Collections Highlight: Robert C. Lautman Collection

In 2007, architectural photographer Robert C. Lautman donated his life’s work to the National Building Museum, comprised of approximately 70,000 photographic prints, transparencies, negatives, slides, and ephemera related to his business. In 2025, the Museum received a federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to preserve and improve access to this collection. This multi-year award will support the Museum’s ongoing efforts to organize, research, catalog, digitize, and rehouse collections materials that were previously inaccessible.

Lautman (1923-2009) came to the practice of architectural photography after serving as an Army combat photographer in World War II’s Pacific theater, where he was awarded two Bronze Stars. He also apprenticed at Wurts Brothers Photography, whose collection the Museum also holds.

In 1948, Lautman established his own studio in Washington, D.C., spending the next fifty years building a client base of the country’s most prestigious architects, landscape designers, interior designers, builders, and publications of that era. His expertly crafted images covered a wide range of commercial, residential, and institutional projects, and his work was featured in magazines like House and Garden, Architectural Digest, Smithsonian, and many more. He frequently collaborated with his son, Andrew, who became a partner in the family business.

Lautman worked repeatedly with modernist architects like Louis Kahn, Marcel Breuer, Michael Graves, Hugh Newell Jacobsen, I.M. Pei, Charles Goodman, and many others, helping to spread images of their minimalist and functional designs across the country and the world. The Museum also holds many of the magazines, brochures, books, and other publications that featured Lautman’s work at these and other sites. In recognition of these valuable partnerships, Lautman was an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and was awarded their Gold Medal for Architectural Photography in 1973.

Throughout his career, Lautman contributed enormously to the American public’s visual memory and understanding of historical structures like Mount Vernon, the Capitol Building, and Monticello. Lautman undertook an especially unique set of photographs for Ken Burns’ 1997 PBS series Thomas Jefferson, working in low, natural lighting and using an 1850s-style platinum palladium process to depict Monticello as Jefferson himself would have experienced it.

Closer to home, Lautman photographed D.C.’s abandoned Pension Building in the 1970s. The Committee for a National Museum of the Building Arts used those photos to lay out the vision for what would soon become the National Building Museum.

With one foot planted firmly in modern design and an unparalleled commitment to historic preservation, the Robert C. Lautman Photography Collection provides a remarkable record of the D.C. metropolitan area’s growth and development in the second half of the 20th century. The National Building Museum is thrilled to preserve and share these important photographs with the public as cataloging and digitization progresses over the next several years. Keep an eye out for this collection on the Museum’s online database search, and further updates about cataloging processes and findings on The Blueprint.

To conduct research using the Robert C. Lautman Photography Collection, please fill out a Research Request Form. You can learn more about other collections held at the Museum by searching our online database here.