Born in Manhattan, Kahn graduated from Columbia College in 1903 and completed further study in architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1907-08. Returning to New York, Kahn struggled to find work in the wake of the 1907 stock market collapse. Competition for architectural jobs was tough given the growing number of trained architects and Kahn also faced a rising wall of anti-Semitism in the patrician world of New York architecture. In 1914, Kahn took a teaching position at Cornell as a replacement for a French architect unable to return due to the outbreak of World War I. In 1917, he joined the partnership of Buchman and Fox, already an established firm. As part of Buchman & Kahn, he began designing and building successful commercial buildings, profiting from the building boom in the 1910s and 1920s.

After Buchman's retirement in 1930, Kahn practiced alone for a decade, and was joined in 1940 by the much younger Robert Allan Jacobs. Kahn finished his career in partnership with Jacobs, retiring from the practice in 1969. Jacobs retired soon after, in 1973, and the remaining junior partners of Kahn & Jacobs joined the St. Louis-based architecture firm Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (HOK) that same year.

The bulk of this collection consists of the Kahn & Jacobs architectural drawings and papers, created between circa 1893 and 1965, which were donated to Avery Library by HOK in 1978. A small amount of personal papers was transferred from the Arendts Library at Syracuse University in 1997. Additional personal papers, including two large scrapbooks, were donated by Mrs. Ely Jacques Kahn in 1992 and 1993. Also found in this collection are student drawings and an incomplete autobiographical essay, donated to Avery Library by Kahn himself in 1963.

The projects in this collection represent the history of a firm that lasted nearly a century. The roots of the firm can be traced back to Hermann J. Schwarzmann, a German-born architect who designed the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876. Schwarzmann soon partnered with Albert Buchman and practiced with him until 1887. Unfortunately no drawings survive from the two earliest firms. This collection begins with records from the partnership of Buchman & Deisler (circa 1888-1899), followed by a succession of partnerships until the dissolution of the firm: Buchman & Fox (1899-1917), Buchman & Kahn (1917-1930), Ely Jacques Kahn Architects (1930-1940), and Kahn & Jacobs (1940-1973). The bulk of the collection documents the firms' work from 1893 until 1950.

The collection includes approximately 8,250 architectural drawings for projects located primarily in New York City that were designed or altered by Kahn & Jacobs and the various predecessor partnerships. Major projects include the Bergdorf Goodman Department Store (1927); Bloomingdale’s Department Store (1903-1917); the Bonwit Teller Department Store at Fifth Avenue and 38th Street (1911); the Film Center building (1928-1932); the original New York Times Building at 42nd Street and Broadway (1915-1920); and the Squibb Building (1929-1951), all in New York City. Researchers will also find drawings for the Oppenheimer-Collins Company buildings in Brooklyn (1915-1928), New York City (1906-1930), Philadelphia (1923), and Pittsburgh (1919-1928).