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The Historic American Building Survey in Philadelphia, 1950-1966: Shaping Postwar Preservation, Elise Vider, 1991
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The Historic American Building Survey in Philadelphia, 1950-1966: Shaping Postwar Preservation, Elise Vider, 1991
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E
UNIVERSITY
PENNSYLVANIA
LIBRARIES
WILSON 802
THE HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY IN PHILADELPHIA.
1950-1966: SHAPING POSTWAR PRESERVATION
Elise Vider
A THESIS
in
The Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
Presented to the faculties of the University of Pennsylvania
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCE
1991
Roger W. Moss. Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture
Advisor
Robert J. Kapsch, Chief. HABS/HAER. National Park Service
Reader
Architecture
FINE ARTS
UNIVERSITY
OF
PENNSYLVANIA
LIBRARIES
i
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
11
Acknowledgments
V
Chapter One: Introduction
1
Chapter Two: HABS Founding and Early Years
11
Chapter Three: HABS in Philadelphia,
22
The Postwar Years Through Mission 66
Chapter Four: HABS in Philadelphia,
41
Mission 66 Through 1966
Chapter Five: Conclusion
72
Notes
78
Plates
92
Bibliography
140
ii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate 1. HABS certificate
92-93
Plate 2. Elevation, St. Michael's Cathedral,
94
Sitka, Alaska
Plate 3. HABS 1930s veterans
95
Plate 4. Charles E. Peterson
96-97
Plate 5. Thomas C. Vint
98
Plate 6. Staffs of Eastern Office of Design and
99
Construction and Independence Park
Plate 7. Measuring team at Independence
100
National Historical Park, 1955
Plate 8. Door. Cross Keys Tavern, Chester County.
101
Pa.
Plate 9. South elevation, Custom House and Public
102
Stores, Salem, Mass.
Plate 10. Construction details, Custom House and
103
Public Stores. Salem, Mass.
Plate 11. Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
104
Plate 12. Measuring team at Harpers Ferry, 1958
105
Plate 13. Measuring team at Independence Hall,
106
July 1961
Plate 14. Measuring team at Johnson-Pratt House,
107
Mid-Coast Maine Project. 1960.
Plate 15. James Swilley at Johnson-Pratt House,
108
1960
Plate 16. James C. Massey explaining Cronaflex
109
method, 27 October 1961
Plate 17-18. - Professor Perry E. Borchers
110-112
arranging photogrammetry equipment
Plate 19. West elevation, Plum Street (Isaac M.
113
Wise) Temple, Cincinnati, Ohio
iii
Plate 20. Elevation, The Provident Life and Trust
114
Company Bank, Philadelphia. Pa.
Plate 21. John Poppeliers, 1963
115
Plate 22. HABS Advisory Board, October 1961
116
Plate 23. Charles Peterson and Thomas vint,
117
27 October 1961
Plate 24. Engraving, c. 1855. Jayne
119
Building, Philadelphia, Pa.
Plate 25. Rear view of Jayne Building during
120
demolition, January 1958
Plate 26. Elevations, Jayne Building
121
Plate 27. Varied drawings, Robert M. Lee
122
House and Law Office, Philadelphia. Pa.
Plate 28. The Provident Life and Trust Company
123
Bank, Philadelphia. Pa.
Plate 29-30. The Provident Life and Trust
124-126
Company Bank during demolition, 1960.
Plate 31. Elevations, Capt. James Abercrombie
127
House, Philadelphia. Pa.
Plate 32. The Manhattan Building, Philadelphia.
128
Pa.
Plate 33. The George Gordon Building.
129
Philadelphia. Pa.
Plate 34-35. - The LaTour Warehouse,
130-131
Philadelphia. Pa.
Plate 36. James C. Massey
132
Plate 37. U.S. Grant summer cottage, Long Branch,
133
N.J., during demolition, 1963
Plate 38. Auditorium Building. Chicago, Ill.
134
Plate 39. Robie House, Chicago, Ill.
135
Plate 40. Robie House furnishings
136
Plate 41. Ernest Allen Connally, 1964
137
iv
Plate 42. Russell V. Keune, 1969
138
Plate 43. William J. Murtagh, speaking
139
in 1968
V
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A number of people helped this thesis to fruition
with their advice, support, and kind assistance. I am
indebted to my advisor, Dr. Roger W. Moss. for his
clear-headed counsel and advice. My reader, Dr. Robert J.
Kapsch, chief of HABS/HAER, went beyond the call of duty
with his meticulous reading of the manuscript. I am
grateful for his generous assistance throughout the
research and writing process and for his instrumental role
in shaping and refining the topic.
My debt to Charles E. Peterson cannot be
overstated. As the founder of the Historic American
Buildings Survey and eminence grise of historic
preservation in America, Mr. Peterson was an invaluable
source. My thanks go to him for sharing his time, his
memories, his library. and his expert knowledge with me.
All of the interview subjects gave their time
graciously as I prodded for recollections of events long
ago. My thanks go to Ernest Allen Connally, James C.
Massey, Penelope Hartshorne Batchelor, John Poppeliers,
Russell V. Keune, E. Blaine Cliver, William J. Murtagh,
Jack E. Boucher, Cervin Robinson, John Waite, and James F.
O'Gorman.
Thanks, also, to George E. Thomas: Constance M.
vi
Greiff: Judy R. Davis, John A. Burns, and Georgette R.
Wilson of the HABS/HAER staff; Hilda Sanchez of Charles
Peterson's office: Barry Mackintosh of the National Park
Service: and Bruce Laverty of The Athenaeum of
Philadelphia.
My biggest debt of gratitude goes to my family,
Dick. Joshua, and Kelly Polman. Dick flew many extra miles
and Josh and Kelly played quietly countless times 80 that I
could work on this project. For their patience and loving
support, this thesis 18 dedicated to them.
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
The modern historic preservation movement has its
roots in a confluence of forces. The restoration of
Williamsburg. Virginia, the enactment of municipal
preservation ordinances in historic cities such as New
Orleans and Charleston, rejection of the orthodoxy of
modern architecture and city planning. and the federal
government's first, tentative steps towards preserving the
nation's patrimony with the Antiguities Act of 1906 were
all seminal.
So. too, was the activity that occurred in
Philadelphia from 1950 through 1966 when a number of
historical forces. personalities. and policies converged to
make the city a center of the emerging preservation
movement. Postwar Philadelphia was alive with
preservation-related activity. In the Old City,
Independence National Historical Park was taking shape and
in the surrounding neighborhood. Society Hill, scores of
18th and early 19th-century houses were being restored.
Crosstown, at the University of Pennsylvania, academics
including George B. Tatum and Robert C. Smith were
influental in legitimizing the study of American
architectural history. In 1955, the city passed its
historic preservation ordinance, pioneering in its citywide
jurisdiction. (1)
1
2
Contributing to the activity was the Historic
American Buildings Survey. popularly known as HABS, the
nation's archives for the documentation of American
architecture. By the 1950s, HABS --established in 1933 as a
New Deal program and emerging from a period of dormancy
during the war years -- was the oldest federal preservation
program, and its role in promoting preservation was well
established. Under HABS, noteworthy American buildings were
selected, researched, photographed. and measured drawings
made for submission to the Library of Congress. From its
inception. HABS set out to document architecturally
significant structures, a departure from the traditional
emphasis on associative values; instead HABS was intended
to chronicle "almost a complete resume of the builders'
art.' (2) For decades before the establishment of the
National Register of Historic Places, HABS was the only
source of federal recognition for locally significant
structures. Certificates, signed by the secretary of the
interior, were bestowed by HABS. (plate 1) For owners and
occupants, it was often a surprise to learn that their
buildings were of interest to the Library of Congress and
HABS certificates were frequently framed and displayed with
pride. "There is no question that the preservation movement
was encouraged by the survey, " HABS founder Charles E.
Peterson has said. (3)
3
In the years between 1950 and 1966 -- at first by
happenstance, and later, by design -- HABS was based
largely in Philadelphia. (After 1957, some HABS work was
done out of Washington, D.C. and, after 1959, from San
Francisco. But Philadelphia remained the epicenter of HABS
activity.) The National Park Service had assigned Charles
Peterson, who in 1933 had originated HABS, to Philadelphia
in 1950 to begin work on Independence National Historical
Park. As resident architect, Peterson was faced with the
need to document dozens of existing buildings. He quickly
perceived the opportunity to add to the HABS collection by
making sure that the recording work was done to HABS
standards and forwarded to the Library of Congress. With
the work at Independence, the survey, which had been
virtually dormant for nearly a decade, got its second lease
on life by the man who had originated it years earlier.
But the postwar building boom was now in progress
and HABS could no longer rely on a pool of experienced but
unemployed architects, as it had throughout the 1930s.
Instead, Peterson hit upon an idea, borrowed from the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers, of using undergraduate,
professional students during their summer recess. (4) The
first students began work in Philadelphia in 1950. (5)
Summer after summer, building by building, detailed
measured drawings were made as properties were acquired for
4
the park. Anonymous 18th-century residences, great houses
such as the Neave and Abercrombie houses (both built 1759),
and landmarks such as the Provident Life and Trust Company
Bank (built 1876-79. Frank Furness) were all recorded by
HABS. In 1954, Peterson was put in charge of historic
structures for the park service's new Eastern Office of
Design and Construction (EODC). based in Philadelphia and
with jurisdiction over the eastern half of the United
States. The promotion gave Peterson the opportunity to
extend HABS beyond the confines of Philadelphia to other
park restoration projects. Teams were exported to such
sites as the Adams Mansion in Quincy. Mass. (1955), Harpers
Ferry, West Virginia (1955 and 1958). and the Andrew
Johnson home in Greeneville, Tennessee (1957).
In 1957, the Park Service undertook its "Mission
66" program, designed to upgrade the national parks in time
for 1966, the fiftieth anniversary of the National Park
Service. As one small facet of the program, funds were
allocated to reactivate HABS. With its new appropriation.
the largest since the 1930s, HABS was no longer constrained
to recording park properties. For the first time since the
Depression, HABS could mount recording projects of
privately-owned structures. Teams moved out to the middle
Connecticut River Valley (1959). to St. Augustine, Florida
(1960-61). and to San Juan, Puerto Rico (1962).
5
For the hundreds of students who participated in
summer survey teams during the 1950s and early 1960s. the
HABS experience and training proved to be a seminal
introduction to historic architecture, to recording and
documentation techniques, and to the evolving philosophies
and attitudes of historic preservation.
American architecture schools of the 1950s and
1960s were heavily oriented towards modernism. Curricula
generally de-emphasized architectural history and
delineation: restoration techniques and architectural
conservation were virtually ignored. (6) Not until 1964 was
the first graduate course in historic preservation taught
at Columbia University. (7) As late as 1968, the National
Trust for Historic Preservation reported that
"architecture school curricula for the most part evidenced
little interest in the grammar of historic styles and in
draftsmanship. " (8) Thus it was through HABS that a
generation of young professionals gained their first
exposure to historic American architecture with hands-on
experience augmented by occasional lectures and training
sessions. For some. the HABS experience proved to be a
turning point.
Ernest Allen Connally. then a professor of
architecture at the University of Illinois and a frequent
summer HABS team supervisor, wrote in 1961:
6
From the beginning, one of the chief
aims of the summer program has been to give our
students -- our architects of the future -- the
opportunity to participate directly in the
conservation of our architectural legacy, thereby
cultivating and perpetuating an informed concern
for one of our most significant cultural sources.
This is a responsibility of the
architectural profession at large. Even so, we
still require within the profession a small corps
of highly trained specialists to work in the field
of preservation and restoration, and one of the
collateral results of the summer program has been
the decision of a number of able young men to make
careers in this vital work. (9)
Indeed, a number of HABS alumni of the period --
both students and supervisors -- achieved prominence in
the preservation movement. (10) Among them are Connally.
who shaped federal preservation policy in the first
critical years following passage of the National Historic
Preservation Act of 1966; James C. Massey, one of
Peterson's first recruits who served as chief of HABS from
1966-72: James F. O'Gorman, now a noted scholar of
architectural history; Russell V. Keune, instrumental in
developing the criteria for the National Register of
Historic Places and for implementing the program; John
Milner and John G. Waite, who went on to practice the
almost-unknown specialty of restoration architecture;
William J. Murtagh, a preservation educator and first
keeper of the National Register: F. Blair Reeves, a
7
supervisor who trained a generation of architects at the
University of Florida and at the Preservation Institute:
Nantucket; Harley J. McKee, a Syracuse University
architecture professor and HABS supervisor who was one of
the founders of the Association for Preservation
Technology: E. Blaine Cliver, a long-time Park Service
official who has led teams to devastated historic sites in
the aftermath of fire, earthquake, and hurricane damage:
Theodore A. Sande, a noted expert in industrial archeology:
Robert C. Giebner, professor of architecture at the
University of Arizona: Donald B. Myer, assistant secretary
of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts; and, of course,
Peterson himself who has been called "one of the seminal
figures in the history of preservation and restoration
nationally.' (11)
HABS moved to Washington in 1966 as part of the
consolidation of federal preservation programs. But the
survey's fifteen-year tenure in Philadelphia placed HABS
and its participants in the midst of a maelstrom of
preservation-related activities. HABS interacted with the
city's fledgling Historical Commission and with the
planning and redevelopment boards that were reshaping much
of the city's historic quarter.
More significantly. HABS was actively recording
buildings as last rites before another arm of the Park
8
Service demolished them to clear space in Independence
National Historical Park. The most vivid memories of many
of the HABS alumni of the period pertain to this tension,
particularly to Charles Peterson's efforts to save doomed
Victorian structures that were interspersed among older
structures deemed worthy of preservation. "Peterson seemed
to be a voice in the wilderness," recalled O'Gorman. "What
he could do if he couldn't save the buildings was record
them as they went down. And I think he did that. " (12)
The notion of "preservation through documentation"
became a critical aspect of the HABS program as the forces
of urban renewal and highway construction wrought havoc on
the historic landscape throughout the 1950s and early
1960s. (13) "What we can't protect in physical being, we
can protect in spirit. The Historic American Buildings
Survey shows us how we can catch the historic places for
the files before the bulldozer comes," offered John A.
