Wallace Neff Photograph Collection

The photographs in this collection are chiefly black-and-white 8 x 10-inch professional images of residences and other projects designed by Neff, including interiors, exteriors, and aerial views, as well as photographs of architectural drawings. The majority of buildings represented are in California, but there are a few projects in other states and the Virgin Islands. Items in the collection include photographic prints; photocopies of published images; photographs of sketches and renderings; published articles and clippings; and some correspondence and patent documents related to airform construction. Neff appears in several photographs in portraits and with family members, including a copy photograph showing Neff as a young boy with his family in Salzburg, Austria. The airform construction or "Bubble house" materials include correspondence, copies of drawings, clippings and photographs, including snapshots of airform housing under construction in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.

Several of the photographs were made by photographers Julius Padilla, Padilla Studios, and Maynard L. Parker.

Many of the photographs in this collection were used in Architecture of Southern California (Rand McNally, 1964), by Wallace Neff, and later in Alson Clark and Wallace Neff, Jr.'s Wallace Neff: Architect of California's Golden Age (Capra Press, 1986), and Wallace Neff 1895-1982: The Romance of Regional Architecture (The Huntington Library, 1989). An autograph copy of Architecture of Southern California by Wallace Neff is part of this collection (Box 6).