Architecture

Special Collections holdings for architecture include the Willett-Pashley Architectural Library, the working library of a late nineteenth-century Chicago architectural firm; the Frank Lloyd Wright Collection, containing printed volumes, ephemera, and over 1000 photographs; and the associated manuscript collection of Curtis Besinger, a Taliesin Fellow from 1939 to 1955 and late KU Professor of Architecture.

Additional printed works on architecture are available in the named Architecture collection (call numbers beginning "Architecture") and the general Rare Books collection, both searchable using the KU Libraries Catalog.

Frank Lloyd Wright Collection

A collection of books by and about Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), as well as clippings, rare printed ephemera, and over 1000 photographs.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Collection was founded in 1969 and built largely through the efforts of Curtis Besinger, a Taliesin Fellow from 1939 to 1955 and late KU Professor of Architecture. The collection is made up of the following:

• books by and about Wright
• over a thousand photographs of his buildings and of life at Taliesin (particularly Taliesin West), most of them the gift of Elizabeth Gordon Norcross, former editor of House Beautiful
• a great many clippings and rare printed ephemera, such as Taliesin Eyes, the newsletter printed by the Taliesin Fellows

Associated manuscript collections include correspondence of the Taliesin Fellows with Prof. and Mrs. George Beal and the substantial body of Curtis Besinger's own papers.

Willett-Pashley Architectural Library

A collection of over 800 volumes from the working library of a late nineteenth-century Chicago architectural firm.

Acquired in 1965, this is the working library of a firm of late nineteenth-century Chicago architects. The Willett-Pashley collection consists of 800 volumes concerned with architecture and engineering during the formative period at the end of the nineteenth century. It contains a number of works demonstrating the early use of iron construction as well as many illustrated texts on the reproduction of European stone construction in American wood and iron.