Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum Branch Library

The museum, an art school for women, and library were founded by sisters Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt, granddaughters of the industrialist Peter Cooper at Cooper Union in 1897. The collections were transferred to the Smithsonian in 1967, and moved into the landmark Andrew Carnegie Mansion on New York City's historic Museum Mile on 5th Avenue in 1976. As initially prescribed by the Hewitt sisters, the library continues to be a "design resource" for the museum, for design students (today specifically for the 50 students enrolled in the History of Decorative Arts Master's degree program co-sponsored by the museum and the Parson's School of Design), and the general public.

The scope of the library, which originally focused on European decorative arts from 1500 through 1830, has been expanded to include the later 19th century to contemporary periods and worldwide coverage of all areas of the decorative arts, notably interior, industrial, and graphic design. The Bradley Room, which houses over 5,000 rare and special items, features colorful pattern and sample books, early children's books, illustrated natural history folios, architectural treatises, rare travel guides, hundreds of pop-up and moveable-parts book titles, and a sizeable world's fair collection. The 2,000 pieces in the Trade Catalog Collections, frequently used by researchers to document objects, include a rare Kimbel and Cabus furniture catalog of 1870* and earlier items dating to the 18th century.

The library maintains the museum's design archives which contain the papers, photographs, records, and related drawings for nearly twenty American industrial and graphic designers and design firms. Such leading designers as Donald Deskey (1894-1989), Henry Dreyfuss (1904-72), Ladislav Sutnar (1897-1976), and Don Wallance (1909-90) are in this archive. The picture file of over 400,000 design related subjects, the Kubler collection of 19th-century "everyday scenes," and the Art Deco period photographs of Thérèse Bonney, are regularly used by curators, collectors, publishers, and design professionals.

Stephen Van Dyk, Librarian

The library is open by appointment Monday-Friday, 9:00 am-5:30 pm except on Federal holidays. Tel: 212-860-6887

* To be published Fall 1996 as Kimbel and Cabus & the Modern Gothic in America, 1863-1882 by Acanthus Press