Lithographs: Architectural Resources at the American Antiquarian Society

The AAS has an extensive collection of nineteenth-century lithographs, many in color, of rural houses and farms, colleges and academies, and views of city streets. The collection includes lithographs from artists such as John Pendleton, considered to be America's first successful practicing lithographer and teacher to Nathaniel Currier, and those of Currier & Ives, who ran a successful firm from 1857 until 1907. Other lithographers included are Endicott & Company (1849-1852) of New York, Major & Knapp, who were active from the 1860s until the 1880s, and Thomas Sinclair, an artist from Scotland who was one of the first to experiment with chromolithography in the 1830s.

Hayward's McEvers Mansion.

Mendel's Knox College.

Pendleton's Franklin House.

Many chromolithographs in the collection are from David Thomas' Valentine's Manual, which offer views of New York streets and buildings; in George Hayward's New York & City Banks and the McEvers Mansion scene, for example, men are seen in front of the McEvers Mansion and banks. The mansion had been the home of Gen. Wilhelm von Knyphausen, a German general who led British troops during the Revolution. Also in the collection is a beautiful chromolithograph of a house, Sunnyside in a country setting (Currier & Ives). Commercial buildings and street scenes are also represented; the Franklin House in New Haven Connecticut, for example, was lithographed by Pendleton Printers. Pendleton who worked in Boston and New York, sold his shop in New York to Nathaniel Currier in 1834. Also noteworthy is the Gothic revival building at Knox College with men and women in the foreground by Edward Mendel.

Funding from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts has enabled AAS to scan these prints which will be available through David Rumsey's website, David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, in late 2006.

Holland's Sun Quick Step.

Ripley's Mount Vernon Waltz.

Currier & Ives Sunnyside.

AAS also maintains a strong collection of lithographed sheet music covers, many with famous American architecture. One such cover, .Mount Vernon Waltz. was dedicated to the Ladies of the Mount Vernon Association. In it E.L. Ripley shows J.H. Bufford's depiction of the Virginia estate. The collection also holds examples of buildings such as a chromolithograph of the first iron building in Baltimore. Albert Holland's, .Sun Quick Step. is dedicated to the readers of the Baltimore Sun.