Carver Jr., assistant secretary of the Department of the
Interior. (14)
At the same time, there began to be an awareness
that HABS's interest in an endangered property could be
translated into advocacy:
federal recognition of a historic building by
HABS recording. graphically demonstrated by its
formal certificate, has sometimes been significant
in attempts to keep the building away from its
wreckers, through the weight of an outside and
9
impartial scholarly viewpoint.. The recording of
threatened buildings, such as New York's
Metropolitan Opera House or the eighteenth-century
Leiper House near Philadelphia called attention to
their historic importance and architectural merit
and aided the preservationists trying to save
them. (15)
Similarly, the possibilities of using HABS drawings
as the basis for restoration or reconstruction began to
take hold: "These architectural records take on a
heightened importance when a building is to restored, or
reconstructed after a fire or storm. Such happened recently
when the venerable [St. Michael's] Russian Orthodox
Cathedral in Sitka, Alaska, burned to the ground, for HABS
measured drawings will be used for its reconstruction. What
about other key landmarks? Are there precise records
available for restoration or rebuilding after such a
catastrophe as this?" (16) (plate 2)
(This function of HABS has been put to lighthearted
use as well. In 1966, HABS provided a set of drawings of
the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion in Philadelphia to Princess
Grace of Monaco as the basis for construction of a replica
for her children.) (17)
Philadelphia during HABS's tenure was an incubator
for a generation that would shape the modern preservation
movement while transforming it from an antiquarian concern
to a professional pursuit. At the same time, the
Philadelphia years were critical for HABS itself as it
10
evolved from a New Deal, work-relief effort into a vital,
federal program with relevance to contemporary preservation
concerns and challenges.
CHAPTER TWO: HABS FOUNDING AND EARLY YEARS
The Historic American Buildings Survey was born on
a Sunday afternoon in November 1933 in an apartment at 2501
Calvert Street, Washington, D.C. when Charles E. Peterson
took pencil in hand to write a ten-page memorandum
proposing a relief program to employ out-of-work architects
and photographers by recording specimens of American
architecture. (18)
Peterson had begun his professional career as a
landscape architect with the National Park Service in 1929
in San Francisco but was ordered East in 1930 to work on
two new historical projects being developed in Virginia:
the George Washington Birthplace and the Colonial National
Monument. (19) By the fall of 1933. only five years out of
college, Peterson was ensconced in Washington as chief of
the Eastern Division of the Branch of Plans and Design of
the Office of National Parks, Buildings, and Reservations
(known before and since as the National Park Service). He
has recalled:
Washington D.C. was agog with excitement in
1933. President Roosevelt, after his inauguration
on March 4, immediately began his dramatic war
against the Depression. New Deal agencies,
administrators, and idea men rose, spoke, and
faded month by month. New schemes were regularly
announced in the press and on the radio. On
November 9, the President by executive order
established the Civil Works Administration with
Harry L. Hopkins as Administrator. His mandate was
to create four million jobs to help the vast army
of unemployed over the winter. The executive
11
12
departments were invited to bring forth programs
for those needing work, including professional
people. Speed was essential.. (20)
There were precedents for the use of unemployed
architects to record historic buildings. In 1931,
depression-hit architects and draftsmen under the Royal
Institute of British Architects were put to work making
measured drawings of historic buildings in London. (21) The
Architects' Emergency Committee of New York City put
unemployed architects and draftsmen to work making measured
drawings and photographs of old buildings from Maine to
Louisiana and the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American
Institute of Architects (AIA) organized a survey of the
early architecture of Western Pennsylvania. (22) In
Philadelphia. the AIA chapter periodically drew individual,
historic buildings. A broader effort was initiated in 1930
when "The Old Philadelphia Survey" put fifty-seven
unemployed draftsmen to work preparing 407 measured
drawings of structures in the Old City and along the banks
of the Schuylkill River. Additionally. 125 photographs and
a map were produced. (23) As Peterson wryly noted. "The
dank winds of the Great Depression did blow some good. "
(24)
There were other inspirations as well. During his
years in Virginia, Peterson had close contact with the
13
drafting room at Colonial Williamsburg. Each draftsman, he
observed, had plans to do 8 book about old Virginia houses
and there was much secrecy as each sought to find early
structures that no one else knew about. Far preferable.
thought Peterson, would be a central, public archives of
historic architecture that would encourage the sharing.
rather than the hoarding. of results. (25)
In his proposal, quickly dubbed the Historic
American Buildings Survey (the word "survey" was "loosely
used for promotional reasons. as surveys were popular at
the time". ) (26) Peterson proposed to employ 1,200
architects, draftsmen. and photographers for a period of
two or more months to study. measure, draw. and photograph
important "antique" buildings in the United States. (27)
"From the cultural standpoint an enormous contribution to
the history and aesthetics of American life could be made. "
he wrote. (28) Although the proposal was essentially a work
relief project. Peterson clearly perceived an opportunity
to initiate a record of American architecture and he wrote
passionately about the need for such an effort:
Our architectural heritage of buildings from the
last four centuries diminishes daily at an alarming
rate. The ravages of fire and the natural elements
together with the demolition and alterations caused
by real estate "improvements" form an inexorable
tide of destruction destined to wipe out the great
majority of the buildings which knew the
beginning and first flourish of the nation... It is
the responsibility of the American people that if
14
the great number of our antique buildings must
disappear through economic causes, they should not
pass into unrecorded oblivion. (29)
Peterson's vision was ambitious in scope, proposing
a canvass of structures ranging from the Atlantic seaboard
to Russian remnants in Alaska, with a proposed cut-off date
of 1860. The 1860 date, which precluded the recording of
late Victorian structures, must be viewed in the context of
the times. The study of American architecture was still in
its nascent period in the early 1930s and, Peterson
recalled, "there was in those days a general consensus that
Victorian buildings were ugly and not worth serious study
or any effort to save them. Indeed, Greek Revival was only
then coming up for attention and the two first works on
that subject, I remember, were avant-garde curiosities."
(30) Nevertheless, Peterson took the forward-looking step
of calling for HABS to record building types that included
even vernacular and modest commercial and agricultural
structures. "The list of building types," he wrote, "should
be almost a complete resume of the builders' art. It should
include public buildings, churches, residences, bridges.
forts, barns, mills, shops, rural outbuildings, and any
other kind of structure of which there are good specimens
extant. " (31)
To accomplish his goals, Peterson set out an
organizational structure with a seven-member national
15
advisory committee; state offices headed by what came to be
known as district officers, nominated by local AIA
chapters: and state advisory committees that would
determine projects to be undertaken and oversee operations.
Overall administration and deposition of completed material
in the Library of Congress would fall to the Park Service.
Enrolled architects would furnish their own drafting
boards, T-squares, triangles, and other equipment; paper,
pencils. and erasers would be supplied free. Similarly.
photographers would need their own cameras; film would be
provided by the government. The pay be would be $1.10 an
hour for field supervisors and $.90 for regular enrollees:
photographers would be paid $1 an hour. (When
administrative details were worked out, the salary for
district officers was set at $200 a month.) The overall
cost for a payroll of about 1,200, Peterson estimated.
would be $448,000. (32)
By the standards of the modern bureaucracy. the
proposal moved along with astonishing speed. Within four
days it had been approved, as written, by Secretary of the
Interior Harold I. Ickes and by December 1 by Hopkins. In
the interim it had also received the endorsement of the
Williamsburg Advisory Committee of Architects and of the
Executive Committee of the AIA. (33)
The AIA had good reason to support the plan. The
16
organization had endorsed the concept of a national survey
of historical architecture as early as 1918. (34)
Furthermore, the AIA leadership "preferred HABS to most
other public employment projects for architects because it
did not throw the workers into competition with their
colleagues still in private practice.' (35) Most essential
was the enthusiasm of Dr. Leicester B. Holland who served
in pivotal roles as both head of the Fine Arts Division at
the Library of Congress and as chairman of the AIA's
Committee on Preservation of Historic Buildings. Holland
had been active in the Old Philadelphia Survey. he had
established a Pictorial Division of Early American
Architecture at the Library of Congress in 1930 and, in
1933, "he was ready to undertake a national project. " (36)
The sum of money Peterson had requested was quickly
set aside by the Civil Works Administration and HABS was
launched, under the supervision of Chief Architect Thomas
C. Vint. (The job fell to Vint after Ickes approved the
program with the provision that Peterson was not to run
it.) (37) Work began about the first of January 1934 and
the National Advisory Committee met on January 8-9, with
Holland as chairman, to discuss policy matters.
Drafting-room techniques, a standard paper type for final
record drawings and a uniform sheet size were established.
(38) At its peak, the first HABS campaign employed 772
17
people who prepared 5,110 sheets of drawings representing
882 measured structures with brief historical sketches and
3.260 photographs. Another 1,461 buildings were identified
as suitable for future recording. (39) (plate 3)
The frequent administrative changes that
characterized New Deal programs kept the "life expectancy
of the survey precarious indeed. On February 13. the
staff was advised of the imminent end of the project, but
working with inspired desperation, the men in the field
matched wits with local administrators. and HABS somehow
came through, " Peterson recalled. (40) Almost from the
survey's inception, HABS supporters, perceiving the
cultural benefits of a centralized. public archives of
American architecture, were interested in making the
program permanent. "While the Historic American Buildings
Survey receives its initial impetus from relief funds, it
was designed so it could be made permanent. There are many
possible sources which might supply the funds to carry on
the work, and the historic material which should be
recorded is nearly inexhaustible, " Peterson wrote in 1936.
(41) In the first months of HABS's existence, Holland,
Peterson, and Vint "worked out a bureaucratic instrument
which established a permanent organization for HABS. " (42)
In April 1934, an exhibition of HABS work at the National
Museum in Washington and the ensuing, favorable press
18
coverage generated good will for the survey. "The quality
of the work was excellent, and the exhibition was well
received. The proven feasibility of the whole idea
encouraged the National Parks Service, the American
Institute of Architects. and the Library of Congress to
effect, on July 23, 1934, an agreement to carry on the work
as a permanent activity. Peterson wrote in 1936. (43)
The "Tripartite Agreement," as it came to be known,
was derived from the document prepared by Holland,
Peterson, and Vint. It established the respective roles of
each of the three parties: the Park Service was to
administer the survey; the AIA was to be responsible for
execution of field work; and the Library of Congress would
be the repository of completed records, with responsibility
for classification and storage. (44)
But HABS was still without specific legal standing.
"Both [HABS and the Civilian Conservation Corps (another
relief program)] cut across federal-state lines, involving
the Service with historic properties and preservation
functions regardless of jurisdiction. Yet their activities
were administrative improvisations. lacking specific legal
authority. To insure that it could continue its broad-based
involvement, the Service needed the sanction of law. The
result was the Historic Sites Act of August 21, 1935. " (45)
Among its provisions, the act authorized
19
continuation of HABS by mandating the National Park Service
to "secure, collate, and preserve drawings, plans,
photographs, and other data of historic and archaeologic
sites, buildings, and objects.' (46) The act also mandated
the Park Service to survey historic structures and sites to
determine "which possess exceptional value as commemorating
or illustrating the history of the United States. (47)
This mandate launched the National Survey of Historic Sites
and Buildings, commonly shortened to the Historic Sites
Survey, from which grew today's National Historic Landmarks
Program. From the start, the Historic Sites Survey was
separate and distinct from HABS, both in mission and
administration. "Instead of building on HABS, the
historians started their own survey of historic sites and
buildings, based largely on documentary sources. (48) To
fulfill the mandates of the new law, the Park Service
established a new Branch of Historic Sites and Buildings
but HABS stayed with the Branch of Plans and Design. "The
architects' Branch of Plans and Design resisted the
[efforts] of the new Branch of Historic Sites and Buildings
to co-opt their program. HABS continued to enjoy the strong
support of architects inside the Park Service, and those in
private practice. By failing to shift HABS to the History
branch in the bureaucratic shuffle that ensued after the
passage of the Historic Sites Act, the Park Service
20
leadership effectively reaffirmed the identity of HABS as
an architects' program. " (49)
In a succession of administrative and funding
arrangements, HABS persisted through the 1930s. In 1935
and 1938, catalogs of the HABS collection were published,
followed in 1941 by an enlarged version. Published nine
months before Pearl Harbor, the 1941 catalog reported
records of 6,389 structures, recorded on 23,765 sheets of
drawings and 23,357 photographs in the Library of Congress.
(50) "Vint realized that if war did come, it would suspend
HABS activities indefinitely. He considered a completed
catalog crucial to the future usefulness of the
collection
The catalog was published in March 1941,
effectively ending HABS as a New Deal program. " (51)
As Vint feared, the arrival of World War II put
HABS and other Park Service programs on indefinite hiatus.
The Park Service was moved to Chicago to free its
Washington space for war-related activities. (52) Funds
were cut drastically and a number of key officials,
including Peterson, entered the military. Although some
drawings trickled in, donated by individuals and
institutions, HABS. without funding or staffing, became
largely inactive for the duration of the war. (Although
never approved, a proposal for the wartime continuation of
HABS was drafted in June 1942. It recommended the emergency
21
recording of Park Service sites, buildings, and monuments
to provide a basis for restoration should they be damaged
by the "man-made wreck of war. ") (53)
The first phase of HABS, an opportunity wrested
from the desperation of the Great Depression, was over.
