At the 2022 Book Fair

Yesterday the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair opened to the public, the first of its four days at the Park Avenue Armory on Manhattan's Upper East Side. I was able tp attend the preview yesterday, taking the opportunity to search out items relevant to architecture. So, like I did with the first fair I attended two years ago (it was the last event I attended before lockdown and was the most recent edition of the fair, it being cancelled last year), below are some of those finds — 15 items from 12 booksellers — with photos and captions, and listed in the order I discovered them. People interested in attending the 62nd Annual ABAA New York International Antiquarian Book Fair can buy tickets online.

Located near the entrance, the booth for New York's Ursus Rare Books has a reduced version (still nearly 6' long) of the Historical Table for 'The Functional City' exhibition (De Functionele Stad) at the Stedelijk Museum in 1935. It's attributed to Rudolf Steiger, George Schmidt, and Wilhelm Hess but features contributions by Otto Neurath. $17,500

London's Benjamin Spademan Rare Books has the oldest and most expensive architecture book I came across yesterday: Fra Giovanni Giocondo da Verona's illustrated 1511 edition of Vitruvius's De Architectura. $55,000

My favorite staging of a book — books, actually — is at the booth of Type Punch Matrix, where Ed Ruscha's famous Every Building on the Sunset Strip (bottom left) from 1966 is presented alongside two earlier fold-out street depictions: Ginza Kaiwai / Ginza Haccho (1954) by Suzuki Yoshikazu and Kimura Shohachi (bottom right); and Boulevards de Paris (1846) by Jean Jacques Champin and Edouard Rneard (top). $5,500 / $5,000 / $7,500

Brooklyn's Daniel / Oliver Gallery has one of the more unique and extensive offerings at the book fair: a Substantial Archive from Breuer and Associates from the 1950s through the 1970s, or from Saint John's Abbey in Minnesota to the Atlanta Central Library. The archive consists of 348 photographic prints plus architect's reports, correspondences, and other documents, all adding up to 2.4 linear feet. Take look at a PDF of the gallery's specially made catalog on the archive. $25,000

Jeff Hirsch Books from Wadsworth, Illinois, has more architecture books on display than most booksellers at the fair. One of the standouts consists of multiple books on/by the great but overlooked architect Antonin Raymond: His Work in Japan, 1920–1935 (1935) and the spiral-bound Architectural Details (1938). $3,000 / $850

Also at Jeff Hirsch Books is a copy of Tribune Tower Competition from 1923. This is the first time I've seen this hefty first edition with its original dust jacket. $1,250

Across the aisle from Jeff Hirsch Books is Connecticut's Derringer Books, which has a signed first edition of Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York, a book that needs no introduction on this blog. $2,500

Bauhaus titles are in abundance around the fair, but no single booth appeared to have as much of the school's titles related to architecture than Berlin's Rotes Antiquariat. In this photo is Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, 1919–1923 (1923) edited by Bauhaus and Karl Nierendorf, and signed by the book's designer, Herbert Bayer. $6,000 (Behind it is a 1921 issue of H. Th. Wijdeveld's Wendingen devoted to Frank Lloyd Wright, featuring a cover by El Lissitzky. $4,000)

Rotes Antiquariat also has a "very rare original issue of Thonet's famous and highly influential tubular steel furniture catalog of 1930," which presents designs primarily by Marcel Breuer on a few dozen advertising cards. $12,000

New York's Martayan Lan has a large Deluxe Prospectus for the Architecture of Rome's EUR District, or Esposizione Universale di Roma, from 1939. According to the bookseller, "this work is not to be confused with a much more common quarto-format souvenir book which was published under almost exactly the same title." $3,850

Philip Jodidio's monograph on Tadao Ando that was published by Taschen in 1997 is so easy to come by and cheap to buy it normally wouldn't be at an antiquarian book fair. But the one on display in the booth of England's Voewood Rare Books is special, since it is signed by Ando and has three original sketches in red pencil. $850

Michael Laird Rare Books from Lockhart, Texas, has a couple old gems displayed dramatically under lights. First is The Architecture of Palladio published in London in 1721. $18,000

Second is Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du Songe de Poliphile published in Paris in 1561. $28,000

Walking some of the aisles it seemed at times there were more maps on display than books, most of which I breezed by. Nolli's Plan of Rome (1748) at the booth of Daniel Crouch Rare Books made me stop dead in my tracks — as did the price. This item, consisting of 12 sheets mounted in frames, is so special the bookseller made a short film explaining its history and important features. $53,000

Another map of interest is something unheard of to me: a Ribbon map of New York City (1867) "identifying over 175 businesses and landmarks along Broadway south of 14th street," according to New York's James Cummins Bookseller. $10,000 (This booth was the most crowded of any I looked at, but it wasn't this map they came to see; they were peering at the miniature book made by a 13-year-old Charlotte Brontë, written up by the New York Times and going for $1.25 million!)