæum Building Competition

Between 1836 and 1845 the Athenæum sponsored a series of competitions and entertained submissions from most of the leading American architects of the day. In addition to William Strickland's proposal, designs were received from John Haviland, Napoleon LeBrun, Thomas S. Stewart, Thomas Ustick Walter, and several other less famous hopefuls. Ultimately the commission was awarded to the young Scot John Notman (1810-1865), who generated several designs in a variety of styles before the indecisive building committee settled on a simple Italianate palazzo. Notman's building--albeit expanded and modernized--continues to serve the Athenæum after 150 years. As for the forty drawings that survive from the nineteenth-century competitions, they remain the core of a graphic legacy that has grown to more than 150,000 drawings representing the work of approximately 1,000 American architects. While heavily weighted to drawings of Philadelphia origin, the collection is national in scope, including drawings for buildings in most states and several countries.

Irvin R. Glazer Theater Collection

Mastbaum Theater, Main Auditorium, 20th & Market
Streets, Philadelphia, Hoffman & Henon, Architects,
1929, Glazer Collection

This collection represents a lifetime of collecting and research by the donor, Irvin R. Glazer (1922 - 1996). Included in the 70 cubic feet of material are original photographs, dedication programs, playbills, news clippings and correspondence relating to nearly 1,000 theater buildings. Although the bulk of the Glazer Collection documents Philadelphia theaters, there is extensive information on dozens of New York theaters as well as playhouses and motion-picture houses throughout the world.

One component that makes the Glazer Collection particularly rich is the hundreds of studio photographs from the prolific architectural firm of William H. Hoffman and Paul J. Henon, Jr., who designed 32 theater buildings in Philadelphia, including their masterpiece, the Mastbaum (1929). The Glazer Collection is also supported by the photo and inventory files of the Stanley-Warner Company, the leading motion-picture distributor in Philadelphia during the first half of the twentieth century.

The Glazer Collection joins the Athenæum's already substantial holdings documenting Philadelphia's architectural theater heritage. One of the earliest Athenæum architectural drawings for a theater building in Philadelphia is John Skirving's design for the interior of Musical Fund Hall (c.1843). The Athenæum also preserves two sets of 1854 competition drawings for the Academy of Music, one by Edwin Forrest Durang and the other by John Notman. Under a long-term loan agreement, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania has placed at the Athenæum two additional sets of drawings for the Academy: Stephen D. Button's unsuccessful competition entry, as well as the winning Napoleon LeBrun and Gustav Runge drawings.

Several early-twentieth-century theaters are also documented in the archives of the Ballinger Company and of Hodgens & Hill, architects. The Athenæum maintains a set of stunning Art Moderne designs from 1932 by Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker for a proposed, but unexecuted, Concert Hall for the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Apart from the Glazer gift, the largest cache of original theater materials at the Athenæum is the Magaziner Collection; it contains more than 500 original architectural drawings documenting eighteen motion-picture theaters that Louis Magaziner (1878-1956) and his partners designed between 1911 and 1950, including the Uptown, Ogontz, Arcadia and Midway. The Magaziner Collection is one of the most complete at the Athenæum, including working drawings, photographs, specifications, building agreements and correspondence.

In 1994 The Athenæum of Philadelphia and Dover Publications jointly published Irvin R. Glazer, Philadelphia Theaters: A Pictorial Architectural History from the Collections of The Athenæum of Philadelphia which reproduces 141 photographs and drawings of Philadelphia theaters dating from 1724 to 1991. Of particular importance is a chronological list of all known Philadelphia theaters, including location, architect, date of construction and demolition, theater type, and size of the house. This 90 page, large format, paperback is available by mail from the Athenæum for $11.95, plus $3.00 postage and handling. [See, Bookstore]

Photographic Archive

The architectural photograph collection, numbering more than 300,000 images, ranges in date from the 1840s to the late twentieth century. Most of these document the completed commissions of architects represented in the drawing collection, such as the 5,000 images in the Ballinger Company Collection, c.1905-1950.