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Archival description
Only top-level descriptions University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services (UTARMS) Acland, James Headly
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James Headly Acland fonds

  • UTA 1002
  • Fonds
  • [195-]-1976

Records documenting Professor Acland’s research, publication and teaching activities. Includes notebooks, scripts and draft papers, photographs, slides, and negatives. The fonds is dominated by over 4000 prints and negatives documenting his research interest in and publication of his book The Gothic Vault and the book Building by the Sea written with Eric Arthur on the study of maritime architecture on Canada’s east coast. Also included are numerous prints of Toronto where Acland was active in the preservation of historic buildings such as Old City Hall.

This accession documents to a limited degree James Acland’s research, teaching and publications. It is limited because very little of his textual records survived, although there is a good number of notebooks that were mostly likely used for lectures. Records relating to his architectural conservation work especially relating to saving Old City Hall are held at the City of Toronto Archives.

This accession does however give a good representation of Acland’s photographic work that formed the basis of his research and publications. There are extensive photographs and negatives relating to The Gothic Vault as well as Building by the Sea. There is a large collection of photographs taken on a trip to Europe in 1964. These would have most certainly been used for research and teaching. All the images in this collection are well identified in terms of their location and site. However, few give specific dates. It is assumed that most of the images were taken through the 1960s and some in the early 1970s.

Sometime after his death, a collection of 25,000 slides was donated to the University of Toronto and was distributed among 15 departments. A catalogue of these slides was prepared by the Centre for Medieval Studies and published in 1984: Catalogue of the James Acland Slide Collection. Only a few slides were donated with this accession and it is possible they are duplicates of what is found in the larger collection.

Acland, James Headly