CHAPTER THREE: HABS IN PHILADELPHIA, THE POSTWAR YEARS
THROUGH MISSION 66
Charles E. Peterson began his professional
acquaintance with Philadelphia -- a relationship that would
endure for decades -- in 1947. In the 18 years since he had
joined the National Park Service, Peterson had established
himself as the Park Service's foremost expert on the
restoration of historic architecture. In the early 1930s,
he had been stationed at the fledgling Colonial National
Monument (later Historical Park) in Virginia and lived
nearby at Williamsburg. giving him exposure to what were
then "the two most thoroughly professional and complicated
historical programs in the United States." (54) Based on
his work at Colonial, he is credited with having introduced
the basic restoration methodology and format that has
become known as the "historic structures report." (55)
Later, he served as staff architect at the Jefferson
National Expansion Memorial, where a large number of
historic buildings in a dense urban setting were analyzed
-- and ultimately demolished.
Now, in 1947, after serving in the Navy from 1941
to 1946, (56) Peterson was sent to Philadelphia from St.
Louis to consult with the Philadelphia National Shrines
Park Commission, mandated by the federal government to
investigate the establishment of a national historical park
22
23
around Independence Square. (57) (plate 4) Although just a
visitor, Peterson quickly made the social rounds and was
sought as a public speaker. (58) Referring to the
residential neighborhood south of the park, he may have
been the first to resurrect its 18th-century name, "Society
Hill." (59) Most significantly. he began to shape his own
philosophy about the park's development. "His concept of
how the park should be treated was less antiurban and
aesthetically more respectful of the historic
buildings. (60)
Peterson was permanently assigned to the fledgling
Independence National Historical Park and returned to
Philadelphia to live in 1950. The National Park Service had
opened its land acquisition office the previous year and
Peterson's job was to study and analyze scores of
potentially historic buildings and begin to plan selective
restorations. A first step and fundamental tool in the
process was to make measured drawings of the buildings
being considered for restoration. (Measured drawings, made
by an architect or accomplished draftsman, are precise
scale drawings that comprise a complete and accurate record
of the existing conditions of a building. Typically, they
are based on methodical hand measurement and include floor
plans, elevations, sections, and details of decoration,
trim, and construction.) (61)
24
Measured drawings had been central to the Historic
American Buildings Survey that Peterson had founded in
1933. Although the active measuring program was suspended
in 1941, HABS continued in principle through the war years
by virtue of the 1934 Tripartite Agreement which
established it as a permanent program. The HABS Advisory
Board remained in existence and in 1941 there was an
informal gathering of HABS supporters and board members.
(62) Throughout World War II, the survey had subsisted on a
small number of donated materials.
Now, Peterson perceived an opportunity to begin
once again to build the collection with the recording of
historic buildings at Independence. Drawings had to be made
anyway, he reasoned, so why not make them to HABS standards
and submit them to the Library of Congress? (63) (Despite
pressure from Peterson, not all park properties were
recorded for the HABS collection, however. The standard
nineteen-by-twenty-four inch HABS paper and required
horizontal format were considered impractical by the
architects on the park staff for some of their
documentation work and larger Park Service drawing sheets
were used, although they were unsuitable for submission to
the Library of Congress. (64) The limitations of the small
drawing sheet eventually prompted HABS to approve a larger
sheet, measuring twenty-four-by-thirty-six inches, in the
25
late 1960s.)
Ernest Allen Connally, who met Peterson in 1952,
recalled that,
When Pete got settled in Philadelphia, he saw all
those buildings around that they were going to have
to do something with. There were a lot of important
buildings in the area of Independence National
Historical Park as it was planned and so Pete
always saw the opportunity to get HABS [work] done
and get the drawings and photographs into the
Library of Congress through Park Service projects.
In fact, that is the only way he had to do it. The
only way the government could finance it was just
to sort of piggyback it along with work being
done on historic structures for which the National
Park Service was reponsible. (65)
There was ample precedent for the "piggybacking" of
HABS onto federal projects where measured drawings were
being made as a basis for restoration. The Moore House at
Yorktown, restored in 1931. (and. four years later.
specifically redrawn for HABS). the architectural remains
at 17th-century Jamestown, Virginia, and the mountain
cabins in the Great Smoky Mountains are all examples from
the 1930s. (66) There was no need to gain official approval
for the notion at Independence: the plan had the tacit
endorsement of Thomas C. Vint, who, as head of the Design
and Construction Division, oversaw both HABS and the
Independence project and, besides, recalled Peterson,
"nobody raised any questions." (67) Vint had been an
enthusiastic supporter of HABS since its New Deal days and
enjoyed a warm friendship with Peterson. (plate 5) James C.
26
Massey, who joined HABS in 1953, remembered the two men as
close, with Peterson as maverick and Vint as mentor and
friend who insured that Peterson had "protection at the
top" and that HABS itself enjoyed "a certain protected
status.' (68)
But even Vint's support and Peterson's energetic
devotion couldn't overcome the fact that postwar HABS was
hobbled by the lack of a readily available labor force. In
the 1930s, the survey had relied overwhelmingly on a large
pool of experienced, unemployed architects and draftsmen.
Now, the postwar building boom was underway and architects
and draftsmen were back to work. The answer came in a
memorandum that floated past Peterson's desk, describing
how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had been authorized to
hire undergraduate professional students during their
summer academic recess. (69) The first students worked
directly for Peterson in the summer of 1950, making
measured drawings of buildings scheduled for restoration at
Independence. The students were David Krumbhaar of the
University of Pennsylvania; Richard E. Pryor. a recent
graduate of the University of Miami (Ohio) and a former
student of Dr. Leicester B. Holland, who had been a key
player in the establishment of HABS; and Donald E. Benson
of the University of Illinois. (70) In 1951, a summer team
of students was headed by William M. Campbell. a faculty
27
member in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania
who later became a permanent member of the Independence
staff. The students were Pryor: Paul G. Kuhnle of
Pennsylvania State College: and Alexander B. Toland of
Princeton University. Their job was to measure and draw 403
Manning Street (one of a row of five, contiguous brick
residences, built c.1812, that were later renamed
Marshall's Court after their original builder), the Bishop
White House (309 Walnut Street, built 1786-87). the Penn
Mutual Life Insurance Company Building (129 S. Third St.,
built 1850-51), and William Strickland's Merchant's
Exchange (143 S. Third St.. built 1832-33). (71)
Connally began his long association with the
National Park Service the following summer, when he came to
Philadelphia to head the next student measuring team. The
native Texan, 31 that summer. was an assistant professor of
architecture at Miami University, Ohio and a doctoral
candidate in history and principles of architecture at
Harvard University. Peterson had gotten Connally's name
through Kenneth J. Conant, the Harvard medievalist, who was
an acquaintance from the Society of Architectural
Historians, of which Peterson was president from 1951 to
1952. (72)
The student roster in 1952 consisted of Santo J.
Lipari and Louis H. Goettelmann, both of the University of
28
Pennsylvania; Kuhnle, back for a second season: and,
Ellsworth H. Kent of the Rhode Island School of Design.
Their projects were: the McIlvaine House (315-317 Walnut
St., built 1793): 410 Locust St. (a c.1760 residence); the
banking room ceiling at the Old Customs House (420 Chestnut
St.. built 1818-24, William Strickland, architect): 407-411
Manning St.: and to complete plans started the previous
summer for 323-325 Walnut St. and the Bishop White House.
"Data will be presented for the Historic American Buildings
Survey archives as expeditiously as possible, emphasis
being placed on structures of known history." it was duly
noted. (73)
In 1953. a student architect from the University of
Pennsylvania joined the summer team who would have a long
involvement with and major impact on HABS. James C. Massey
had been developing an interest in historic architecture
under the influence of art historians George B. Tatum. and
Robert C. Smith although "[G.] Holmes Perkins [dean of the
School of Fine Arts and a confirmed modernist] thought I
was bizarre...an oddball." (74) Massey's first project was
a substantial report. produced over the summers of 1953 and
1954, on the physical history of Carpenters' Court. (75)
The alleyway. leading off Chestnut Street to Carpenters'
Hall (1770-74). contained several buildings, acquired by
the Park Service, whose fates were uncertain. One was the
29
Guarantee Trust Company (built 1875) by Frank Furness,
which, along with other Victorian buildings in the park,
would become a major point of controversy in the next few
years.
The summer teams also came to serve as a de facto
recruitment mechanism for the Park Service by allowing
Peterson to observe participants for a three-month period.
Some of the most promising who were recruited for full-time
jobs working on historic structures in the park system
included Massey, who eventually served as chief of HABS:
Russell V. Keune, who worked as a restoration architect at
a number of national parks and as a staff architect for
HABS in the mid-1960s and, much later. was a key figure in
the establishment of the National Register of Historic
Places; Lee H. Nelson, who worked as a restoration
architect at Independence for many years: and William J.
Murtagh, who worked at Independence and served, much later,
as the first keeper of the National Register. (76)
Establishment of the summer teams was an inspired
approach to filling manpower needs but the undergraduates
were vastly inexperienced compared to the professionals of
the 1930s, some of whom had spent years at the drafting
board by the time they made their first HABS drawing.
Training became an expediency to get the necessary drawings
made; there was no master plan to indoctrinate young
30
architects in historic architecture or quality
draftsmanship. (77)
Nevertheless, a collateral effect of the summer
programs was that young architectural students, in the
formative stages of their careers, received expert
training. At the time, the National Park Service's summer
team program in Philadelphia was virtually the only
American training ground in restoration architecture. The
work at Colonial Williamsburg. whose "drafting room was
the first school of architectural restoration" was over.
(78) Not until 1964 would James Marston Fitch teach the
first graduate course in the preservation of historic
architecture at Columbia University. (79) The students of
the 1950s and early 1960s who participated in HABS summer
teams were coming from American architectural schools that
were heavily in the throes of modernism. The emphasis was
on new design: restoration. architectural conservation. and
related subjects were not considered. (80)
At the American Institute of Architects' 1954
convention in Boston. Peterson raised the issue, noting
that many foreign countries had programs in preservation
and restoration but that, in the United States, "We have no
place to go for a professional education in this exacting
work and not even a handbook to consult. While in American
universities one can take an advanced degree relating to
31
the construction of Persian buildings. little can be
learned about our native product." (81) Peterson described
the Philadelphia summer program to his AIA colleagues and
mentioned several training aspects: "Lectures and field
demonstrations are a part of the schedule. A small museum
of architectural specimens (carpentry. ironmongerey. stucco
work. etc.) has been set up for consultation." (82)
The University of Pennsylvania responded to the
educational deficit by granting academic credit to its
students who participated in the summer teams. Grant
Manson. the vice-dean of the university's School of Fine
Arts wrote in 1955 that: "The business of caring for,
restoring. and sometimes unearthing the nation's historical
structures 1s a field into which. up till now. men and
women have simply drifted by chance and temperament. The
time has come when this casual source of personnel is
inadequate to the demand. Mr. Peterson is convinced that a
steady source of trained personnel has become essential to
the continuation of the work -- and he. in turn. has
convinced us here in the University of Pennsylvania.' (83)
University of Pennsylvania faculty also came crosstown to
lecture to the summer students. In 1954. guest lecturers
included Robert C. Smith. who spoke on "The Eighteenth
Century House" and David M. Robb. on "Philadelphia and
Newport -- Two Colonial Towns." (84)
32
The modernist approach to architectural education
also abandoned the traditional Beaux-Arts emphasis on
drawing. "Rejecting the elaborate presentation drawings
demanded by the Ecole system, [modern] architects developed
a simplified, often simply linear, graphic style in which
drawing was once again relegated to its proper. largely
subordinate place in the building process." (85) To
compensate, the summer program emphasized draftsmanship and
lettering. In announcing the 1958 summer season, Peterson
promised that "the work is supervised by men who are...
able to instruct in the professional draftsmanship not
taught in the schools. (86) Frequent lettering exercises
were conducted for the students. (87) But most of the
training benefits ultimately came from the hands-on
experience of crawling around an historic building with
tape measure in hand. "Making measured drawings of a
building is the most educational thing for an architect, "
said Peterson. (88) Connally saw the work as useful for all
architects, even if they intended to pursue careers in
modern design:
By taking a building that's already an
architectural creation and examining it and making
drawings of 1t, which is just the reverse of the
usual architectural process of conceiving of a
building and making drawings of it and then seeing
it built you understand why things are the way
they are and how buildings are put together and
the way space is formed and the relationship of
drawings to the fully realized piece of
33
architecture which is the building itself. (89)
The architectural historian James F. O'Gorman
trained as an architect and participated in several HABS
summer projects. including the recording to the Andrew
Johnson house in Greeneville, Tennessee in 1956. He
recalled:
I was educated in the fifties and we had little
history I can remember trying to draw some
moldings in the house in Greeneville and not
understanding what the hell I was doing and Charlie
[Peterson] coming down and showing me what to do,
showing me what a molding looked like under all
that paint and what I was supposed to be looking
for. I had five years of architecture education and
I didn't know what I was doing --what constitutes a
molding. what are the various profiles that go into
a molding and that kind of thing. It was a
revelation that there was a whole, vast area of
architecture that I had missed I was certainly
aware that I was getting a part of my education
that I hadn't gotten before. (90)
Inevitably. however, the use of students led to
inconsistent quality. Some students took readily to the
intricacies of measuring historic structures, with their
often irregular and eccentric spaces and details. Some were
fine draftsmen. Others were less able and work had to be
checked carefully. (91) A lack of understanding often led
to inaccurate measurements, recalled Penelope Hartshorne
Batchelor, who joined Independence as a staff architect in
1955. "They didn't understand how buildings were knit
together, they didn't understand shapes of moldings. They
would let thicknesses of paint interfere with their
34
understanding of what a molding really was. (92)
In an attempt to insure uniform quality for its
drawings, HABS reissued its "Specifications for the
Measurement and Recording of Historic American Buildings
and Structural Remains" in January 1951. The specifications
were a revised and edited version of the same instructions
that had been distributed by HABS during the 1930s. The
specifications provided detailed instructions on the
preparation of measured drawings, written data,
photographs, and index cards, used to catalog completed and
potential HABS subjects. In 1951, the specifications
required that final record drawings be made in black ink on
standardized sheets. (Standards for the HABS paper weren't
mentioned in the specifications but were the same as those
set in 1934. The paper was to be of a 40-pound weight and
100 per cent rag content -- considered the most permanent
and stable -- and the sheet size was roughly
nineteen-by-twenty-four. Both the small size and the
required horizontal format were suitable for the small,
early buildings that comprised most of the survey's early
efforts.) (93)
Indeed, criteria for choosing recording subjects
was unchanged since the 1930s. Despite an allowance for
worthy exceptions, the cut-off date was still 1860,
reflecting an earlier generation's "consensus that
35
Victorian buildings were ugly and not worth serious study
or any effort to save them. " (94) "Absolute priority" was
suggested for pristine buildings of architectural or
historic interest "in imminent danger of destruction or
material alteration." (95) District officers had the
authority to determine priorities although, in actuality,
they had no personnel to assign.
