Engineering, Building, and Architecture - Overview
Not many museums collect houses. The National Museum of American History has four, as well as two outbuildings, 11 rooms, an elevator, many building components, and some architectural elements from the White House. Drafting manuals are supplemented by many prints of buildings and other architectural subjects. The breadth of the museum's collections adds some surprising objects to these holdings, such as fans, purses, handkerchiefs, T-shirts, and other objects bearing images of buildings.
The engineering artifacts document the history of civil and mechanical engineering in the United States. So far, the Museum has declined to collect dams, skyscrapers, and bridges, but these and other important engineering achievements are preserved through blueprints, drawings, models, photographs, sketches, paintings, technical reports, and field notes.
"Engineering, Building, and Architecture - Overview" showing 3 items.
La Libreria a Venise
- Description
- Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697–1768), known as Canaletto, etched this view of Venice featuring the Library of St. Mark and the Piazzetta in the 1740s. The Library was designed by Jacopo Sansovino (1486–1570), who is credited with bringing the High Renaissance style to Venice. Many travelers were interested in Renaissance and Baroque architecture, as well as the ruins of ancient Rome. Canaletto's views appealed especially to wealthy 18th-century British visitors who came to Venice on the Grand Tour. Americans also visited Italy and collected prints to remind them of places seen.
- Canaletto specialized in paintings of Venice, many of which show well-known landmarks. He also made a series of etchings. Some depict actual sites, as this one does, while others show invented landscapes. The Museum's set of Canaletto's Venetian etchings was received as a gift from Mabel Brady Garvan, who, with her husband Francis P. Garvan, built an important collection of American paintings, furniture, and decorative arts that is now at the Yale University Art Gallery.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- graphic artist
- Canaletto
- ID Number
- GA*21847
- catalog number
- 21847
- accession number
- 257503
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Mission Church, New Mexico
- Description
- Thomas Moran etched this view of a mission church in New Mexico in 1881 after a photograph by friend and traveling companion William Henry Jackson (1843–1942). Moran had met Jackson in 1871 on Ferdinand V. Hayden’s Yellowstone expedition, the first government-sponsored survey of that area. Jackson and Moran worked side by side recording views. While Moran’s paintings of the West made his reputation, fewer than one-fifth of his etchings depict Western or Mexican scenes. His signature “TYM” at lower left stands for Thomas “Yellowstone” Moran.
- The church shown in this print was replaced by a stone building in the early 20th century, and the San Juan Pueblo recently changed its name to Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. It lies twenty-five miles north of Santa Fe.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1881
- Associated Date
- 1881
- graphic artist
- Moran, Thomas
- photographer
- Jackson, William Henry
- ID Number
- GA*14750
- catalog number
- 14750
- accession number
- 94830
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
Lithograph of the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Company
- Description
- This lithograph is a bird's-eye view of the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Company, circa 1880. The company maufactured sewing machines in Watertown, N. Y., from 1851 to 1856. In 1856, they relocated to Bridgeport, Conn., where they continued operations until 1905. In the 1850s and 1860s, their sewing machines outsold all others, including Singer and Howe. Two separate factory buildings are illustrated. The caption under the building on the left notes: "Front 368 ft., Width 307 feet," and the dimensions for the building on the right are noted as "Front 526 ft., Width 219 feet." The lithographers were Worley and Bracher of 320 Chesnut Street in Philadelphia, Penn.
- S.I. Photo Negative No.: 92-4215 for both B&W and color slide.
- Date made
- ca 1880
- lithographer
- Worley and Bracher
- ID Number
- 1991.0134.01
- catalog number
- 1991.0134.01
- accession number
- 1991.0134
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center