Ongoing

Van Alen Archives

Van Alen Institute has spent more than 130 years at the intersection of design ambition and civic life. Our archive,  comprising thousands of competition boards, jury records, photographs, and correspondence, is one of the most significant collections of American architectural history in existence. Much of it has never been seen by the public.

With materials from 1893 onward, our physical archives include 254 linear feet of institutional records, 43.5 linear feet of photography, and more than 4,000 original drawings. Records include the institution’s founding documents, correspondences, design competition submissions, travel logs, and invitations and promotional materials for events such as the Beaux Arts Ball. Approximately 25% of this has been digitized, largely submissions to the long-running Paris Prize in Architecture and other prominent design competitions.

Our physical archives are not yet available to the public. Currently, our archivist and student interns are processing and organizing more than 250 boxes of institutional records and design documents. We’re still discovering what the contents are and how to best organize them for ease of access. Our goal is to eventually provide public access to our full archives and raise awareness within the design community of its value as an educational and research resource.

Society of Beaux-Arts Architects (1894–1941)

Founded in 1894 by a group of American architects—formerly students at the Ecole Nationale et Speciale des Beaux-Arts in Paris—the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects (SBAA) offered an opportunity to study the French Beaux-Arts architectural style. To complement and enrich its architecture program, SBAA went on to expand its programming to include departments of decorative sculpture and mural painting, run jointly with the National Sculpture Society and the Society of Mural Painters.

Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (1916–55)

Due in part to this expansion, SBAA formally separated its educational and social activities. In 1916, SBAA members founded the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design (BAID) under a provisional charter granted by the Regents of the University of the State of New York. With increased membership, BAID’s programming accommodated contemporary practicing architects, artists, and novice candidates interested in the field of education. While SBAA was dissolved in 1941, BAID continued as an independent educational organization.

National Institute for Architectural Education (1956–95)

In 1956, BAID reorganized as the National Institute for Architectural Education (NIAE), tacitly acknowledging that its affiliation with the Beaux-Arts no longer served its educational mission. In an introduction to its first annual yearbook, NIAE openly positioned itself as an organization committed to cultivating and supporting diverse architectural curricula among schools throughout the country. Over four decades, NIAE generated hundreds of popular design competitions regularly incorporated into the curricula of dozens of architecture schools.

Van Alen Institute (1996–present)

In 1995, the institute was named in honor of William Van Alen, Brooklyn-born architect of the Chrysler Building and recipient of SBAA’s prestigious Paris Prize in 1908–09. At this time the organization began to focus on New York City’s public realm, launching initiatives to reconsider locations such as Governors Island and Times Square. Van Alen Institute’s current mission is to create equitable cities through community-led inclusive design. To achieve this, we facilitate public space projects and educational initiatives that build unconventional coalitions of designers, local stakeholders, and city leaders.

Our existing digital archive has more than 2,400 digitized objects, representing about 25% of our total archives. It is a rich window into a century’s worth of design competitions that have nurtured generations of architects and urban thinkers.

To improve access to our archives, our digital archive will be redesigned and relaunched in 2027, with plans to greatly expand the content available in the coming years.

Our 2017 publication Fellowships at Van Alen traces the evolution and growth of Van Alen Institute through our history of competitions and fellowship programs for young architecture students. Student drawings mark shifts in educational approaches and style from the Beaux-Arts to Modernism and beyond. At the same time, excerpts from letters, jury notes, and interviews tell of a more fundamental shift, the expansion of how we conceive of design and its power to shape the world around us.