In other ways, too, although HABS activity was
largely confined to Independence Park, supporters in
Washington and elsewhere helped keep the survey intact.
There was an informal gathering of those associated with
HABS and the Pictorial Archives of the Library of Congress
on 29 January 1951 at the annual meeting of the Society of
Architectural Historians in Washington, D.C. (96) Vint
continued to correspond with members of the advisory board.
In 1953. the Tripartite Agreement was amended to clarify
the board's composition although the following year three
positions expired and were left unfilled. (97) And there
was, at least in the immediate postwar years, an annual,
futile effort to win a Congressional appropriation in order
to "carry the survey on to completion." (98)
Donations of measured drawings and photographs
continued to be encouraged. In 1951, for example, the
Germantown Historical Society in Philadelphia undertook an
architectural survey. Peterson suggested that the work be
36
done to HABS standards and later provided regulation HABS
paper for the project. (99)
In 1952, despite the survey's quiescence. a major
initiative was launched with the establishment of the
Historic American Buildings Inventory (HABI). The inventory
was intended to be a national listing of historic buildings
that could be used as a planning tool for HABS and as a
coordinated resource that would eliminate duplication by
concerned organizations. Proposed in 1952 by Professor
Turpin C. Bannister of the University of Illinois. a HABS
Advisory Board member and chairman of the AIA Committee on
Preservation of Historic Buildings, the inventory was
devised as a joint, voluntary effort among the signers of
the Tripartite Agreement, with the addition of the National
Trust for Historic Preservation. A one-page form with
pertinent information was substituted for the HABS index
cards. Peterson, however, did not support the idea. "I felt
that it would be a mistake to begin a new survey for the
entire United States, when HABS was already in the field in
a big way. Fred (Frederick L. Rath Jr., former director of
the National Trust) seemed to agree, but felt that we
weren't collecting on our index cards all the information
that he needed. So a bunch of meetings were held in
different places, and a lot of people got into the act. The
hotel rooms got so full of smoke, I decided the best
37
contribution I could make would be to give my seat to
others.' (100)
HABI had its most active period in 1957-58 when
foundation grants financed a National Trust inventory of
pre-Civil War, Virginia architecture. But there was general
confusion about the inventory and its growth was sluggish.
In 1961. HABI was renamed The Historic American Buildings
Survey Inventory (HABSI) and an attempt was made to clearly
differentiate the broad-based inventory from the more
selective survey. (101) Efforts were made to simplify and
improve the inventory form but "the records were hard to
handle [and] were seldom looked at in the Library." (102)
In 1972. HABSI was dropped. (103)
Of more significance. ultimately, to the operation
of the survey was a reorganization made at the National
Park Service in 1954. Two new. regional offices were
established under Thomas C. Vint's Design and Construction
Division. The new Eastern Office of Design & Construction
(EODC). with jurisdiction for planning. design. and
construction in national parks throughout the eastern U.S.,
was located in Philadelphia: its counterpart in San
Francisco was the Western Office of Design and Construction
(WODC). (plate 6) A few years later, a third branch. the
National Capitol Office of Design and Construction. was
added in Washington, D.C. Peterson was immediately promoted
38
to supervising architect of historic structures for EODC
and with the new title came broadened authority. His
fiefdom no longer consisted solely of Philadelphia: he now
found himself directing all restorations of historic park
properties in the east. (Technically. Peterson, as
supervising architect, was supposed to report to John
"Bill" Cabot, chief architect. In practice, Peterson
retained his access to more senior officials at the Park
Service, particularly Vint.) (104)
The promotion enabled Peterson to begin to export
the HABS concept beyond Philadelphia. In the summer of
1955, work continued at Independence and teams were sent to
Harpers Ferry. West Virginia, the site of John Brown's
raid, and to the Adams Mansion in Quincy. Massachusetts,
the family seat of the famous patriots. (plate 7) In the
summer of 1956, Ernest Connally returned to the National
Park Service to head the summer restoration study of the
Andrew Johnson House in Greeneville, Tenn. As at Connally's
earlier project at Independence, Peterson gave clear
instructions regarding HABS. Connally recalled: "Pete
siphoned (money) out of the budget from Design and
Construction to make sure that there was a team there that
could make measured drawings to HABS standards for
submission to the Library of Congress and to look around
the countryside and see what else could be found. And we
39
did that He'd just piggyback HABS onto the bigger item of
design and construction. (105)
At the same time that new responsibilities were
directing Peterson's attentions to projects outside of
Philadelphia. the battles over demolition of Victorian
buildings at Independence and over the redevelopment of
Society Hill were beginning to accelerate with Peterson on
the front lines.
Peterson had never made a secret of his belief that
late 19th century buildings should be incorporated into the
park. In 1956, he voiced his opinions to no less a critic
than Lewis Mumford of The New Yorker:
Quite early in the day. Mr. Charles E. Peterson...
disposed of the effort to turn [Independence] into
another Williamsburg by pointing out that there is
no uniform style for treating almost two centuries
of architecture, which have produced a marked
succession of styles. This was the proper answer
to those who, in their concentration on 1776 and
all that, looked with disdain on such a Victorian
masterpiece as Notman's Athenaeum Library
If Mr.
Peterson's wise lead is followed, the general
rehabilitation of this area will not bring about 8
reign of compulsive Colonialism. There will be,
rather, a wider variety of buildings, carried over
from the past or newly built, each representing a
significant moment in our national development.
Only after 1840 did a truly indigenous architecture
spring up in America, and one of the merits of Mr.
Peterson's approach 18 that it would insure the
preservation of at least one of Frank Furness's
characteristic works in this area. (106)
In the next few years, a number of Peterson's
battles with the Park Service would be lost as the pace of
40
demolition accelerated. For now, the controversy simmered.
Meanwhile, in 1955, Philadelphia passed its historic
preservation ordinance. The new Historical Commission,
although strictly advisory, was empowered to certify
historic buildings throughout the city and could recommend
against inappropriate alterations or demolitions. (107)
Peterson became one the commission's charter members and
later helped coordinate efforts between the commission and
HABS.
By mid-decade, HABS had shaken off its wartime
doldrums and was about to get its largest boost to date
with the Park Service's Mission 66 program, which would
provide funds to renew the active measuring program.
Peterson is widely credited with having kept the survey
alive, almost singlehandedly. during the difficult years of
the early 1950s. Connally recalled: "HABS would simply have
faded away and died out totally if it hadn't been for
Charles Peterson who. by his own interest and
determination, kept the baby alive during those lean
years
And, if he hadn' t
there wouldn't have been any
reason for the Park Service to have included the resumption
of HABS as a program of the Park Service in 1957. (108)
CHAPTER FOUR: HABS IN PHILADELPHIA, MISSION 66 THROUGH 1966
By the mid-1950s. the national parks were decrepit.
Years of neglect, an upsurge in postwar visitation, and a
shortage of funds had created overcrowded and deteriorating
facilities "approaching rural slums." (109) To remedy the
problems, Conrad L. Wirth, director of the National Park
Service, launched a ten-year initiative in 1956 to
rehabilitate the parks in time for 1966, the Park Service's
50th anniversary. "Mission 66." as it was dubbed, was
concerned largely with issues like campground fees and
visitors' accommodations. One small and relatively
unnoticed aspect of the program was the allocation of funds
-- beginning in 1957 -- for the Historic American Buildings
Survey to renew its active measuring program.
Charles E. Peterson credits the inclusion of HABS
in Mission 66 to Thomas C. Vint, chief of Design and
Construction and a longtime HABS enthusiast. (110) Vint was
among a select group of Park Service personnel to serve on
Wirth's steering committee as Mission 66 was planned. (111)
Later, Vint served on the Mission 66 Advisory Committee
which consulted on the program's implementation. (112) The
objective of the Mission 66 program for HABS was to
complete the recording of all historic American buildings
in ten years. (113) As far as Peterson was concerned, "I
never thought of it as being completed. I kept saying we're
41
42
making architectural history faster than we're recording it
and we still are. " Nevertheless. it was on this basis that
the National Park Service was persuaded to appropriate
Mission 66 funds for HABS. (114) (The notion of completing
HABS was eventually dropped quietly when the volume of
worthy buildings became obvious. Instead, HABS became
viewed as a continually-evolving. open-ended archives.)
(115)
Mission 66 also resurrected the old Historic Sites
Survey which, along with HABS. had been authorized by the
Historic Sites Act of 1935 and had fallen inactive during
the war years. The Historic Sites Survey was to be
conducted by the Park Service's Branch of History,
remaining a historians' program, separate and distinct from
HABS, the two "somewhat parallel but quite
independent collaborating only sporadically. (116)
Criteria for inclusion in the Historic Sites Survey, the
direct ancestor of today's National Historic Landmarks
Program, was based solely on national significance in
American history or prehistory. Unlike the criteria for
inclusion in HABS, architectural significance alone was not
sufficient for inclusion. The difference reflected a
fundamental contrast in training and point-of-view between
Park Service historians, who emphasized associative values,
and the architects. who prided themselves in understanding
43
the buildings themselves. A case in point occurred in the
late 1950s at Fort McHenry, the late, 18th-century fort
outside of Baltimore. where Park Service historians were
baffled by evidence of large purchases of lime. The
explanation was obvious to the HABS team architects: the
fort was built of brick and lime had been needed to make
mortar. (117)
With the mandate to reactivate HABS came an
appropriation in fiscal 1958 for $116,000; $90,000
earmarked for the Philadelphia branch of the Eastern Office
of Design and Construction (EODC) and $26,000 for the
Branch of Architecture. where HABS work in Washington was
based. (118) The Western Office of Design and Construction
(WODC). based in San Francisco under Charles St. G. Pope,
did not receive Mission 66 funds until 1959 and its HABS
output was never as prodigious as its eastern counterpart.
"Peterson had the ability to use the largest amount of the
money the best and the fastest he was set up to do it. He
was experienced. He knew what to do. He had this sort of
sub-HABS activity going and there were more buildings that
the Park Service was working on in the east and the east
was where the historical buildings of that age were
anyway.' recalled James C. Massey. (119)
After years of drought, the HABS funds to EODC
seemed an overwhelming embarrassment of riches. "We had no
44
staff to work with and we had to spend it by the end of the
year and show that it had been spent well We nearly
drowned in it for a year, " Peterson recalled. (120) With
both money and mandate, HABS was thrust into a dizzying
array of activities: buildings under the jurisdiction of
the Park Service were to be recorded; projects unfinished
from the 1930s were to be completed; new subjects were to
be identified and acted upon; the Historic American
Buildings Inventory (HABI) was to be carried forth. (121)
Additionally, the HABS catalog of 1941 needed to be updated
and reproduced (a catalog supplement was published in
1959). new recording techniques required evaluation and,
all the while, an aggressive recording program needed to be
conducted. (122)
To consider the myriad policy issues facing the
survey, Wirth authorized the HABS Advisory Board to conduct
its first meeting since 1934. Eight members of the board
met on 28-29 January 1958 at the Library of Congress and at
the AIA's headquarters, the Octagon Building, in
Washington, D.C. and were briefed by Wirth, Vint, Peterson,
and others. (123)
In Philadelphia, Peterson began to meet the
pressing demands of the reactivated survey by hiring Agnes
Addison Gilchrist, a New York architectural historian,
whose first job was to analyze existing HABS coverage. "On
45
a large blank county map of the United States the
statistics for HABS already done were compiled, state by
state,' Peterson recalled. (124) Among Gilchrist's findings
were that, as of November 1956. 8,292 structures had been
recorded to some degree in 44 states. (125) Massey returned
from the Army in 1958, a few months after the survey's
reactivation. and went back to his post of historical
architect at Independence National Historical Park, a job
he had held after graduating from the University of
Pennsylvania in 1955. He was tapped quickly to help with
the HABS program by Peterson. who, he recalled "was
desperate for help." (126)
Under pressure to build the HABS collection -- and
fast -- EODC quickly began to experiment with different
types of arrangements. each designed to accelerate the
survey's growth. A "dragnet" survey was undertaken of the
Mill Creek Hundred in New Castle County. Delaware, by
Gilchrist and architect Robert L. Raley. The idea was to
inspect every structure in a given area using HABI forms to
determine which were worthy of recording. The project was
never completed. (127) More successful was a cooperative
project. initiated in 1958 with the Chester County
Historical Society in Pennsylvania, in which the local
historical group would canvass the county. select one
hundred buildings of particular interest, conduct the
46
necessary research, and produce the written data. A
contract was awarded to a team of local, professional
photographers, Ned and Lila Goode, on a competitive basis.
