When searching for a building, it is always helpful to have some of the following pieces of information:

 For a famous structure, an entire book may have written on a single building. These books may be searched under the name of the building in the title, subject, or keyword lines of the pull-down Find menu in library catalog. Most of the time you will have to search under the name of architect or firm in the title, subject or keyword lines of the pull-down Find menu in library catalog.  Searching under keyword will retrieve the greatest number of titles.

Also you should search in periodicals to find citations to articles containing information about the building. Indexes that will you find useful are:

Other indexes that you may find helpful:

Please look at the list of NYiT Library Internet Databases for additional resources, especially Grove’s Dictionary of Art.

Also one should also search the internet for a famous architect or a building.  For instance, The Great Buildings Online has photographs of famous buildings.

The library owns many architectural guides to cities that will give a brief introduction to the most important buildings, including their architects and dates of construction.  A sampling can be found in the architecture guide.

If you are researching an historical building, the same process is appropriate. In addition, you may want to look in sources that are arranged by: period (renaissance, baroque, modern, medieval, etc.), style (romanesque, neo-classical, post-modern, etc.), century, country of origin, or a combination of the above.