About The AIAHistory

Brief history of the AIA web page

The A.I.A.’s First Hundred Years, by Henry H. Saylor, FAIA, published as a special issue of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects in May 1957 for the AIA’s centennial

Building the Culture of the Architects’ Professional Society: 150 Years of the American Institute of Architects, by James Scheeler, FAIA, and Andrew Brodie Smith, introductory essay for the AIA Issues Database project

Education of Architects: The Grand Central School of Architecture, by Andrew Brodie Smith, essay based on the AIA Issues Database

Original AIA Constitution of 1857

R. Randall Vosbeck, FAIA, A Legacy of Leadership: Presidents of the AIA, 1857-2007 (Washington, DC: The American Institute of Architects, 2008)

Richard Guy Wilson, The AIA Gold Medal (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984), discusses the history of the AIA Gold Medal and its recipients 1907-1983

Architects in Historic Preservation: The Formal Role of the AIA, 1890-1990, a report of the AIA’s Committee on Historic Resources in celebration of the centennial of its founding. A companion volume is Pioneers in Preservation: Biographical Sketches of Architects Prominent in the Field Before World War II

“Chapter 2: History of the AIA Documents,” by Alan B. Stover, Esq., AIA, in The American Institute of Architects, Official Guide to the 2007 AIA Contract Documents (published by John Wiley & Sons for the American Institute of Architects, 2009), pp. 12-37, gives the history of the AIA’s contract documents program from 1860 to 2007. The first AIA contract document (1888), the first set of Standard Documents of the AIA (1911), and the Second Edition of the Standard Documents (1915), are available online.

For the past three decades, the American Institute of Architects has conducted periodic surveys of its member firms. The purpose of these surveys is to document emerging trends in the practice of architecture and assess how they interact with economic trends and technological developments. Past editions of the AIA Firm Survey provide a statistical picture of the business of architecture over time. Firm Surveys were done in 1979 (copy not available), 1980, 1981, 1983, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1997, 2000-02, 2003, 2006, and 2009. For more information on the 2009 AIA Firm Survey, see the AIA’s Economics and Market Research page at http://www.aia.org/practicing/economics.