(128) The Chester County project resulted eventually in
several exhibitions, an informal publication, and "a
celebratory dinner." (129) More important to HABS. it
demonstrated the feasibility of cooperative ventures with
local historical organizations. (plate 8)
A third prototype project was a contractual
arrangement with the School of Fine Arts at the University
of Pennsylvania to inventory, photograph, and make measured
drawings of buildings in the middle Schuylkill Valley.
mostly in Berks County, Pennsylvania. A student team,
working in the summer of 1958, made six sets of measured
drawings. Photography was commissioned by the university on
a piecework basis. (130)
Student teams continued to be a mainstay for
expanding the collection but with Mission 66 in place, the
recording of privately-owned properties became possible for
the first time since 1941. Nevertheless, there was pressure
at first from Washington to concentrate on Park Service
properties. (131) National monuments, parks, and historic
sites represented the bulk of the projects undertaken
during the summers from 1957 to 1959, including those at
Salem, Massachusetts: Harpers Ferry, West Virginia: Fort
47
McHenry and Hampton, Baltimore, Maryland: Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania; Appomattox Court House, Virginia, as well as
at Independence in Philadelphia. (plates 9-13) With
increasing frequency. however. student teams were
dispatched to record privately-held, historic structures at
locations such as the middle Connecticut River Valley
(1959) the Maine coast (1960 and 1962) Savannah, Georgia
(1962) Charleston. South Carolina (1963): New Haven,
Connecticut (1964); and Annapolis, Maryland (1964). (plates
14-15) To support the summer team work, HABS encouraged the
contribution of in-kind services. As part of the
Connecticut River Valley project in 1959, for example,
Dartmouth College provided drafting facilities and
inexpensive housing. (132)
To further build the survey's archives, HABS
continued to be piggybacked onto Park Service projects.
Measured drawings and research done for restorations of
Park Service property on the Virgin Islands went to HABS.
(133) In 1962, the Adams National Historic Site in Quincy.
Massachusetts, commissioned a set of eighteen photographs
which were pledged to HABS in "a notable example of
Park-HABS cooperation it secures a more permanent
repository for the photographs than would be possible in a
Park's files.' (134) In 1959 and 1962, Ernest Connally was
sent to Cape Cod to canvass historic structures within the
48
boundaries of the new Cape Cod National Seashore and to
advise the Park Service on their usage. Connally's
research, along with photographs by freelance photographer
Cervin Robinson and drawings made by two, subsequent,
summer teams, became part of the HABS collection. (135)
The frenzy of activity prompted reassessment of
some of the survey's time-honored policies, practices, and
recording techniques. (136) The HABS specifications were in
an almost constant state of revision from the late 1950s
through the mid-1960s. The first changes, written by
Charles W. Lessig of the Washington office after the
reactivation of HABS, resulted in the July 1958 publication
of an enlarged and better-illustrated version of the
original 1930s instructions. (137) In 1960, Harley J.
McKee, a Syracuse University professor of architecture and
a frequent summer team supervisor, was put to work on an
exhaustive rewriting of the specifications. "He got tired
of being scout master, fraternity mother, and everything
else to these kids," recalled Peterson. So, for the summers
of 1960 and 1961, he "took a room on the west side of town"
and produced chapter-by-chapter drafts for a new manual
that were promptly mimeographed and sent into the field for
comments. (138) The chapters formed the basis for McKee's
Recording Historic Buildings, published in 1970 by HABS.
One substantial change was in the criteria for
49
selecting buildings to be recorded. In 1958, the 1860
cut-off date that had been in place since the 1930s was
extended to 1900. (139) The specifications also reflected a
Cold War urgency. Top priority had earlier been given to
endangered buildings of architectural or historical
interest. Now, endangered buildings came second; highest
priority was accorded to buildings of national historical
significance:
The world events since September 1939 call for a
reappraisal of priority factors. The unprecedented
and indiscriminate destruction wrought abroad has
brought realization that, should this country be
attacked, well within the realm of possibility,
some of these heritages from our past might be
lost. In order to make possible the authentic
restoration or reproduction of these buildings, if
damaged or destroyed, measured drawings, photo-
graphic and other records should be prepared with-
out delay. (140)
In 1961, McKee retained the suggested 1900 cut-off
date (although allowing for notable exceptions). (141) The
concern about war-related damage expressed in 1958 was
gone. Instead, McKee wrote, "In 1961 some of the greatest
dangers lie in areas where dams are planned for flood
control, or in highway construction. suburban housing and
urban renewal: structures of interest may be threatened
with destruction." (142) Historical interest was to be
given equal weight with architectural interest, with
highest priority going to endangered buildings in their
original condition. (143) Park Service properties were
50
given a high priority; outside of the National Park system.
"the present policy under Mission 66 is to concentrate on
areas which were neglected earlier. In the great campaigns
of the 1930s, travel money was generally unavailable and
work was done where the architects lived. " (144)
McKee revised the criteria again in 1964, this time
dictating that buildings selected for recording by HABS
should be fifty years or older. (145) The rapidly changing
criteria reflected changes in scholarship and the influence
of younger staff like Massey who were interested in
Victorian and early modern architecture. (146) An
underlying consideration in the choice of subjects was the
promotion of historic preservation. (147)
The post-reactivation years also brought about
changes in the recording techniques used by HABS. Since its
inception. the survey had required that final record
drawings be made in permanent, waterproof ink. Ink,
however. was a difficult medium. In 1956, Chief Architect
Dick Sutton wrote, "There is definite objection to the
continued use of ink on the bond paper because of the
difficulty in making corrections and the difficulty of
tracing because of its opaque characteristic. The draftsmen
today are not in the same class of competence as those who
worked on the original projects and cannot be relied upon
to produce such fine work." (148) Pencil, the logical
51
alternative to ink, was not considered a permanent medium.
The answer came with DuPont's "Cronaflex" method, in which
a finished pencil drawing on HABS paper was photographed
full size onto a photographic film to produce a master
negative. (plate 16) The negative was then contact-printed
in a vacuum frame onto a sensitized, polyester plastic
sheet to make the master positive, which had the appearance
of an ink drawing. The original pencil drawing, master
negative, and master positive were all deposited in the
Library of Congress as part of the HABS collection. (149)
The process was first used successfully by HABS in 1959.
(150) By 1961, Cronaflex had become standard procedure,
replacing the use of ink. (By the late 1960s, however,
Cronaflex had been replaced as standard procedure by
ink-on-mylar.)
Another technical innovation of HABS after its
reactivation was the use of architectural photogrammetry, a
technique derived from aerial map making in which images
made on a pair of "stereocameras" are converted to accurate
scale drawings with the kind of plotting equipment used to
produce contour maps. The process is especially
well-suited to recording large or complicated structures
and offers the possibility of making and storing large
numbers of photogrammetric images, from which measured
drawings could be made at any time. (The Germans, with the
52
same technology, made stereo-photographic images of a
number of their historic buildings before World War II.
Russian captors at the end of the war found the glass
photographic plates and wiped them clean for issue as
window panes. ) (151)
There was great excitement about photogrammetry at
HABS. In 1958, Vint wrote the Advisory Board, "If
photogrammetry 1s as good as it looks to us now it may be
well to reconsider our method of making our records." (152)
To test photogrammetry. EODC granted three contracts
between 1957 and 1959 to the School of Architecture at Ohio
State University where Professor Perry E. Borchers was one
of the foremost American experts in architectural
photogrammetry. (plates 17-18) - One of his first projects
was the facade of the Isaac M. Wise (Plum Street) Temple in
Cincinnati. (plate 19) "The savings of time, scaffolding.
etc., plus the real accuracy of the result are striking."
Peterson reported in 1958. (153) Borcher's recording of the
intricate minarets of the synagogue, built in the
mid-1860s, resulted in a spectacular drawing for HABS that
would have been impossible using conventional methods.
(154) For comparison. the Washington office awarded a
contract for architectural photogrammetry to an Alexandria,
Virginia, aerial mapping firm. The work was unsatisfactory
and the contract was cancelled in late 1959. (155) Borchers
53
and his students continued to be the survey's primary
source of photogrammetric work and their projects included
the row of Philadelphia banks. with the Provident Life and
Trust Company Bank by Frank Furness among them. that were
demolished across Chestnut Street from Independence Park in
the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Despite the successes of photogrammetry. the
technology has drawbacks and HABS never fully abandoned
traditional. hand measuring techniques. Architectural
photogrammetry 18 limited to what the cameras can see so
floor plans. sections. and other drawings still have to be
produced by hand techniques. Additionally. photogrammetric
equipment was prohibitively expensive for purchase by the
Park Service so the process remained limited to contracts
let for especially tall or complicated buildings and. in a
few limited instances. for stereopairs that could be stored
for the future. (156) (plate 20)
The reactivation of the survey also brought a far
greater emphasis on photography and written data, both of
which were found to be lacking: "A searching reappraisal
of the Archives points up the need of upgrading the quality
of photographs and historical coverage." (157) "Photo-data
books," consisting of large-format photographs (the
standard negative size was five-by-seven inches) and a
written text on 8 structure's history and architectural
54
characteristics, had always been part of the survey's
efforts. But photography and history were subordinate to
the creation of measured drawings. Earlier specifications
had dictated that, "in general. photographs will be used to
supplement the more important measured and drawn records."
(158) As for history. "only the briefest resume of facts is
necessary." (159) The expectation was that written data
would be donated to HABS by local volunteers. (160)
Photography in particular became crucial to
fulfilling the Mission 66 mandate. "To prepare detailed,
elaborate drawings for all historic buildings in the United
States would be impossible [so] it was decided to develop a
wide coverage by photography and to emphasize quality so
that the pictures could be used by writers and editors for
publication. Each picture published can do as much good as
hundreds that merely exist in archives," Peterson later
wrote. (161) HABS began to commission experienced.
independent architectural photographers -- including Fritz
Henle, Cervin Robinson, and Cortlandt Van Dyke Hubbard --
who were persuaded to work for modest pay. (Robinson slept
in cars and drafting rooms while on freelance assignments
for HABS. Peterson considered putting him on salary for one
summer but ultimately decided against it, worrying that if
it rained a lot, the photographer would spend his days with
his feet propped on a desk in Philadelphia.) (162)
55
In 1958, Jack E. Boucher was hired as the first,
full-time, professional photographer regularly employed by
HABS. although for several years his time was shared with
the Park Service's Washington Branch of Still and Motion
Pictures. Boucher was an experienced photographer with a
strong interest in architecture and history whose previous
job had been photographing the construction of the Garden
State Parkway in New Jersey. At HABS, Boucher set out to
improve photographic standards, which were almost
non-existent. particularly in regard to archival stability
of negatives and prints. (163) McKee's 1961 manual provided
more detailed photographic specifications than ever before
while Boucher and the cadre of freelance professionals
promoted technical advancements and a breadth of coverage
that was new to HABS photography.
Written data also took on new importance. John
Poppeliers. who would later serve as chief of HABS from
1972 to 1980, joined the survey at EODC in 1962 as a
fulltime historian and editor. (plate 21) Poppeliers had
just received his master's degree in art history from the
University of Pennsylvania where his thesis, written under
the guidance of George B. Tatum, was on Philadelphia
architect John Windrim (1840-1919). Almost immediately, the
young historian was put to work editing and evaluating a
large, donated collection of written material and measured
56
drawings of 19th-century Shaker buildings. (164) In the
office. there was a growing awareness that history "was the
intellectual basis for a national archives." The recording
effort needed to justify why a building was important and
architects, in many cases, were not trained or equipped for
the job. (165) The new emphasis on history was also
reflected in the 1961 manual which, for the first time,
spelled out techniques and suggested sources for those
doing historical research in the field.
To keep abreast of the rapid changes, the HABS
Advisory Board met in Philadelphia on 26-27 October 1961.
(166) (plate 22) Budget, technical issues, and public
relations were all discussed, and the board endorsed an
updated Tripartite Agreement for continuing HABS. The new
agreement clarified the roles of the co-signers of the 1934
original. which had established HABS as a permanent
program. (167) A few days after the meeting, Thomas C.
Vint, who as head of Design and Construction had been the
survey's top-level administrator, retired after 39 years
with the Park Service. (plate 23)
The HABS Advisory Board would not meet again for
six years and, in the interim, was the subject of bitter
controversy within the Park Service. In March 1963, John B.
Cabot, chief of the Division of Architecture, wrote a
lengthy memorandum to Park Service Director wirth,
57
recommending the abolition of the HABS Advisory Board.
"Like the Historic American Buildings Survey itself, the
HABS Advisory Board has followed a sometimes erratic and
checkered course.' he wrote. The board had met only three
times in three decades, he noted, and "has been a
continuing body in name only Ceremonial convocations are
a luxury that our budget cannot afford. " The existence of a
separate HABS board had undermined cooperation among HABS.
the Historic Sites Survey and its offspring. the Registry
of National Historic Landmarks, Cabot argued. "There can be
little doubt that the nebulous existence of the HABS
Advisory Board has had a negative effect upon the close
coordination between the programs of history and
architecture that we now seek. The balanced teamwork which
the legislation of 1935 outlined has rather been frustrated
than abetted. " Cabot's recommendation was to withhold
further appointments. allowing the HABS board to dissolve
in 1966 when the last appointments would expire. The AIA.
among others. could provide necessary guidance for HABS, he
wrote. (168)
The memo was approved and signed by Wirth on 9
April 1963. Wirth later denied signing the memo to board
Chairman Turpin C. Bannister. "Wirth evidently had signed
a big pile of mail at the end of a hard day. He couldn't be
expected to read all of it carefully. All of this goes to
58
show how HABS. which had made a mark in the world over 30
years -- and many friends for the Park Service -- could be
done in by an enemy within the walls, " Peterson said a few
years later. (169)
At any rate, by January 1964, Wirth had retired and
been replaced by George B. Hartzog Jr. and the decision to
dissolve the HABS Advisory Board had been reversed. (170)
The vacancies on the board were eventually filled -- after
long delays -- and the board next met in October 1967.
almost six years to the day since it had last convened in
Philadelphia.
The earlier board meeting. in 1961. was conducted
in Philadelphia because EODC was clearly at the epicenter
of HABS activity. Massey and Peterson were by now
coordinating a well-oiled machine. The collection was
expanding with the contributions of Boucher and the
freelance photographers. cooperative ventures with a number
of private groups, the receipt of gifts and donations, and
the payment of $50-per-sheet "honoraria" for measured
drawings made by professional architects. Additionally. the
summer team program was widespread and well-established. A
new initiative was the preparation of state catalogs. At
the time of the 1961 meeting. catalogs for Wisconsin.
Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire were in varying stages of
completion. (171) Increased emphasis was also placed on
59
exhibitions of HABS materials. An exhibit of HABS
photographs by Cervin Robinson was mounted by the
Philadelphia Museum of Art to coincide with the AIA's 1961
convention in Philadelphia. (172) Exhibits of the work of
HABS summer teams were mounted in a number of locations and
HABS exhibits continued to be pegged to major professional
gatherings. Exhibits, catalogs, and a push to include HABS
material in published architectural histories were all done
to encourage awareness of the survey. (173)
Training of students continued with a particularly
memorable event, the so-called "Carpenters' Carnival, in
the summer of 1962. Peterson organized a day-long program
that included presentations on historic hardware, early
tools, old nails and joining devices. early American paint,
paint analysis, reconstruction, and restoration. (174)
Along with HABS participants, Park Service personnel, and
guests from around the East, residents of the Society Hill
neighborhood were also invited as a community service to
homeowners who were restoring 18th and early 19th-century
structures. (175) Relations between HABS and the
neighborhood weren't always warm, however. Both James F.
O'Gorman and Cervin Robinson recall being threatened by
unhappy residents who perceived HABS personnel as
government outsiders who were forcing them out of Society
Hill. HABS wasn't directly involved with the policies that
60
led to displacement and gentrification in the neighborhood
nor were those issues discussed among the Philadelphia
staffers. But the experience made enough of an impact on
O'Gorman that, in the early 1960s, he wrote a graduate
paper about the social implications of reclaiming historic
neighborhoods. using his observations of Society Hill in
the summer of 1959 as the basis. (176)
Philadelphia's historic buildings continued to
comprise a large part of the survey's effort despite
recognition that "Philadelphia has had more than its share
of attention." (177) Peterson served on the city's
fledgling Historical Commission from 1956 to 1964 and the
two bodies collaborated several times on photo-data book
projects. with HABS providing photography and the
commission providing historical and architectural data.
HABS personnel were also dispatched to a number of historic
Philadelphia buildings that were threatened with
demolition. Throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s,
Peterson had been a vociferous and outspoken opponent of
the demolition of many 1gth-century buildings at
Independence and in the surrounding neighborhood.
Nevertheless. the buildings came down with daunting
frequency: the 1850-51 Penn Mutual Building, one of the
earliest cast-iron buildings in the U.S. (demolished 1956);
the 1810 Front Store on Carpenters' Court (demolished
61
1957) the Jayne Building. an 1849 prototype skyscraper
design (demolished 1957-58): the Robert M. Lee House and
Law Office. built in the late 18th century and remodeled c.
1840 (demolished 1959): the Provident Life and Trust
Company Bank. a significant work by Frank Furness. built
1876-79 (demolished 1959-60): the rear ells of the
Abercrombie and Neave houses (demolished 1959); the
Manhattan Building. an 1888 skyscraper (demolished 1961):
the George Gordon Building. one of the city's last
cast-iron office structures (demolished 1962); and the
LaTour Warehouse, a notable, early-19th-century waterfront
building (demolished 1967). (178) (plates 24-35)
Many of the buildings, such as the Jayne Building.
were demolished by the National Park Service as they
cleared land for Independence Park; others were destroyed
as part of the city's urban renewal effort. On both fronts.
there was great public controversy to which Peterson added
an outspoken voice. The situation was especially awkward
within the Park Service. "[HABS] went around recording
buildings as cultural documents which the Park Service
would then turn around and demolish. They weren't very
happy about it either," Massey recalled. "We were viewed
rather awkwardly by a lot of [the staff of] Design and
Construction." (179) Some of the dispute was attributed to
the long-entrenched. philosophical differences between Park
62
Service architects and historians. The historians' vision
for Independence was based on its associative and
commemorative values. It was not to be a park for
architectural historians. (180)
The antagonism, however, was at the management
level; the staff in Philadelphia was solidly behind
Peterson. "We were all sympathetic with Pete's point of
view, recalled William J. Murtagh, who measured the tower
at Strickland's Merchants' Exchange for HABS and worked
later as an Independence staff architect before becoming
the first keeper of the National Register of Historic
Places and, later still, an important preservation
educator. (181) "We were all Charlie's boys and we backed
him one hundred per cent," said O'Gorman. who recorded the
Abercrombie and Neaves houses for HABS shortly before their
rear ells were demolished to make way for an underground
parking ramp. "We were operating from his enthusiasm as
much as anything else." (182)
Peterson, however, was growing frustrated with
what he perceived as a lack of support for historic
structures work at the Park Service. In February 1962, he
wrote a long memorandum to Wirth outlining his grievances.
The memo went unanswered and in October 1962, Peterson
retired from the Park Service to pursue a career as an
independent restoration architect and consultant. (183)
63
Massey was named supervisory architect for HABS, with
responsibility for the survey in the eastern United States.
(plate 36) The departure of the survey's founder and
biggest booster came at a time of great urgency as HABS
hustled to keep pace with a vast tide of destruction
resulting from urban renewal, highway and dam construction,
suburban development, and the continuing postwar
construction boom. Increasingly. HABS responded to crises,
sending photographers to record doomed structures such as
Pennsylvania Station in New York (1906-10, McKim. Mead &
White, demolished 1966) and the Low House, a shingle style
masterpiece in Bristol, R.I. (1881, McKim, Mead & White,
demolished 1962). Sometimes. HABS personnel worked with the
bulldozers literally humming in the background. In 1963,
for example, during a morning coffee break, a small item in
the New York Times was spotted about the imminent
demolition of President Ulysses S. Grant's summer cottage
in Long Branch, N.J., to make room for a parking lot. Hasty
telephone negotiations were conducted and the demolition
team agreed to hold off until 1 p.m. the next day to allow
time for photography. Boucher, Massey, and John Milner --
then a student architect from the University of
Pennsylvania who went on to become a noted practitioner of
restoration architecture -- arrived at 9 a.m. only to find.
as Boucher recalled,
64
a bulldozer with its motor throbbing and smoke
going out its back with a long. inch-and-a-half
steel cable going off the back of the bulldozer,
in the front door. down the hallway, out through a
dining room window and back to the bulldozer. If
we had literally been there fifteen minutes later
the building would have been down... The last
picture that I have is the bulldozer in the
foreground with the building coming down in an
enormous cloud of dust behind it. (184) (plate 37)
Not only individual, endangered structures, but
large groups of buildings, doomed by highway projects or
urban renewal, became HABS projects in locations including
Mobile, Ala., Galveston, Texas, and in Philadelphia's
Southwark section, where Interstate Highway 95 smashed
through a historic neighborhood. "It was a pretty desperate
time," Massey recalled. "Things were being torn down
wholesale, blocks at a time and square miles at a time. We
were running round trying to photograph and document
buildings of some consequence that were about to be torn
down." (185)
At the same time, HABS was operating increasingly
as an advocate for preservation, attempting to use 1ts
influence to save endangered buildings. Until the
establishment of the National Register of Historic Places
in 1966, HABS was the sole source of federal recognition of
architecturally significant structures and of historically
or architecturally structures of state or local
significance. Massey recalled that, "What we could do was
65
write letters to people and say 'this building had been
recorded by the Historic American Buildings Survey. the
national program. and for the following reasons we believe
it is a work of architectural importance.' There was
nothing to prohibit us from putting our halo on it. If it
cost a dollar to win the battle. we might have been three
cents but it was still invoking the image of the federal
government and before the National Register. there was no
other way. (186)
HABS used its influence -- not always with виссевв
-- to intervene on behalf of buildings as disparate and
widespread as the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York:
the 18th-century Leiper House in Delaware County, near
Philadelphia: the Convent of Mary Immaculate in Key West.
Florida: the St. Louis Post Office (built 1882. A.B.
Mullett); and the Kansas City Board of Trade (built 1888,
Burnham and Root). (187) Even when the buildings were
ultimately lost, HABS helped pique local interest and got
the attention of local officials. Architect John G. Waite,
who worked on HABS summer teams throughout the early 1960s
and later became a noted restoration architect, recalled
that during a controversy over the demolition of historic
brownstone structures in Troy, New York, "the local urban
renewal people were astounded that there was a federal
agency saying, in writing. that what they were doing was
66
wrong. (188)
Influenced by changes in scholarship. the survey
also embraced new architectural periods during the early
1960s. In 1958, the cut-off date for recording subjects,
with rare exceptions, was advanced from 1860 to 1900; by
1964, the cut-off had been changed to include anything
fifty years or older. Increasingly. HABS documented
Victorian and early modern subjects, especially those that
were endangered. In 1963, the high demolition rate of the
work of the "Chicago School" prompted a major summer effort
that was to continue in 1964, 1965, and 1967. (plates
38-40) The Chicago project was the survey's first concerted
effort to record modern architecture. Documenting Chicago's
early skyscrapers and large, complex buildings raised new
technical issues for HABS as it encountered unfamiliar
mechanical systems, engineering devices, and foundation
technologies. (189) Some of the early Chicago work was
later criticized for inaccuracies, omissions, and
oversimplifications but, despite the problems, the Chicago
project was a watershed for the survey in its recognition
of modern architecture. (190)
Meanwhile, the destruction of the historic
landscape had not gone unnoticed in Washington. With
increasing frequency, bills proposing various preservation
initiatives were submitted to Congress. Environmental
67
conservation and the "beautification" of America had
popular support and several best-selling books articulated
the failures of urban renewal and postwar architectural
design. (191) The culmination was the passage of the
National Historic Preservation Act, with its key provision
the establishment of the National Register of Historic
Places, signed into law by President Johnson on 15 October
1966.
The months leading to the law's enactment were
active ones for the Park Service as it planned for the
implementation and accommodated an internal reorganization.
In December 1965. the regional offices of design and
construction were officially closed and EODC was replaced
by the new Philadelphia Planning and Service Center. (192)
In February 1966, HABS operations in Philadelphia were
ordered to Washington. (193) The move took place later that
year. Massey was given the new title of chief of HABS, with
jurisdiction over the national program. John Poppeliers,
the survey's editor and historian, also made the move.
In May 1966, Director Hartzog appointed a special
committee on historic preservation to evaluate the Park
Service's existing preservation programs and to consider
its anticipated duties under the pending legislation. The
committee consisted of Ronald F. Lee, Hartzog's special
assistant and former chief historian for the Park Service:
68
Dr. John Otis Brew. a prominent archeologist and director
of Harvard's Peabody Museum; and Ernest Connally. professor
of architectural history at the University of Illinois and
a veteran HABS summer team leader. (194) (plate 41)
Connally's appointment came because he was known to Park
Service officials through his HABS work. (195)
Among its findings. the committee noted
fragmentation among the branches of the Park Service
concerned with history. archeology. and historic
architecture and cited the lack of cooperation between HABS
and the Historic Sites Survey. (196) The proposed remedy
was the formation of an "Office of Archeology and Historic
Preservation" to consolidate the Park Service's historians.
archeologists. and historical architects. The head of the
new office would report directly to the director of the
National Park Service. (197) Ernest Connally agreed to
leave academia to head the new operation and OAHP. as it
was quickly dubbed, was established early in 1967. with one
of its constituents the new Division of Historic
Architecture which included HABS. As head of OAHP. Connally
was put in the position, during the early. critical years
of the expanded, federal preservation program, to rule a
largely autonomous office that he "sought to organize and
staff in a manner that would gain it academic
respectability and professional standing equivalent to the
69
foreign government offices charged with similar
responsibilities.' (198)
To implement the new law and the National Register
provision, the Historic Preservation Task Force was
convened in November 1966. Among its members was Russell V.
Keune, a former student of Connally, whose experience
included HABS summer teams and a stint as a restoration
architect under EODC and who was currently serving as HABS
staff architect in the Washington office. (plate 42) Keune
was the only architect on the task force that defined the
National Register and shaped its all-important criteria.
"The most important legacy of the task force was setting
forth the concept of significance as the basis for
evaluating historic or prehistoric properties.. The
National Register criteria of significance set the standard
for evaluation in the preservation movement." (199) Keune
personally designed the task force's preliminary version of
the National Register inventory form, drawing heavily on
the HABSI form, as well as the one used by the National
Historic Landmarks Program. (200) Keune also served as
acting and assistant keeper of the National Register during
1967-68. The first keeper of the Register was Murtagh, who
was then serving as director of program for the National
Trust for Historic Preservation. (plate 43) As keeper,
Murtagh administered the survey, planning, registration.
70
grants-in-aid. and Section 106 provisions of the program.
(201)
The HABS collection itself was also a factor in the
initial content of the National Register. In June 1966, as
the Park Service planned for the expected program.
consideration was given to automatically placing all
buildings in HABS into the register. (202) This approach
was quickly seen as unworkable since many buildings
recorded by HABS had been demolished and there was no
practical method for determining survival. (203) Instead,
structures listed by HABS. along with those in the Historic
Sites Survey. were published by OAHP in 1969 as the
Advisory List to the National Register of Historic Places.
The ostensible purpose was to provide the states with a
basis to investigate, evaluate, and make nominations to the
National Register. (204) According to Keune, however, the
true motivation for the advisory list was to provide
ammunition for Hartzog when he went before Congress seeking
appropriations to support the new program at a time when
the Vietnam War was escalating and funding was tight.
"George Hartzog had to go up before the Congress and make
it look like there was a lot of stuff already going on and
we weren't starting from scratch," Keune recalled. "We had
to stop everything and work with HABS to put together [the
advisory list]
I frankly question how thoroughly any of
71
the states went on to use that list. " (205)
The location of HABS in the National Park Service,
along with the Historic Sites Survey and the landmarks
registry. probably helped insure that the expanded federal
preservation program under the 1966 act stayed with the
Park Service, rather than moving to a rival agency. (206)
And HABS, with its emphasis on architecturally-significant
buildings and those of importance to state and local
history. can be viewed as a precursor to the National
Register which included those categories in its criteria.
