Yale Library to Preserve Centerbrook Archives

CENTERBROOK, Conn. -- At the invitation of Yale University, Centerbrook Architects has agreed to donate its archives to the Manuscripts and Archives Department at the Yale University Library, whose collections are a major resource for teaching architectural history, theory, and practice.

Centerbrook’s records join those of other architects and firms whose legacy is being preserved at Yale, among them Eero Saarinen, Paul Rudolf, Louis Kahn, and James Gamble Rogers.

Projects being sent to Yale run the gamut from large urban and civic developments and academic buildings to private homes and cultural centers. The firm has garnered more than 325 awards for design excellence, including the 1998 Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects.

Centerbrook clients whose projects are part of the transfer include NASA, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and universities such as Quinnipiac. The last two institutions have been clients of the firm since the 1970s. Submissions to Yale will encompass Centerbrook’s design work for: independent schools, such as Andover, Hotchkiss and Choate; colleges and universities, including Yale, University of Colorado and Texas A&M; performing arts centers like the Norma Terris Theater and the Garde Art Center; art museums at Dartmouth College, Williams College and Lawrence University; and sports facilities and arenas.

Centerbrook’s files include free-hand sketches, construction drawings, letters, photographs, and renderings, Some 174 projects dating from the 1970s through the mid-1980s have been transferred to New Haven, and those through 1990 will be processed and sent this year, according to Genie Devine, who is managing the project for Centerbrook.

The firm will retain its architectural materials going back 20 years, annually sending Yale a year’s worth of project files. The material being donated by Centerbrook includes work done by the late Charles W. Moore. Moore was Dean of the Yale School of Architecture as well as a founding partner of Moore Grover and Harper, the predecessor of Centerbrook.

Yale Manuscripts and Archives has an active architectural records collecting program, and maintains significant holdings in the areas of American architecture and urbanism. The archives also hold drawings, photographs, maps, and reports for Yale campus buildings.