2024-05-02T09:28:41-04:00 https://archinect.com/news/article/150004947/digging-through-architectural-treasures-at-the-avery-drawings-and-archives Alexander Walter 2017-04-27T17:39:00-04:00 >2018-01-30T06:16:04-05:00 <img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/4b/4be622b3d6857d9d44a6e531f37b9620?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=1200" border="0" /><em><p>Uptown and underground is the home of a dense community of New York architects, their colleagues, clients, and friends, their skyscrapers and townhouses. They are the denizens of the boxes and the file folders of the Avery Drawings and Archives, one of the richest collections of American architectural drawings and records. For the last 36 years, Janet Parks, curator [...], has been mayor of this town, located in the lower level of Columbia University&rsquo;s Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library.</p></em><br /><br /><p><em>"The trove of drawings, which took a good 18 months to sort through, contained the physical traces of a long-gone city &mdash; and&nbsp;not just how it looked. Parks remembers opening a tightly sealed tube of drawings: &ldquo;This wafting smell of cologne and pipe tobacco came out. It had been trapped inside. We all stood around it and we were back in the 1920s.&rdquo;"</em></p>