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During the decades that their prominent architectural firm Collins
& Autenrieth flourished in 19th-century Philadelphia, German-born
partners Edward Collins (1821-1902) and James M. Autenrieth (1828-1906)
designed both public and private buildings. Some have endured, but many
others have been altered significantly or demolished, making the
hundreds of architectural drawings, blueprints, and notebooks now
archived in Special Collections at the University of Delaware among the
only records of the firm’s work and its role in the history of
Philadelphia architecture.
One example, an architectural drawing dated January, 1878, was part
of the firm’s design plans for the Romanesque-style Central Presbyterian
Church in Philadelphia. This year the drawing became both a technical
study and treatment project for Winterthur/ University of Delaware
Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC) Fellow Emilie Duncan, a library and
archives conservation major. Emilie looked forward to both studying and
treating the drawing, and to learning more about the little-studied
architects and how they worked.
The church building, located on north Broad Street in Philadelphia,
is home now to a Baptist congregation. The original appearance of the
interior, thought to have undergone many changes, is suggested by the
details included in the drawing. Done on a high-quality, wove paper, the
drawing shows one-quarter of the building’s domed ceiling, including
the supporting corner pendentive and arched colonnade. Emilie believes
the drawing’s varied design motifs and many colors, done in translucent
watercolor washes and opaque body colors, indicate that the artist was
experimenting to see which colors and patterns he liked best.