These albums contain mounted black-and-white photographic prints documenting historic sites and structures along the East Coast of the United States, from the South to New Hampshire, created and collected by architect and historian John Mead Howells. These albums appear to have been created as reference sources for Howell's publications LOST EXAMPLES OF COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE (New York, W. Helbrvn, 1931), THE ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE OF THE PISCATAQUA (New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1937), and THE ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE OF THE MERRIMACK (New York: Architectural Book Publlishing Company, 1941). However, many additional images may be found in these albums than were used in these publications. The images were taken during the second half of the 19th-century and the early 20th-century of historic buildings and sites constructed during the 18th- and 19th-centuries. Most images have annotations and caption information in typescript or in Howell's own hand. Howells collected most of the images from a variety of sources, including the Frank Cousins image collection at the Essex Institute, the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, architect Ogden Codman, and the Historic American Buildings Survey. The remainder were taken by Howells himself.

Architectural drawings and specifications for Codman's projects, circa 1890s-1930s, including the Martha Codman house in Washington, D.C.; alterations for Edith Wharton and her husband at their three residences, the Mount in Lenox, Mass., Land's End in Newport, R.I., and their Park Avenue home in New York City; work for the Thayer family of Boston, Mass., specifically Nathaniel Thayer's three homes in Boston, Lancaster, Mass., and Newport, R.I. ("Edgemere"), Bernard Thayer's Beacon Hill houyse in Boston, and Eugene Van Rensselaer Thayer's two houses in Boston and Lancaster, Mass.; the Lucy Dahlgren house in New York City; the Archer M. Huntington house on Fifth Avenue in New York City; interior design for John D. Rockefeller in his house "Kykuit" at Pocantico Hills, N.Y.; interior design work for the Vanderbilt family including Cornelius Vanderbilt's "Breakers" at Newport, R.I. and Frederick William Vanderbilt's mansion in Hyde Park, N.Y. and his house on Fifth Avenue in New York City; Oliver Ames' mansion at Pride's Crossing, Beverly, Mass., and his house in Boston; and interior decoration and alterations for Codman's own homes in Newport, R.I. and Roslyn, N.Y. and his villa in France, "La Leopolda", at Villefranche-sur-Mer. Also, lists, descriptions, and postcards of French chateaux, with related correspondence, circa 1900s-1930s, relating to Codman's bibliography on the chateaux of France; and miscellaneous lists of houses in England and France, correspondence, and printed material.