Yesterday I was looking for some reference images of mid century modern architecture for an illustration I am working on when I stumbled across the USC Architectural Teaching Slide Collection. This website contains about 1400 images taken between the late 1930’s and late 1960’s. it features the work of American masters like Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, Pierre Koenig, Fritz Block and many more. The site is broken into 4 sections, Pierre Koenig (302 items), Fritz Block: Modern architecture II (The new concept of space) (459 items), Fritz Block: Modern architecture I (248 items). There is also a link to a prototype website that was built back in the late 1990’s with additional information.

If you open an image, there is a large selection of information about each slide. Location of the structure, the year taken, who the photographer is, the architect, publisher etc. The images are scans of slides taken in many cases by the architect, or Block. They are not color corrected, and these are not professional architectural photographs. They do however show what was going on in terms of modern architecture at the time, and in some cases show shots of the buildings being built. There are images of blueprints, and correspondence as well as site drawings, and planning layouts for entire subdivisions.  All the images are available for download, print or sharing.