Louis Henry Sullivan (1856-1924) was an American architect and partner in the Chicago architectural firm Alder & Sullivan. He is also known as a mentor to architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The core of the collection is made up of 122 drawings given to Frank Lloyd Wright by Louis Sullivan before Sullivan's death in 1924. The Avery collection represents the bulk of what remains of Sullivan's drawings. Most of the drawings in this collection are designs for ornament representing different stages of Sullivan's stylistic development. Some drawings are annotated by Wright. The collection also includes additional donations of drawings, objects, and papers collected over the years.

Papers consist primarily of Smith's files relating to his architectural work containing correspondence with clients, colleagues, contractors, suppliers, and others, with related bills, notes, receipts, accounts, estimates, specifications, time sheets, progress reports, and architectural drawings. Also, portrait photographs of young people (possibly classmates?) in Rochester, N.Y. and Evanston, Ill., circa late 19th century; a class roll card, 1901, for a class taught by Smith at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, New York; a memo book, undated, containing miscellaneous accounts, sketches, memoranda; correspondence, 1890s, between Ella Smith (Smith's mother) and Lucien Smith and other family members, Rochester, N.Y., and Elmhurst, Ill.; account book, 1891-1902, of Mrs. H. V. (Ella) Smith, Rochester, N.Y.; calling cards, invitations, photographs, letters, bills, receipts, and other, miscellaneous personal documents; student drawings made by Smith when at Columbia University's School of Architecture; drawings for a proposed "academy of art and archaeology" in Rome, 1905-1906; and drawings for Malvina Hoffman's house and studio in New York City.

Architectural drawings and photographs of buildings designed by the firm dating approximately from its founding to the 1950s. Among those represented are buildings at the World's Columbian Exhibition, Chicago, 1893; Pennsylvania Railroad Station, New York, 1906-1910; restoration, 1903, of the White House, Washington, D.C.; buildings at Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus, New York; Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass.; E.W. Morgan mansion; Municipal Building, N.Y.; Col. Elliott Shepherd House, Scarborough, N.Y.; buildings at Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.; Bellevue Hospital, New York; various New York City residences; and others. Also included are competition drawings for the New York Public Library; miscellaneous drawings and sketches; photographs of the partners and of other members of the firm; lists of the firm's work; clippings of articles about the firm; lists of the firm's employees; billing records, 1953-1955; account books, 1940s-1950s; bank books, 1895-1955; award certificates; and other office miscellany.

Files of the company, 1911-1920, much of which consists of unsucessful architectural bid documents, each noting the architect, building, and location, as well as estimated costs, sketches, and related correspondents. These bid documents represent commissions not awarded to NYATCC, and do, in some cases, indicate the outcome of the bid. Architects represented include McKim, Mead & White; Cass Gilbert; George Post; D.H. Burnham & Company; Warren & Wetmore, Schwartz & Gross, and many others. Also includes correspondence and office memoranda, including some describing the formative years, 1911-1914, of the National Terra Cotta Society, trade catalogs, and job photographs. Also, two albums containing photographs of sample pieces of terra cotta, and month by month construction records for three buildings, including the American Theater (42nd Street, New York, 1892) by Charles Coolidge Haight; the Renaissance Apartments (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1889) and the Imperial Apartments (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1890) both by Montrose Morris.

Included in this collection are nineteen albumen photographs and one lithographic print of architectural drawings submitted by architects for the competition to design the New York State Capitol building in Albany, circa 1866-1870. Competing architects and architectural firms represented here include Adams & Worthen, Louis Burger, Fuller & Gilman, Fuller & Laver, Schulze & Schoen, and several unidentified architects. Of note are drawings for the New York State Capitol by Louis Burger and Schulze & Schoen bearing inscriptions to Obadiah B. Latham, a member of the Capitol Commission. Also included are nine photographs showing construction in progress on the Capitol between July and September, 1869. Photographs of competition drawings by Schulze & Schoen for the Iowa Capitol, the New York Post Office, and the New York Life Insurance Company Building, as well as an unsigned drawing of the Ohio Capitol building are additionally part of this collection. Several of the images are labeled by the photographer E.S.M. Haines, also practicing as Haines & Wickes, in Albany, New York.

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.

Also, typescripts of lectures delivered by Boring in architecture courses at Columbia, 1932-1933, miscellaneous typescripts of articles and printed materials, 1930-1933, and a typescript of Boring's autobiography, MEMORIES OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF WILLIAM A. BORING, circa 1937. Also included are four sketches by Henri Gauthier, Edward Tilton, Maurice Sashin, and Joseph Laudin.