Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library

The story

The world's largest architecture library exists because a young New York architect died and his grieving parents wanted to leave something behind. Henry Ogden Avery was a friend of William Robert Ware, Columbia's first architecture professor. After Avery's death in 1890, his parents donated his personal collection of 2,000 books — mostly architecture, archaeology, and decorative arts — as a memorial. Now housed in Avery Hall on Morningside Heights, the library serves architects, preservationists, and art historians, holding archival materials that document two centuries of American design.