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.

This collection is made up of architectural drawings, correspondence, specifications, contracts, invoices, minutes, financial statements, patents, advertisements, photographs, photograph album, test results and reports, memoranda, tile samples, factory order cards, and other materials pertaining to The Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company's projects. The dates of the materials span 1866-1985, with bulk dates 1890-1942. The architectural records include structural, decorative, and acoustical sample products and fragments. Also included are materials added to the files by George Collins (1917-1993), Professor of Art History at Columbia University. Prof. Collins secured the donation of this archive in 1963, and remained its custodian until it was transferred to the Drawings and Archives Collection at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library in 1988. The records document Prof. Collins' research efforts, as well as the Company's projects in forty states (including District of Columbia), four Canadian provinces, and eleven other foreign countries.