HABS contributed in one other small way to the National
Register as it emerged as the federal government's primary
preservation program. When the National Register had its
first publication in July 1968 Keune chose for the cover a
measured drawing of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in
Charleston, South Carolina, taken from the HABS collection.
(207)
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION
1966 was a watershed year in historic preservation.
with the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act.
a vastly-expanded, federal program was put in place which
shapes American preservation to the present. And in the
earliest days following passage of the new law. the
formation of that program was largely presided over by
individuals -- Ernest Allen Connally. Russell V. Keune and
William J. Murtagh --who were alumni of the Historic
American Buildings Survey.
Indeed, HABS in the 1950s and early 1960s --
operating primarily out of Philadelphia -- was one of the
only centers for training and the professional pursuit of
historic preservation in the United States. For many of the
individuals who emerged as leading practitioners in the
years that followed. HABS provided critical experience. In
1973. the survey reported that, "a recently compiled
'roster of HABS alumni' has indicated that perhaps 80
percent of all professionals in [the fields of historic
architecture and preservation] in the United States have
been associated with the survey at one time -- a remarkable
record in education."
(208)
Several HABS alumni have gone on to receive the
Crowninshield Award. the highest honor given by the
72
73
National Trust for Historic Preservation. Winners include
HABS founder Charles E. Peterson (1965): Murtagh and
Connally (1980); and F. Blair Reeves, an educator who
supervised a number of HABS summer projects (1987). In
1983, the survey itself was given the award on the occasion
of its 50th anniversary -- the only public organization so
honored.
Like Colonial Williamsburg in the 1930s. HABS in
Philadelphia shaped the careers of a generation of young
professionals. For many of the undergraduate architectural
students, participation in HABS summer teams was their
first exposure to historic architecture. Some, like Keune,
came to HABS fully intending to practice modern
architecture, joining only because the survey offered a
summer job with the opportunity to travel. (209) Others.
like John G. Waite. who went on to specialize in
architectural restoration, were already interested in
preservation. (210) Either way. the experience offered
training that was unavailable in most American
architectural schools. "This was the decade of
International Modernism in the schools and we had little
history. [HABS] gave the architects a contact with history
and with historic preservation and historic recording.'
recalled James F. O'Gorman. now a prominent architectural
historian. (211)
74
"You perfected skills. being able to look at a
building and being able to tell how it was built, which the
universities really weren't teaching you." recalled Keune,
who worked on a succession of HABS projects starting in
1958 at Harpers Ferry. "How does brick go on brick? How
does wood fit with wood? How do trusses go together? What
are moldings like? What are the spatial relationships of a
section of a building? All that stuff you got on the job. "
(212)
Waite, who worked for HABS during four successive
summers starting in 1963 at Independence National Historial
Park, recalled a heady atmosphere where every morning over
coffee. HABS and EODC historical architects would mingle
and talk about their projects. "There was a lot of talk
about the philosophy of preservation No place else in the
country was there that type of interaction." (213)
Charles Peterson contributed by serving as a
willing mentor to those he considered talented, sharing
knowledge and contacts. (214) A forceful teacher and
empassioned advocate for historic buildings, Peterson never
overlooked the didactic aspects of HABS for the students
and the general public. He brought in expert lecturers and
teachers. He encouraged the publication of HABS material,
particularly by turning over to the students his "American
Notes" column in the Journal of the Society of
75
Architectural Historians, which he edited from 1950 to
1967. Among those published as undergraduates were James C.
Massey. who wrote about Carpenters' Court, and Keune, who
reported on Maine farmhouses. Peterson also used the column
to promote HABS, filling it with HABS-related announcements
and reports of its latest accomplishments.
Peterson also had a wide array of contacts among
architectural historians, architects, and preservationists
around the country and he freely introduced his
often-impressive visitors to the students and staff. He
also maintained an active presence in a number of
professional organizations, Society Hill neighborhood
groups, and public bodies such as the Philadelphia
Historical Commission, proselytizing for HABS and for the
merits of historic architecture at every opportunity.
Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, as urban
renewal and other destructive forces played havoc with the
historic landscape, HABS was challenged to find its
relevant place in the emerging preservation movement. Under
Peterson and, later, Massey, the survey responded by
assuming an activist role, attempting to use its influence
to save buildings. When all else failed, there was
recognition that preservation through documentation. while
not a substitute for a historic building, was an important
tool for scholars and preservationists. "Every attempt is
76
made by the survey to record significant buildings that are
threatened, even as the bulldozers approach. It is not only
as a permanent record but also a tool for preservationists
who are trying to protect structures from the wreckers for
publication and exhibit,' Massey wrote. (215) HABS also
helped push the boundaries of architectural scholarship.
"There was a long period of moving the frontiers forward
and trying even to be ahead of practicing architectural
historians," Massey recalled. The hope was that when
scholars turned their attention to a particular period.
style, or building type, there would already be
documentation in the HABS archives. (216)
Massey recalled:
The biggest thing we were doing at this point was
taking a 1930s depression program and making it a
relevant part of a modern preservation community.
[HABS was] seeking a role of helping to record
buildings that were threatened with demolition,
identifying major issues that needed to have
attention called to them, projecting the
architectural history responsibilities of HABS,
working in new frontiers, working in new building
types, for example, railroad stations and
associated structures right to the railroads
themselves textile mills, factories the whole
theme was to establish relevance to that time.
(217)
Since 1966, when it relocated from Philadelphia to
Washington, HABS has continued to expand the breadth of its
coverage. In 1969, the Historic American Engineering Record
was established to record industrial landmarks. The two
77
sister programs today have produced more than 48,000
measured drawings, 135,000 photographs. and 80,000 pages of
written historical data on 25,000 structures in every state
and most territories. New technologies and techniques have
been incorporated. The alumni roster has grown to more than
2.500 architects, engineers, historians, and photographers.
most as members of the still-active summer program, which
fields about thirty teams a season.
After almost sixty years. HABS is a far larger and
more sophisticated program, covering an even broader
"resume of the builders' art." than Charles Peterson could
have envisioned in 1933. (218) That this national archives
of historic American architecture survives at all is due,
in large measure, to the pivotal fifteen, Philadelphia
years when Peterson, almost singlehandedly, nurtured HABS
from a dormant, Depression-era relief effort to an
aggressive and meaningful historic preservation program.
NOTES
1. Margaret B. Tinkcom, "The Philadelphia Historical
Commission: Organization and Procedures," Law and
Contemporary Problems 36 (1971): 386.
2. Charles E. Peterson to Arno B. Cammerer, 13 November
1933, reproduced in full in "The Historic American
Buildings Survey Continued," Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians 16, no.3 (October 1957): 30.
3. Charles E. Peterson, "Thirty Years of HABS," Journal of
the American Institute of Architects 40 (November 1963):
84.
4. Charles E. Peterson, "HABS In and Out of Philadelphia."
introduction to Philadelphia Preserved, 2d ed., by Richard
J. Webster (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981),
xxxiv.
5. Charles E. Peterson, interview with author,
Philadelphia, Pa., 18 April 1991.
6. Stephen W. Jacobs, "The Education of Architectural
Preservation Specialists in the United States," in
Preservation and Conservation: Principles and Practices
(Washington: Preservation Press, 1976), 458-462.
7. Elizabeth D. Mulloy, The History of the National Trust
for Historic Preservation (Washington: Preservation Press,
1976), 173.
8. Ibid., 174.
9. Ernest Allen Connally, "Preserving the American
Tradition: The National Park Service Program for Students,"
Journal of the American Institute of Architects 35 (May
1961): 57.
10. John A. Burns, "Architects and the Historic American
Buildings Survey, in The Role of the Architect in Historic
Preservation (Washington: The American Institute of
Architects, 1990), 6-7.
11. Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., foreward to Independence: The
Creation of a National Park. by Constance M. Greiff
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987). X.
12. James F. O'Gorman, telephone interview with author, 12
March 1991.
13. At least one-third of the structures in the HABS
collection no longer exist. Source: "Help Record Historic
78
79
America" brochure, n.d.
14. John A. Carver, Jr., "An Inexact Business," Journal of
the American Institute of Architects (February 1963): 33.
15. James C. Massey. "Preservation Through Documentation.'
Historic Preservation 18 (July-August 1966): 148.
16. Ibid., 150.
17. J.E.N. Jensen to Henry J. Magaziner, 7 September 1966,
"HABS Philadelphia 1963-66," HABS Office Files, Washington.
18. Charles E. Peterson, "The Historic American Buildings
Survey: Its Beginnings, in Historic America (Washington:
Library of Congress, 1983), 8.
19. Charles Peterson was born in Minnesota in 1907. He
spent several summers of his youth working in Western
national parks, including the summers of 1927 and 1928 when
he worked as a rodman with the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads.
He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1928 with
a degree in architecture and is a registered architect and
a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. But he
entered the National Park Service as a landscape architect
after taking the Civil Service exam for Junior landscape
architects. Source: Peterson interview, 18 April 1991.
20. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxx.
21. Charles E. Peterson, "Our National Archives of Historic
Architecture." The Octagon 8, no. 7 (July 1936): 12.
22. Wilton C. Corkern Jr.. "Architects. Preservationists,
and the New Deal: The Historic American Buildings Survey,
1933-1942" (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University.
1984). 33 and Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xliii.
23. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxix.
24. Ibid., xxviii. The drawings of the Old Philadelphia
Survey, although never published, are located today in the
Art Department at the Philadelphia Free Library.
25. Peterson interview, 18 April 1991.
26. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, x1111.
27. In the 1930s, HABS made no distinction between hiring
80
"architects." who were considered to be those with
university degrees in architecture and "draftsmen, who
were any designers that had gained their training at
private architectural offices. Source: Peterson interview,
18 April 1991.
28. Peterson, "HABS Continued," 29.
29. Ibid., 30.
30. Peterson in Historic America, 9.
31. Peterson, "HABS Continued," 30.
32. Ibid., 31.
33. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxx.
34. Corkern, 7.
35. "Report of the Board of Directors,' The Octagon 6 (May
1934): 23 as quoted in Corkern, 8.
36. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxxi.
37. Charles E. Peterson, interview with author,
Philadelphia, Pa., 20 February 1991.
38. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxxi.
39. Leicester B. Holland, "H.A.B.S. Redivivus, " The
Octagon 6 (November 1934): 15. The article is unsigned but
is attributed to Holland by Charles Peterson.
40. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved. xxxii. For a
thorough discussion of the organizational machinations of
HABS's early days, see Corkern.
41. Peterson, "Our National Archives, 14.
42. Corkern, 94.
43. Peterson, "Our National Archives, 14.
44. The full text of the Tripartite Agreement is published
with "H.A.B.S. Redivivus," Octagon 6 (November 1934):
16-17.
45. Barry Mackintosh, The Historic Sites Survey and
81
National Historic Landmarks Program: A History (Washington:
NPS/DOI, 1985), 4.
46. The Historic Sites Act of 1935, 74th Cong., No. 292,
Sec. 2 (a).
47. Ibid., Sec. 2 (b).
48. Corkern, 107.
49. Ibid., 114.
50. Peterson, "Thirty Years of HABS, " 84.
51. Corkern, 150.
52. Conrad Wirth, Parks, Politics, and the People (Norman,
Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 225.
53. Carol C. Smith, Fifty Years of the Historic American
Buildings Survey (Alexandria, Va.: The HABS Foundation,
1983), 7.
54. Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., Preservation Comes of Age: From
Williamsburg to the National Trust, 1926-1949. vol. 1
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981), 500.
55. Greiff, 118. Peterson's groundbreaking 1935 historic
structures report was republished as A National Park
Service Historic Structures Report: The Moore House; the
Site of the Surrender --Yorktown. Washington: National
Parks & Conservation Association, 1981.
56. Peterson achieved the rank of Commander (Civil
Engineers Corps) U.S.N.R. Source: Peterson interview, 18
April 1991.
57. Greiff, 50.
58. Ibid., 53.
59. Ibid., 54.
60. Ibid., 55.
61. James E. Massey, The Architectural Survey, Preservation
Leaflet Series (Washington: National Trust for Historic
Preservation, n.d.). n.p.
82
62. Memorandum, "The HABS Advisory Board: A Review and
Evaluation, " Cabot to Wirth, 19 March 1963, "HABS Advisory
Board 1962-66." HABS Office Files. Washington.
63. Peterson interview, 20 February 1991.
64. Penelope Hartshorne Batchelor, interview with author,
Philadelphia, Pa., 24 January 1991.
65. Ernest Allen Connally, interview with author,
Washington, D.C., 12 February 1991.
66. Peterson, "Our National Archives," 16.
67. Peterson interview, 20 February 1991.
68. James C. Massey, interview with author, Washington,
D.C.. 12 February 1991.
69. Charles E. Peterson, interview with author,
Philadelphia. Pa., 15 March 1991.
70. Peterson interview, 18 April 1991.
71. Memorandum, "Suggestions for Superintendent's Report
for June, 1951, Resident Architect to Superintendent, 12
July 1951. "Reports," Box 5. Independence National
Historical Park Archives (hereafter cited as INHP
Archives). Philadelphia.
72. Connally interview, 12 February 1991.
73. Reports, 8 and 14 July and 1 August 1952, "Reports,"
Box 5. INHP Archives, Philadelphia. Not all of the measured
drawings made at Independence National Historical Park in
the early 1950s ever made it into the HABS collection. Some
of the projects cited are not listed in HABS today; others
are represented only by photographs or written data; and
some entered the collection decades later. Some of the
early recording efforts are rumored to have been discarded.
74. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
75. Massey, "Carpenters' School, 1833-43." Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians 14, no. 2 (May 1955):
29.
