New Acquisitions: 2025

Woodbury & Co, founded in 1879 in Worcester, Massachusetts, was well-known for its industrial plant aerial view drawings. Though the majority of their drawings date from 1890 to 1920, the company remained an active print-maker until the 1990s. Aerial views of industrial plants were often drawn for early advertising and corporate identity and brand purposes; these views were then reproduced as precise photo-engraved prints using patented technical methods invented by Woodbury. In 2025, Norman Brosterman donated twenty ink drawings to the Museum, which he acquired from the Woodbury family when the company closed its doors. They document a wide range of industrial architecture, particularly textile mills, in the early 1900s.  

Donor: Norman Brosterman
Image: (Top) Drawing of the Textile Dyeing Company, 2025.3.11; (Bottom) Drawing of the Franklin Electric Company, 2025.3.14

Vlastimil Koubek, a modernist architect who designed over 100 buildings primarily in the D.C. Metro area, immigrated to the United States in 1952. He originally worked as a draftsman at Emery, Roth & Sons, then in the US Army’s Army Exhibit Unit. He established Koubek Architects in 1957 and, over the course of the next fifty years, was key in more than half of the buildings constructed in the D.C. Metro region. Vlastimil’s daughter, Jana, donated his entire archive to the Museum. This material includes photography, rolled architectural drawings, and 1600ft³  of archival files from his firm’s offices.  

Donor: Jana Koubek
Image: Vlastimil Koubek’s archive in Museum collections.

An important addition to the Architectural Toys Collection, the American Girl Doll Kaya, and her associated accessories and books, offers insight into how young children, particularly girls, have been encouraged to engage with the unique built environment of indigenous peoples in what is now the United States of America. Kaya, her horse, and several accompanying accessories were given to the Museum by Fields Utz.  

Donor: Fields Utz
Image: American Girl Doll Kaya.

Part of the Pension Building’s original function, the Museum’s historic building remains a venue for inaugural events every four years. In documenting the building’s history, the permanent collection accepts materials related to the inaugural events held in the Museum’s Great Hall. This group of materials includes the menu, inaugural seal, and a napkin from the event held at the Museum in 2025.  

Donor: Special Events Department
Image: 2025 inaugural candlelight dinner menu, 2025.6.3.

A nationally recognized master of stained glass, Rowan LeCompte completed forty windows for the Washington National Cathedral over the course of his career. His estate donated materials related to two of these windows, the West Rose Creation Window and the clerestory Calling of St. Peter Window, to the Museum.  

Donor: Estate of Rowan LeCompte, Executor Jenny Barbano
Image: Study of the West Rose Creation Window in the Washington National Cathedral.

Started in Cincinnati, Ohio by two electrical engineers in 1913, Formica is now a leading powerhouse in decorative laminate products for furniture and countertops. In 2024, Formica gifted its extensive archive of pattern samples to the Museum; they built on this landmark donation by adding their line of Woodgrains and Solid Colors to the Museum’s permanent collection in 2025. In doing so, the company’s iconic contributions to interior design will be preserved permanently at the Museum.  

Donor: Formica, Inc. 
Image: Woodgrain samples.

As a longtime user of Formica laminate custom countertops, Stuart Bollock and Bollock Enterprises, Inc. generously donated several samples of Formica woodgrains and solid colors to the Museum in 2025. This donation builds on a previous donation from Bollock Enterprises, Inc. and two donations from Formica, Inc. These samples fill in gaps in previous Formica donations, providing context to the brand’s iconic history and bringing the Museum’s collection closer to full comprehensiveness.  

Donor: Stuart Bollock / Bollock Enterprises
Image: Woodgrain samples.

Following his passing, the family of architect Frederich St. Florian gave materials related to his work on the World War II Memorial to the Museum in early 2025. The donation includes sketches, drawings, renderings, correspondence, paperwork, and one 3D model of a proposed column design for the memorial itself. This material adds to the artifacts already held by the Museum from the Raymond Kaskey Collection featuring his sculpture work for the World War II Memorial, which was donated in 2013.  

Donor: Livia St. Florian
Image: National World War II Memorial detail drawing looking west towards the Lincoln Memorial, 2025.11.145.

American architect and American Institute of Architects (AIA) member William A. Wage passed this unique binder of photographs down to his daughter and son-in-law upon his passing. The binder contains eleven photographs of a brick-making operation in Miami, Oklahoma between 1917 and 1925. These process photographs supplement the Museum’s extensive American Brick Collection by advancing the understanding of historic trades work in brickmaking and the techniques involved in this important construction work.  

Donor: Blake Ross
Image: Binder showing a photograph of a brick-making operation.