I have some drawings for a couple of cool mid-century modern buildings here in Tulsa, also have a drawing of a oil tanker rail road car...it is pretty nice.

I have my grandpas (former electrical engineer) drawings from his college drafting classes. Some pretty sweet hand-drawn details & scale drawings of a railroad bridge with the train on it that look absolutely perfect. Although, tiny holes left on the page from a compass warrented a 'B' for a grade.

I also work in the records dept of my university so I come across some ink on linen drawings of the original buildings on campus every once in a while. They are so beautiful they make CAD drawings look silly.

Here's to beautiful old hand drawings. It's odd and interesting how some working-drawing sheets used to be laid out w/ vastly different drawing types. I remember seeing a nicely drawn 1/8" or 1/4" floor plan filling up most of a sheet; off to the side was a half-size (6"=1') detail of a door frame casing. It blew my mind, and managed to all look elegant!

back in the days when old architects used to have back problems...now, we'll all have carpal tunnel syndrome!

i love to look at the craftsmanship involved in drafting these beautiful drawings (the "artistic" aspect of "technical" drafting), and how much attention was paid to design details (usually ornamental). i love to think about the different sense of time as you'd draft by hand...time to think...

Don't get me wrong. I'm not about to sign on with those crazy professors who "don't believe in using computers in architecture", but something was definitely lost when we all jumped on the ACAD bandwagon. I still take the time to run all my drawings through Illustrator and get the line weights perfect. Fewer and fewer people are even doing THAT these days on pres drawings. I don't know how many times I've looked at other drawings in critique and have been disgusted at the lack of line weights, notations, et. al. Some people just think that having all the lines in the right places is "good enough".

We're loosing one area of our art, to some degree, which saddens me.

Oh, and I have a set of technical drawings for an old tractor dated 1932. Some of the most amazing line work I've ever seen. I still can't figure out how they did certain parts of it without a computer. I really wish I knew more about old drafting methods.

ha ha ha, that's funny you mention the back problems, simples.

i remember when we learned to draft by hand, my friend would call the pain associated with hunching over the drafting tables "architect's back".

there's something that just makes hand drawings/renderings so much better than any cad/3d.

i've always loved r.m. schindler's renderings.

that is a gorgeous rendering. do you know what he used for those?

no, sorry, i don't know.

This discussion points up the most obvious of the capital "A" Artistic aspects of our profession. Of course, some of our brethren (and sistren) tend to focus on this part and forget about construction and buildings. Still, those old drawings are gorgeous....

i was watchin antiques roadhouse and this woman had all these perspective drawings that were drawn by flw for a house that her grandparents had designed. the drawings, five or six, were appraised at around a hundred grand.

My house - built ca. 1954, with an addition made in 1960 - was designed, built, renovated, and lived in by the architect William Ford of Lennox Matthews Simmons Ford Architects Inc.

I have blueprints of the drawings of the addition. They are wonderful, not exceptionally beautiful, but a great example of the skill and expediency of a knowledgeable draftsman working his craft. You can feel the pressure of the pencil on the paper.

My house was built in 1879 by a blind geriatric using scraps of materials he found in the surrounding fields.

Or at least, that's my theory. There are built-in shelves in the basement made from an old white-picket fence. I doubt there were any architects involved.

Anyway, back on topic.... you've inspired me to take a look on eBay and elsewhere. I've been looking at flea markets and garage sales (and to a lesser extend, estate sales) for years looking for nice old drawings, but so far have come up empty-handed. Some of them are just gorgeous.

I was at what was billed as a tag sale which was way to organized last Saturday, and came across several rolls of drawings done by a Japanese Individual which were all of these wild light fixtures. They looked alot like something out of George Jetson era... I figured if I bought them I my wife would have me legally found insane. Like we need anymore drawings hanging out at our home office.....cause now it is more of an office home.

I do have a set of blue line prints of the Hollywood Bowl done by Lloyd Wright.

for a short time chili davis had a full set of blueprints (i.e., blue with white lines) of the 1953 grosse pointe public library by marcel breuer in his hot little hands. he scanned them and digital images were made available to all participants in the charrette. as has been commented about others' drawings, these were a beautifully spare and efficient set of drawings.

if anyone wants to bid high $$$ on any of the hand drawn sets that i drew in the 80s/90s, email me.

my first job was all hand drafting and it killed my back, neck, eyes and hand. one of the principals in my office does kick ass hand renderings.

my professors refuse to let use do anything but draw by hand. last fall they assigned us two 18x24 tonal renderings that "would only take about a hundred hours each," to complete during reading days and finals week. while i learned how to construct a one-point perspective by hand, it was definately not fun.

oh ya....I had a cool gift given to me yesterday. He isn't a client but his wife is a friend of my wife. So the story goes. I designed a house for a guy last year who makes these beautiful cribbage boards out of cherry wood. As part of the payment for the job I ended up with the cribbage board. Well I know John loves to play cribbage, and well I do once in awhile actually not even that often. So I gave the board to John. So last night my wife comes home with this packet of first day of issue stamps which all are related to Architecture. Not just the stamp but an envelope. Quickly looking at them I thought
wow this is cool. Then I started looking closer some of these envelopes go back as far as 1957. Some of them have the issued stamp and next to it a portrait of the Architect who designed the building. I'm looking at one issued in 1982 with four stamps on it.
Falling Water, Illinois Institute of Technology, Gropius House Lincoln
Massachusetts, Dulles Airport. Then on the envelope is Wright, Mies, Gropius, and Saarinen. Way to cool. and such a thoughtful gift.

i have the original hand drawings of Saddam/Uday Hussein's "love palace" in a safety deposit box. seriously.

i guess they arent historical, but they could be considered historically significant

impalajunkie....do the plans show where he had all his hidden cameras? I recall seeing some video disco nights held in the Love Palace, which I assume were filmed on his security system.

no, they were just basic floor plans, not even many details were included

impalajunkie....then you must have his treasure make house plans.....they have to be worth millions.

I have drawings from the Plymouth old courthouse and hospital what's so important and meaning imo is that they are under 30 ft of ash and mud.

once when i was in undergrad i worked reorganizing the dead files of an office of a guy who used to work with paul rudolph. in the dead files was a beautifully rendered original ink perspective of rudolph's crawford manor. you know the rudolph drawing style. i was SO tempted to take it, knowing that it was unlikely that anyone would revisit these deadfiles for years - or maybe ever. but i didn't. it's probably still in the same tube, never unrolled since 1988. [sigh.]

Steven I had Paul Rudolphs partner give me a 45 record for Christmas on year. We actually spent and evening together
at his girlfriends apartment building a Ginger Bread House. He took a liking to me and this 45 showed up gift wrapped, it was from Virgin Records. He was doing this little project at the time for a record studio. Christ knows what I ever did with it....most likely turned it into an ashtray...or something like that. Funny thing is I can't remember the guys name but I do remember her name was Fern..

steven,
you know that guy snagged it from rudolph right when he got canned/quit.

holz I also had the opportunity to work with Rudolphs model builder. He did amazing work when considering the time. I don't think people were into stagging things back at that time. I recall being asked to dig thru the archived drawings in the office where I worked and was told to keep my eyes open for any drawings signed by I.M. Pei. He had apparently worked in the firm after he came out of MIT.
Unfortunately I found nothing.

holz- he had SOME right to snag it, anyway, if that's what happened. he was the project architect on the job.