[1] Avery Library's collection in architecture literature is among the largest in the world and includes such highlights as the first Western printed book on architecture, De re aedificatoria (1485), by Leone Battista Alberti; Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499); works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi; and classics of modernism by Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, with the rarest materials held in the library's Classics (Rare Book) Department.

In 2012, Avery, in partnership with the Museum of Modern Art, acquired the entire archive of Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Classics collection also has important holdings of manuscripts, broadsides, photographs, periodicals, graphic suites—including Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Carceri (Prisons) and Vedute di Roma (Views of Rome)—and printed ephemera.

Among the notable architects and designers represented in the collection are: The Archives also holds the records of the Empire State Building, Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company, the New York Architectural Terra-Cotta Company, and Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York, as well as papers of artist and writer Kenyon Cox, journalist Douglas Haskell, who was editor of Architectural Forum, and drawings by mural and stained glass artist John LaFarge.

The department also has major archives of architectural photography, including works by C. D. Arnold, George Cserna, Samuel H. Gottscho, and Joseph W. Molitor.

Begun at Avery in 1934 by Talbot Hamlin,[5] the Index provides citations to articles in approximately 300 current and over 1,000 retrospective architectural and related periodicals, with primary emphasis on architectural design and history as well as archaeology, landscape architecture, interior design, decorative arts, garden history, historic preservation, urban planning and design, real estate development, and environmental studies.