Scope and Content Note
Primarily architectural drawings by Donald H. Drayer for commercial and residential buildings and housing developments in Washington, D.C., and surrounding suburbs. The majority of the drawings were executed from 1945-1973. Among his commissions were single detached houses, some for prominent clients such as Lyndon Johnson and Albert Gore, Sr., and apartment houses and complexes such as Grosvenor Park in Rockville, Maryland, Prospect House in Arlington, Virginia, and the Colonnade in Washington, D.C. Materials document various phases of the design process, from preliminary sketches to working drawings to correspondence and specifications relating to building projects. The archive also includes engineering drawings and landscape architecture drawings as well as some architectural drawings by other creators, interior design drawings by Maria Drayer, and renderings by Saifook Chan.
Specific media or processes represented include graphite, ink, diazo print, felt pen, charcoal, stat, photomechanical print, blueprint, photographic print, and watercolor.
Some ADE UNITs have additional materials to the drawings that are filed separately. If present, these series are noted at the end of the ADE UNIT's summary with the following options: specifications, photographs, and/or miscellaneous supplementary materials. These materials are not item inventoried but can be requested from a librarian while doing research in the Reading Room.