The British Architect; or, the Builder's Treasury of Staircases

The British Architect; or, the Builder's Treasury of Staircases

Abraham Swan

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On December 5, 1774, John Norman, an engraver recently arrived in Philadelphia from London, advertised Proposals for Printing by Subscription, the American edition of Swan's British Architect. Published by Robert Bell, the city's leading printer and bookseller. The volume was available the following June and was the first architectural book printed in America. It faithfully copied Abraham Swan's British Architect, first published in London in 1745, and contains a title page, list of subscribers, twenty pages of text, and sixty folio plates whose images reverse those of the English edition, all but one etched by Norman.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.