Augustus Sherrill Whiton, the author of the original text on which the present book is based, was the founder and first president of the New York School of Interior Design. .... Whiton was born in New York in 1887, .., Whiton conceived and wrote a series of Home Study Catalogues in the Decorative Arts. The first catalogue was published in 1916 and was followed by several others. During the next years, Whiton s home study readers frequently stopped at his office on East 40th Street, many of them hoping to find classes being taught there. Finally, in 1924, Whiton opened what was at first called the New York School of Interior Decoration. Its first home was in a building on the southwest corner of Madison Avenue and 57th Street, where the IBM headquarters now stands. The home study manuals were assembled in book form and published by Lippincott in 1937 as Elements of Interior Decoration. The book was reissued in 1944. New editions in 1951, 1957, and 1963 were retitled Elements of interior Design and Decoration, the last of these being published after Whiton's death in 1961"