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 1B Item 24 Back Side Plate Nineteen Doorway of House on Prince and St. Asaph streets, Alexandria, Virginia Measured and Drawn by J. L. Kelster, O. J. Munson, & J. A. Weber
Location Box 1B Item 25 Front Side Windows- Reading, PA Characteristic Windows of the Middle Colony
Location Box 1B Item 25 Back Side Window of Chew Mansion, Germantown 1673
Location Box 1B Item 26 Front Side Plate One Tucker-Rice Porch, Salem, Massachusetts Samuel McIntire, Architect 1800 Measured and Drawn by Gordon Robb, M. A. Dyer
Location Box 1B Item 26 Back Side Plate One Tucker-Rice Porch, Salem, Massachusetts Samuel McIntire, Architect 1800 Measured and Drawn by Gordon Robb, M. A. Dyer
Location Box 1B Item 27 Front Side Plate Fourteen Doorway, Robinson House, Alexandria, VA
Location Box 1B Item 27 Back Side Plate Fourteen Doorway, Robinson House, Alexandria, VA 1796 Measured and Drawn by J. L. Keister, O. J. Munson, and J. A. Weber
Location Box 1B Item 28 Front Side Plate Eight Doorway, French-Munroe House, Bristol, Rhode Island Measured and Drawn by Gordon Robb and M. A. Dyer
Location Box 1B Item 28 Back Side Plate Eight Doorway, French-Munroe House, Bristol, Rhode Island Measured and Drawn by Gordon Robb and M. A. Dyer
Location Box 1B Item 29 Doorway, Thomas Beals House, Canandaigua, New York Measured and Drawn by Benj. F. Betts
Location Box 1B Item 3 Front Side The Brickbuilder Article on cornices
Location Box 1B Item 3 Back Side The Brickbuilder Article on cornices