Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) Team

Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) is a division of the U.S.

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propert ...

(NPS) responsible for administering the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). These programs were established to document historic places in the United States. Records consist of measured drawings, archival photographs, and written reports, and are archived in the Prints and Photographs Division of the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

Historic American Buildings Survey

In 1933, NPS established the Historic American Buildings Survey following a proposal by Charles E. Peterson, a young landscape architect in the agency. It was founded as a constructive

make-work program A make-work job is a job that has less immediate financial or little benefit at all to the economy than the job costs to support. It may also have no benefit. Make-work jobs are similar to workfare, but are publicly offered on the job market and h ...

for architects, draftsmen and photographers left jobless by the Great Depression. It was supported through the

Historic Sites Act The Historic Sites Act of 1935 was enacted by the United States Congress largely to organize the myriad federally own parks, monuments, and historic sites under the National Park Service and the United States Secretary of the Interior. However, it ...

of 1935. Guided by field instructions from

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, the first HABS recorders were tasked with documenting a representative sampling of America's architectural heritage. They began to document America's

built environment The term built environment refers to human-made conditions and is often used in architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, public health, sociology, and anthropology, among others. These curated spaces provide the setting for human a ...

, carrying out multi-format surveys that amassed a "more than 581,000 measured drawings, large-format photographs, written histories, and original field notes for more than 43,000 historic structures and sites dating from Pre-Columbian times to the twentieth century." By creating an archive of historic architecture, HABS provided a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...

of primary source material and documentation for the then-fledgling

historic preservation Historic preservation (US), built heritage preservation or built heritage conservation (UK), is an endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historical significance. It is a philos ...

movement. Earlier private projects included

Eleanor Raymond Eleanor Raymond (March 4 1887 – July 24 1989) was an American architect. During a professional career spanning some sixty years of practice, mainly in residential housing, Raymond explored the use of innovative materials and building system ...

's ''Early Domestic Architecture of Pennsylvania'' (1931),

Charles Morse Stotz Charles Morse Stotz was an architect, architectural historian, and preservationist. He is known for his extensive study of the architectural history of Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania. He was one of the architects to practice in the field of ...

's Western Pennsylvania Architectural Survey and the

White Pine Series of Architectural Monographs The ''White Pine Series of Architectural Monographs'', subtitled "A Bi-Monthly Publication Suggesting the Architectural Use of White Pine and Its Availability Today as a Structural Wood", was a landmark publication of drawings, photographs and des ...

. Many of their contributors later joined the HABS program. Important HABS photographers include

Jack Boucher Jack E. Boucher (September 4, 1931 – September 2, 2012) was an American photographer for the National Park Service for more than 40 years beginning in 1958. He served as the Chief Photographer for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS ...

, who worked for the project for over 40 years; Robert W. Tebbs in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

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in Charleston, South Carolina,

James Butters James is a common English language surname and given name: *James (name), the typically masculine first name James * James (surname), various people with the last name James James or James City may also refer to: People * King James (disambiguati ...

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

, Richard J. Levy in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

. and

Jet Lowe John T. "Jet" Lowe is an American photographer. He is one of the photographers employed by the U.S. National Park Service on the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) projects, and was the super ...

Historic American Engineering Record

The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) program was founded on January 10, 1969, by NPS and the

American Society of Civil Engineers American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

. HAER documents historic sites, structures, mechanical, and engineering artifacts. The Maritime Administration works with HAER to "document historic vessels prior to their disposal." Since the advent of HAER, the combined program is typically called "HABS/HAER".

Eric DeLony Eric DeLony (1944–2018) served as chief of the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) from 1971 to 2003 and was a noted historic preservationist. He was a professional engineering and industrial heritage consultant with a particular interest ...

headed HAER from 1987 to 2003.

Historic American Landscapes Survey

In October 2000, NPS and the

American Society of Landscape Architects The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is a professional association for landscape architects in the United States. The ASLA's mission is to advance landscape architecture through advocacy, communication, education, and fellowship ...

established a sister program, the Historic American Landscapes Survey, to systematically document historic American landscapes. A predecessor, the Historic American Landscape and Garden Project, recorded historic Massachusetts gardens between 1935 and 1940. That project was funded by the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

, but was administered by HABS, which supervised the collection of records. In 2001, along with the Library of Congress, the NPS, and the American Society of Landscape Architects signed a Memorandum of Understanding which established a working relationship between the three organizations. Following the signing of this agreement, these organizations together signed the Tripartite Agreement in 2010, making "HALS a permanent federal program". The NPS deals with the planning and operations of HALS, standardizes the formats and develops the guidelines for recording landscapes.

Library of Congress

The permanent collection of HABS/HAER/HALS are housed at the

, which was established in 1790 (and reestablished after the disastrous fire of 1814 in

by purchasing former third President

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...

's personal library at

Monticello Monticello ( ) was the primary plantation of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, who began designing Monticello after inheriting land from his father at age 26. Located just outside Charlottesville, V ...

in 1815) as the replacement reference library of the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...

. It has since been expanded to serve as the national library of the United States; U.S. publishers are required to deposit a copy of every copyrighted and published work, book monograph and magazine. As a branch of the

United States Government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...

, its created works are in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

in the US. Many images, drawings, and documents are available through the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, including proposed, demolished, and existing structures; locales, projects, and designs.

References

External links

Records of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS)/Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) Division
Guide to Federal Records
National Park Service (NPS): official Heritage Documentation Programs website

Library of Congress HABS/HAER/HALS Collection

Photographer Stepen Schafer BLOG: Frequently Asked Questions about HABS, HAER and HALS website

New England based Photographer Andrew Baugnet specializes in HABS/HAER photographic documentation
* Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) Collection at the University of Maryland Libraries {{Authority control * Photo archives in the United States Online archives of the United States Architecture organizations based in the United States History of engineering . National Park Service Works Progress Administration 1933 establishments in the United States