The use of slides as illustrations for lectures in the Department of Architecture goes back to the earliest history courses taught by John Galen Howard in 1905. In 1964, when the College of Environmental Design moved into Wurster Hall, a separate library was formed to collect and care for these visual materials, called the Visual Aids Collection. It consisted of slide and photograph collections formerly controlled by the Environmental Design Library. In 1980, the Visual Aids Collection was renamed the Architecture Slide Library, and in 2001 was renamed, as the Architecture Visual Resources Library. In 2008, reflecting the collection’s importance to all the departments in the college, the name changed once again to be the College of Environmental Design Visual Resources Center.

The Visual Resources Center currently holds more than 82,000 digital images, 300,000 35mm slides, 35,000 glass lantern slides, and 20,000 mounted study photographs. Our images cover a broad subject area, including buildings, gardens, cities, artworks, and cultural objects from pre-history to the present day.

The Staff