David Adler (1882 - 1949) was an American architect revered for his creative use of historical style in the service of his clients. His traditional American architecture drew from many design vocabularies and the work was built primarily for Chicago clients in that city and it’s suburbs but also in interesting locations where Chicagoans had homes. Adler designed country houses for Chicago based or associated clients on New York’s Long Island (Marshall Field), Boston’s North Shore (Richard Crane), California’s Bay Area (Tobin Clark and Frances Elkins) and in Hawaii (Walter Dillingham). Much admired over the course of his architectural practice (1912 - 1947) Adler has also become a respected resource among a generation of architects building homes for modern Americans in traditional styles today. Several monographs exist describing David Adler’s architectural designs. An early monograph by Richard Pratt has long been out of print and that work has been supplemented by a passionate volume by Stephen Salny as well as a book edited by Richard Guy Wilson and Martha Thorne that accompanied an exhibit on the architect’s work at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002.

The images scanned and presented here are for scholarly use. Any commercial user should track and investigate the holder of any copyright for these images. The David Adler Cultural Center holds an archive of David Adler’s personal papers which were scanned by Laura Graham and Erik Liederbach of Liederbach and Graham, Architects in the summer of 2014 so that the content of those papers might be preserved electronically in case of any damage to the physical material. These papers were collected by David Adler, mounted on shirt cardboards and organized into a reference file for his own personal use in serving his clients. It is a wonderful glimpse into the material that interested the architect and which formed a part of his working library. Anyone with a working knowledge of the operation of a traditional architectural practice will understand the value and use of such an archive. What is remarkable about this collection is the breadth of the architect’s interests.

 

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Records found: 2656
Location Box 1A Item 30 Wyck House Article Exterior front and side views
Location Box 1A Item 31 Pierce-Nichols House, Federal Street, Salem, Massachusetts Architect: Samuel McIntire 1782 Doorway and Street View, Exterior
Location Box 1A Item 32 Early American- Pennsylvania
Location Box 1A Item 33 Independence Hall Palladian Window over South Entrance and South Front
Location Box 1A Item 34 The Woodlands, Philadelphia, PA- North Front 1770 Highlands, Whitemarsh Valley, PA 1796 Cliveden, Germantown, Philadelphia, PA 1761 Hope Lodge, Whitemarsh Valley, PA 1773 First, Second, Third "Type" of Georgian
Location Box 1A Item 35 Front Side Doorways Franklin Inn, Philadelphia, PA D. Caldwell Architect
Location Box 1A Item 35 Back Side 1 Mask and Wig Club Philadelphia, PA C. L. Borie Architect From a watercolor sketch by Eugene Castello
Location Box 1A Item 35 Back Side 2 Remodeled houses at Charlton Street, New York Francis Y. joannes and Maxwell Hyde, Architects
Location Box 1A Item 36 Exterior
Location Box 1A Item 37 Exteriors
Location Box 1A Item 38 Exteriors, 11-6-31
Location Box 1A Item 39 Quaker Meeting House, Easton, Maryland Front View, Albany Road Tavern, 1783-1810