Included are architectural drawings, surveys, maps, and site proposals, for Columbia's Morningside Heights campus, designed primarily by McKim, Mead & White. Other architects represented include Adams & Woodbridge; Arnold Brunner (who designed the School of Mines); Eggers & Higgins; the Columbia University Buildings and Grounds Department; Howells and Stokes (designed St. Paul's Chapel); Reinhard, Hofmeister and Wahlquist; and James Gamble Rogers. Drawings for buildings no longer in existence or never constructed and drawings for later alterations, are included. Architectural drawings of the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, and surveys of the asylum site prepared for Columbia, 1888-1894. Also included are site plans and proposals, surveys, and maps, circa 1890s-1910s, showing the surrounding area, including such institutions as the Jewish Theological Seminary, St. Luke's Home, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Grant's Tomb, and others. Drawings for the Womans's Hospital in the State of New York (designed by Allen & Collens, erected 1903, demolished in the 1970s), circa 1903-1914, are also included. This building was used to house the Columbia School of the Arts in the 1960s since it was located near the campus.

Included are drawings made by Avery while studying under Jules Andre at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and sketchbooks containing sketches made in Paris and on excursions, 1872-1879. Architectural drawings and photographs of architectural drawings for proposed or executed residential and commercial buildings, churches, art galleries, monuments, and other structures, 1880s; competition drawings for public monuments, 1883-1887; experimental studies, 1885, for the pedestal of Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty; and 39 studies and finished drawings, 1888-1890, made for a competition for a memorial for Ulysses S. Grant which he did not win. Also, magazine articles by or about Avery and his work, 1883-1890; obituaries and death announcements, 1890; miscellaneous photographs, certificates, and papers; and invitations, clippings, illustrations, and photographs, circa 1892-1894, relating to the founding of the Avery Architectural Library at Columbia University.