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George Ashdown Audsley Collection
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Held at: University of Pennsylvania: Architectural Archives [Contact Us]220 South 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19094
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Pennsylvania: Architectural Archives. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
George Ashdown Audsley (1838-1925) was born in Scotland, and practiced architecture in Liverpool in partnership with John Cunningham, and later with his brother, William J. Audsley (1833-1907). Although they were successful in their Liverpool practice, the Audsley brothers emigrated to New York in 1892. In America, the brothers designed many public buildings, most notably the Layton Art Gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1888), and the Church of Edward the Confessor in Philadelphia. An authority on organ construction, George Audsley was selected as designer of the great organ in the Festival Hall of the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, an organ subsequently installed in the John Wanamaker Store in Philadelphia.
George Audsley's son Berthold (1874-1962) dedicated the majority of his career to the building of scale models for the Newark Museum (Newark, NJ) and the Edison Lamp Works.
The collection is arranged in two series. Series I comprises ten drawings documenting works by George Ashdown Audsley and his brother William J. Audsley (1893-1898). Projects include competition designs for the New York City Hall, 1893 and for the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Newark, New Jersey, 1897, a detail elevation for an office building (possibly the Bowling Green Building), an elevation of an unidentified Gothic style building, and two renderings illustrating schemes for a bank, dated 1898. Series II comprises five drawings made by Berthold Audsley illustrating construction techniques for scale models in laminated cardboard, 1935.
Gift of G. Holmes Perkins, 1994.
The collection was processed and the finding aid prepared by William Whitaker, Emily Cooperman, Laura Stroffolino and Nancy Thorne. Work was substantially completed in 2000, with additions and corrections in 2003.
- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania: Architectural Archives
Collection Inventory
10 drawingsCity Hall (Competition), New York, New York, 1893 (2 drawings) Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Competition), Newark, New Jersey, 1897 (4 drawings) Unidentified projects--Commercial building; Gothic church?; bank, 1898 (4 drawings)
5 drawings