The collection consists of Dunn's drawings, some of which were considered as illustrations for the Works Project Administration’s (WPA) New Orleans City Guide (1938) and Louisiana: A Guide to the State (1941). Related studies are rendered in pen and ink, with strong contour lines and restrained shading effects. The largest number of drawings are softly toned graphite sketches representing historic structures located in the city of New Orleans. None are dated, but terminus post quem is assumed to be 1940, when the Louisiana guide went to press. Many of the buildings she illustrated are no longer standing, razed during various twentieth-century urban planning initiatives.
The drawings once formed a part of Howard-Tilton Library’s Reference Department picture files, but were transferred to the Southeastern Architectural Archive when it was founded in 1980.
Learn more about Grace Dunn here.
Image above: Grace Dunn, illustrator. Head piece for "New Orleans -- Old and New." Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration. New Orleans City Guide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1938. Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.
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