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This collection includes primarily original etchings, engravings, and lithographs, as well as published images from a variety of sources, of individual architectural structures or the built environment. Most of the images are uncolored. The collection is especially strong in images from the United States and England. A significant number of images are plates from Walter Harrison's "A new and universal history, description and survey of the cities of London and Westminister, the borough of Southwark, and their adjacent parts." (London, J. Cooke, 1776). A small portion of the collection depicts decorative arts and interiors. Also included are a few ephemeral items--such as tickets, letterhead, receipts, and bills--that include architectural imagery.

These albums contain mounted black-and-white photographic prints documenting historic sites and structures along the East Coast of the United States, from the South to New Hampshire, created and collected by architect and historian John Mead Howells. These albums appear to have been created as reference sources for Howell's publications LOST EXAMPLES OF COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE (New York, W. Helbrvn, 1931), THE ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE OF THE PISCATAQUA (New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1937), and THE ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE OF THE MERRIMACK (New York: Architectural Book Publlishing Company, 1941). However, many additional images may be found in these albums than were used in these publications. The images were taken during the second half of the 19th-century and the early 20th-century of historic buildings and sites constructed during the 18th- and 19th-centuries. Most images have annotations and caption information in typescript or in Howell's own hand. Howells collected most of the images from a variety of sources, including the Frank Cousins image collection at the Essex Institute, the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, architect Ogden Codman, and the Historic American Buildings Survey. The remainder were taken by Howells himself.

This collection primarily includes black and white and color photographic prints of approximately 100 buildings designed by the American architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in locations throughout the United States, circa 1945-1969.