?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,500 - $ 5,000
(ARCHITECTURE / MARCEL BREUER.) Archive from a late office of the architectural team of Marcel Breuer and Hamilton Smith. Roughly 3 large boxes containing a wide array of material including photographs by Ezra Stoller, Ben Schnall, Shin Koyama, Joseph Molitor, and numerous unnamed photographers, as well as slides and gel positives of major commissions from the 1960s and 70s. Other material includes copies of reports, promotional publications, reproductions, diplomas, various awards and acknowledgments for projects, and more. Condition varies, but generally very good. Should be seen. New York, 1960s-70s
An interesting archive of material from late-career projects of the great modernist architect and designer. After his start at the Bauhaus and a successful career in Cambridge, Massachusetts both at Harvard and in private practice with his mentor, Walter Gropius, Breuer eventually settled in New York City in the 1940s where his firm thrived. Much of its success can be attributed to partnerships with talented associates he hired and with whom he would generously share credits for major projects. In the late 1950s, he accomplished a number of notable commissions with partner Hamilton Smith, the most famous being New York City's Whitney Museum of American Art (Now The Met Breuer).
This archive contains a number of photographs from that project including interior and exterior photographs, (with Stoller Studio stamps), data sheets, copies of architects' reports, and awards, among them a "New York State Award for 1967 to the Whitney Museum of American Art for Breuer and Smith's new structure." Signed by Nelson Rockefeller at the theatre at Lincoln Center, May 18, 1967.
In addition to The Whitney Museum, the second largest files of material pertain to Breuer and Hamilton's extensive work for St. John's University, 1965-68 including the celebrated St. John's Library and Abbey Church. Contents include photographs by Shin Koyama, Lee A. Hanley, along with several unattributed images, copies of master plan outlines, typed correspondence, and copies of structural reports.
Additional notable material includes papers for the Heckscher Museum, the Kuwait Markets, including a small sketch of the interior marked "this side reads right," likely in Breuer's hand, the Bobst Library at New York University, and Yale University's Becton Engineering and Applied Science Center, among other documentation. A detailed list of contents for the largest files (and more notable buildings) is available upon request.
