Architecture Media Library
Do you have old architecture and design magazines in your attic, basement, office, storage unit, or library? Details. We pay for shipping!
We also archive abandoned architecture websites and podcasts.
Welcome to the USModernist® Library, the world's largest open digital collection of major US architecture media with over 5 million downloadable pages representing over 25,000 issues. At 5 million pages, stacking them would reach a height of 1640 feet. If you put the pages end to end, it would reach 3300 miles, or the distance from New York to the UK. Access to legacy publications has never been more critical for preservation, and now architects, realtors, owners, sellers, and buyers have an easy way to research 20th-century architecture magazine coverage. All across America, old architecture magazines are left rotting in attics, basements, libraries, and offices - if they haven't already been thrown away. We scan US architecture magazines and make them freely available to the public - in text- searchable, printable, and downloadable pdfs.
Major donors include: Tod Williams Billie Tsien, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo, Pei Cobb Freed, Pei Partners, Madhu Beriwal, Smithsonian Institution, UNC-Greensboro, Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture, University of Hawai'i Manoa, Atomic Ranch, AIA National, Savannah College of Art and Design, Palm Springs Museum of Art, Cranbrook, Baltimore Museum of Art, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Robert Keil, Julie Taylor, Michael Raso, dozens of AIA Chapters, and IIT Architecture.
Podcasts
Websites/Blogs
The Eames Library / APT Building Technology Heritage Library
Esoteric Modernist Magazines 1890-1939 / Smithsonian Design Museum (aka Cooper Hewitt)
The US Modernist Library
provides an invaluable service for the teaching and student communities,
allowing ease of access to a wealth of materials on contemporary
architecture that should aid all scholars of the built environment. Its
comprehensive catalog of publications rivals or exceeds that of most
universities, and including ACSA publications will help to deepen its
fundamental holdings.
The Neutra Institute for
Survival through Design applauds this important effort to use digital means
to retain images and thoughts of our architectural past for multiple
audiences.
By assembling well-known
publications into one location, the USModernist Library serves as a
comprehensive, one-stop source for modernist design literature. Historians,
researchers, practitioners, and students will find it of great value for
generations to come.
Please consider joining this effort to support the USModernist Library. This impressive archive offers the opportunity to bring library collections in remote locations to the students and interested scholars regardless of location. --Dean Jose Gamez, UNC Charlotte College of Arts+Architecture
As a marketing
professional at a small architecture firm, I rely on the USModernist Library
regularly for archival research that supports our current projects,
conference presentations, and editorial content. It’s an indispensable
resource—well organized, easily searchable, and rich with material that
would be nearly impossible to find elsewhere. The USModernist Library is a
vital resource that preserves architectural history—making it accessible,
searchable, and useful to the entire design community.
The US Modernist Archive
is the most comprehensive source for published articles about Modernist
architecture in the US. I think of it as the Library of Congress for modern
architecture. Why not free up your shelf space to make periodicals
available to a worldwide audience? --Frank Harmon FAIA, Author, Native
Places
It seems to us at the
Richard Meier-designed Douglas House in Harbor Springs Michigan that it
would be smart cost saving for colleges and universities that have
costly to store and difficult to access books and periodicals to gift
excess or beyond school policy retention guidelines architectural books and
design periodicals to USModernist where the information can be digitized and
made searchable for those of us that serve the broader architectural
community.
The USModernist
Library’s digital collection is and will continue to be one of the most
valuable contributions to the architectural profession and scholarship. It
puts our vast architectural heritage at the fingertips of students,
architects, and the public as never before.
Without doubt, the greatest boon to research in Architecture, Urbanism,
Interiors, and Construction, since the advent of search engines, is the
USModernist Library.
Architectural journals, even more than books, embody the living development
of the architectural world, conveying the adventure of how our built
environments evolved. Moreover, the
USModernist Library solves the access
problems of geography, travel time, building opening time, and the
increasing barriers to institutional resources.
Films
2024 - Arts and
Architecture: The Case Study Houses
2015 - Building Wright Today
(Petra Island), by Jim Libby
2014 - Little Boxes: The Legacy of Henry Doelger, by Rob Keil and Monique Anton
2013 - People in Glass Houses: The Legacy of Joseph Eichler by Monique Anton
2013 - Archiculture: Inside Architectural Education, by David Krantz and Ian Harris
2002 - Elizabeth A. T. Smith with Thorne, Knorr, Koenig, Killingsworth, Hensman, and Shulman
1990's
1989 - Home: Parody by Sandy Perlbinder, Madeline Warren, and Bruce Feirstein
1970's - Charles Kahn audio interviews of architects and engineers
1970's - Diamonstein-Spielvogel Video Archive - also on YouTube 1969 - Ulrich Franzen's Street
1968 - Charles Vaseff filmed the Boston Government Center - plus a video on Wright
1960's - A is for Architecture, produced by Ann Seltman Smart and Ted Daniel for UNC Public TV
1950's - Five Houses By Frank Lloyd Wright
Books
2022 The Radical Practice of James H. Garrott, by Anthony Fontenot
2014 Searching for a Voice, autobiography by Henry Sanoff
2014 Benjamin Forrest Williams, by Jillian Goldberg
2007 NCSU School of Design: The Kamphoefner Years, by Roger Clark
2006 The Town and Gown Architecture of Chapel Hill NC 1795-1975, by Ruth Little
2001 GSA Modernism
1998 History of the NC American Institute of Architects
1993 Keck and Keck, by Robert Boyce
1991 Frank Lloyd Wright Guide, by William Allin Storrer
1990 Architects and Builders in North Carolina
1984 John Erwin Ramsay FAIA: Portrait of an Architect
1982 MOMA's International Style Exhibition of 1932 by Richard Guy Wilson
1960 The South Builds, by Terry Waugh, Elizabeth Waugh, and Henry Kamphoefner
1960's Douglas Fir Second Homes for Leisure Living
1958 Masters of Modern Architecture by John Peter
1957 Rossmoor in Long Beach CA
1954 Quality Budget Houses by Katherine Morrow Ford and Thomas Creighton
1954 Treasury of Contemporary Houses
1952 Living Spaces by George Nelson
1951 The American House Today by Katherine Morrow Ford
1950's Modernist Mail-Order Houses
1950's Architectural Record Mid-Century Houses Technical Guide
1946 MOMA If You Want to Build a House by Elizabeth B. Mock
1945 Tomorrow's House by George Nelson and Henry Wright
1940 The Modern House in America, by James Ford and Katherine Morrow Ford
1940 Houses by Coffey Raleigh NC


































































































































































