76. Peterson interview, 18 April 1991.
83
77. Peterson interview, 20 February 1991.
78. Hosmer, 4.
79. Mulloy. 173.
80. Jacobs, 459-460.
81. Excerpt of minutes, Committee on Preservation of
Historic Buildings, AIA Convention, 15 June 1954. "Summer
Program Lectures." Box 6. INHP Archives, Philadelphia.
82. Ibid.
83. Grant Manson, "Training Architects for Restoration."
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 14. no.
2 (May 1955): 28.
84. Memorandum, 24 June 1954. "Summer Program Lectures,"
Box 6. INHP Archives.
85. James F. O'Gorman, "The Philadelphia Architectural
Drawing in Its Historical Context: An Overview," in Drawing
Toward Building (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1986). 10.
86. Charles E. Peterson, "Architectural Student Summer
Program, 1958.' Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians 16, no. 4 (December 1957): 29.
87. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
88. Peterson interview, 20 February 1991.
89. Connally interview, 12 February 1991.
90. O'Gorman interview, 12 March 1991.
91. Connally interview, 12 February 1991.
92. Batchelor interview, 24 January 1991.
93. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxxi and John A.
Burns, "Recording Historic Buildings: New Philosophies. New
Techniques, New Technologies" in Historic America, 225.
94. Peterson in Historic America, 9.
95. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service,
84
Specifications for the Measurement and Recording of
Historic American Buildings and Structural Remains
(Washington, 1 January 1951), 4.
96. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 10,
no. 1 (March 1951): 27.
97. Memorandum, "Historic American Buildings Survey," Dick
Sutton to Thomas C. Vint, 19 April 1956, "Advisory Board
Correspondence, 1957-66," HABS Office Files, Washington.
98. Dick Sutton to Joseph P. Sims, 8 June 1950, "HABS
Philadelphia 1950-1962," HABS Office Files, Washington.
99. Memorandum, Peterson to Chief Architect, "HABS in
Germantown," 15 August 1951 and letter, Peterson to Grant
M. Simon, 23 June 1952; both in "Old Germantown Survey,"
Box 4, INHP Archives, Philadelphia.
100. Peterson to Richard H. Howland, 6 March 1958, "HABS
Advisory Board, 1953-61." HABS Office Files, Washington.
101. Report, Ad-Hoc Committee to the HABS Advisory Board
Meeting, 26-27 October 1961, "HABS Advisory Board 1953-61,"
HABS Office Files, Washington.
102. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xlvi.
103. Robert Bruegmann, "HABS at an Awkward Age: The 1960s
and 1970s" in Historic America, 222.
104. Greiff, 89.
105. Connally interview, 12 February 1991.
106. Lewis Mumford, "The Sky Line: Historic Philadelphia
III," The New Yorker 33, no. 7 (6 April 1957) 126-27.
107. City of Philadelphia Bill 695, 7 December 1955.
108. Connally interview, 12 February 1991.
109. Charles Stevenson, "The Shocking Truth About Our
National Parks," The Reader's Digest (January 1955) quoted
in Wirth, 237.
110. Peterson interview, 20 February 1991.
111. Roy E. Appleman, A History of the National Park
85
Service Mission 66 Program (Washington: NPS/DOI, January
1958), 7.
112. Ibid., 96.
113. "Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1958," HABS to HABS
Advisory Board, "Reports to the HABS Advisory Board," HABS
Office Files, Washington.
114. Peterson interview, 20 February 1991.
115. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxxvii.
116. Report of Special Committee on Historic Preservation
(Washington: NPS/DOI, 30 September 1966), 7.
117. Charles E. Peterson, interview with author,
Philadelphia. Pa., 15 March 1991.
118. Minutes, HABS Advisory Board, 28-29 January 1958, 11,
"HABS Advisory Board 1953-61." HABS Office Files,
Washington.
119. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
120. Peterson interview, 20 February 1991.
121. Annual report, Fiscal Year 1958.
122. Memorandum, "A Summary Statement of the Present Status
of HABS and a Few Suggested Questions for the Advisory
Board to Consider," Chief of Design and Construction to
Members of the HABS Advisory Board, 27 January 1958, "HABS
Advisory Board 1953-61." HABS Office Files, Washington.
123. Minutes, 1958 Advisory Board meeting. Those present
were Earl H. Reed, Richard Koch, John Gaw Meem, Paul Thiry.
James Grote Van Derpool, Carl Bridenbaugh. Harold Donaldson
Eberlein, Samuel Lapham, L. Quincy Mumford, and Bertram K.
Little.
124. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxxvi.
125. Memorandum, "Analysis of Coverage by States," 22
January 1958, HABS Office Files, Washington.
126. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
127. Notes, "HABS Meeting," 31 October 1957, "HABS Advisory
86
Board 1953-61," HABS Office Files; Peterson in Philadelphia
Preserved, xlvi.
128. Charles E. Peterson, "HABS News, Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians 19 (May 1960): 82.
129. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxxvii.
130. "New Photographic Collections from Pennsylvania." 20
May 1959, "HABS Exhibits -- Publicity and Articles About,
HABS Office Files, Washington.
131. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
132. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxxviii.
133. Historic Architecture of the Virgin Islands,
Selections for the Historic American Buildings Survey
(Philadelphia: HABS/EODC/NPS, February 1966), n.p. The
survey's involvement in the Virgin Islands went farther.
Extensive photography was commissioned and, in 1960 and
1961. HABS collaborated with the Royal Danish Academy of
Fine Arts in Copenhagen on a recording project.
134. HABS Newsletter, 16 November 1962, HABS Office Files,
Washington.
135. "Semiannual Report. Fiscal Year 1960." HABS to
Advisory Board, 3. "Reports to the HABS Advisory Board, ";
Roster for Summer of 1962, Historic Structures Student
Program, "Summer Rosters, 1960 --," HABS Office Files,
Washington.
136. "Report to the HABS Advisory Board for the Period
April 1 through August 1, 1958," 5, "Reports to the HABS
Advisory Board," HABS Office Files, Washington.
137. Notes, "HABS Meeting." 31 October 1957.
138. Peterson interview, 20 February 1991.
139. Specifications for the Measurement and Recording of
Historic American Buildings and Structural Remains
(Washington: NPS/DOI/HABS. July 1958), 3.
140. Ibid., 15.
141. Harley J. McKee, Manual of the Historic American
Buildings Survey: Part II, Criteria, draft (NPS/EODC,
87
October 1961), 2.
142. Ibid., 4.
143. Ibid., 6:3.
144. Ibid., 2.
145. Harley J. McKee, Manual of the Historic American
Buildings Survey: Part II, Criteria, draft (NPS/EODC, 1961,
revised 1964), 1.
146. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
147. James C. Massey, interview with author, Washington,
D.C., 13 February 1991.
148. Memorandum, "Historic American Buildings Survey." Dick
Sutton to Thomas C. Vint, 19 April 1956, "Advisory Board
Correspondence, 1957-66," HABS Office Files, Washington.
149. Harley J. McKee, Manual of the Historic American
Buildings Survey: Part IX, Measured Drawings, draft
(NPS/EODC, October 1961), 52-53.
150. Report to HABS Advisory Board, 30 June 1959, 3.
"Reports to the HABS Advisory Board,' HABS Office Files,
Washington.
151. Perry E. Borchers, "The Measure of the Future and the
Past, " Journal of the American Institute of Architects 28
(October 1957): 353.
152. Memorandum, "A Summary Statement of the Present Status
of HABS and a Few Suggested Questions for the Advisory
Board to Consider," Thomas C. Vint to Advisory Board, 27
January 1958, "HABS Advisory Board 1953-61," HABS Office
Files, Washington.
153. Charles E. Peterson, "Photogrammetry. The Magic
Scaffold," Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians 17, no. 2 (Summer 1958): 27.
154. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxxix.
155. "Semiannual Report, Fiscal Year 1960."
156. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
88
157. "HABS Advisory Board Report," April 1-August 1958, 5.
"Reports to the HABS Advisory Board," HABS Office Files,
Washington.
158. Specifications 1951, 15.
159. Ibid., 25.
160. Peterson, 18 April 1991.
161. Peterson in Philadelphia Preserved, xxxvi.
162. Cervin Robinson, telephone interview, 27 March 1991.
163. Jack E. Boucher, telephone interview, 14 February
1991.
164. HABS Newsletter, 21 September 1962, HABS Office Files,
Washington. The project became the basis for a major
exhibition and publication on Shaker architecture in HABS
in 1974.
165. John Poppeliers, interview with author, 15 January
1991.
166. Members present were Turpin C. Bannister, Carl
Bridenbaugh, Virginia Daiker, Harold E. Eberlein, O'Neil
Ford, George A. Kubler, Samuel Lapham, Richard W.E. Perrin,
Earl H. Reed, and W.S. Tarlton.
167. "Tripartite Agreement for Continuing the Historic
American Buildings Survey." Record of Executive Sessions,
26-27 October 1961, "HABS Advisory Board Minutes 1934-71."
HABS Office Files, Washington.
168. Memorandum, "The HABS Advisory Board: A Review and
Evaluation, " John B. Cabot to Conrad L. Wirth, 19 March
1963, "HABS Advisory Board 1962-66," HABS Office Files.
Washington.
169. Memorandum, Peterson to Brew, Connally and Lee, 27
June 1966, "HABS Advisory Board 1962-66," HABS Office
Files, Washington.
170. John B. Cabot to Turpin C. Bannister, 31 January 1964,
"HABS Advisory Board 1962-66," HABS Office Files,
Washington.
171. Minutes, HABS Advisory Board, 26-27 October 1961, 5.
89
HABS Office Files, Washington.
172. "Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1961," 4, "Reports to the
HABS Advisory Board," HABS Office Files, Washington.
173. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
174. Sample invitation from Peterson, 31 July 1962, "HABS
Archival Material," HABS Office Files, Washington.
175. Batchelor interview, 24 January 1991.
176. O'Gorman interview, 12 March 1991.
177. Minutes, 1961 Advisory Board Meeting, 4.
178. This list, mostly drawn from Philadelphia Preserved,
constitutes just a portion of the demolitions made in this
section of Philadelphia during the late 1950s and early
1960s.
179. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
180. William J. Murtagh, telephone interview, 9 February
1991.
181. Ibid.
182. O'Gorman interview, 12 March 1991.
183. Greiff, 140-141.
184. Boucher interview, 14 February 1991.
185. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
186. Massey interview, 13 February 1991.
187. Massey, Preservation Through Documentation, 148.
188. John G. Waite, telephone interview, 19 March 1991.
189. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
190. For detailed discussions of problems found in the
early Chicago recording projects, see essays by David G. De
Long. John A. Burns, and Robert Bruegmann in Historic
America.
90
191. For a thorough discussion of these and related forces,
see James A. Glass, The Beginnings of a New National
Historic Preservation Program, 1957 to 1969 (Nashville:
AASLH, 1990).
192. Russ Olsen, Administrative History: Organizational
Structures of the National Park Service: 1917 to 1985
(Washington: NPS, n.d.), 85.
193. Massey to Grant M. Simon, 9 March 1966, "HABS
Philadelphia 1963-66," HABS Office Files, Washington.
194. Barry Mackintosh, The National Historic Preservation
Act and the National Park Service (Washington: NPS/DOI,
1986), 1.
195. Connally interview, 12 February 1991.
196. Report of Special Committee on Historic Preservation
(Washington, 30 September 1966), 7.
197. Ibid., 10-11.
198. Mackintosh, National Historic Preservation Act, 4.
199. Glass, 26.
200. Russell V. Keune, interview with author, Washington,
D.C., 13 February 1991.
201. Glass. 31.
202. Mackintosh, National Preservation Act, 22.
203. Ibid., 27.
204. Advisory List to the National Register of Historic
Places 1969 (Washington: DOI/NPS. 1969), V.
205. Keune interview, 13 February 1991.
206. Connally interview, 12 February 1991.
207. Keune interview, 13 February, 1991.
208. "Documenting a Legacy: 40 Years of the Historic
American Buildings Survey," reprint from The Quarterly
Journal of the Library of Congress (October 1973):
274-275.
91
209. Keune interview, 13 February 1991.
210. Waite interview, 19 March 1991.
211. O'Gorman interview, 12 March 1991.
212. Keune interview, 13 February 1991.
213. Waite interview, 19 March 1991.
214. Keune interview, 13 February 1991.
215. Massey, "Preservation Through Documentation. 148.
216. Massey interview, 12 February 1991.
217. Massey interview, 13 February 1991.
218. Peterson, "The Historic American Buildings Survey
Continued, " 30.
92
Plate 1. Until the establishment of the National Register
in 1966, this certificate, signed by the secretary of
the interior and bestowed to owners of buildings
recorded by HABS, was the federal government's only
form of recognition for historic buildings of
less-than-national significance.
93
DEPARTMENTOF-THINTERIOR
WASHINGTON D-C-
THIS-IS-TO-CERTIFY-THAT-THE
HISTORIC BUILDING
KNOWN-AS-
IN-THE-COUNTY-OF
AND-THE-STATE-OF
HAS-BEEN-SELECTED-BY-THE:
ADVISORY-COMMITTEE-OF-THE-
HISTORIC-AMERICAN-
BUILDINGS-SURVEY-
-AS-POSSESSING-EXCEPTIONAL-
HISTORIC-OR-ARCHITECTURAL-
INTEREST-AND/AS-BEING-WORTHY-
OF-MOST-CAREFUL-PRESERVATION-
FOR-THE-BENEFIT-OF-FUTURE
GENERATIONS-AND-THAT-TO-THIS-
END-A-RECORD-OF-ITS-PRESENT-
APPEARANCE-AND-CONDITION-
HAS-BEEN-MADE-AND-DEPOSITED-
FOR-PERMANENT-REFERENCE-IN-THE-
-
LIBRARYoF-CONGRESS-
-ATTEST-
LINT LINTELIOR KRIOR
. Secretary-of the Internor
MI
(Facaimile of Survey Certificate.)
Plate 1.
94
-
SOUTH ELEVATION
SCALE voire
IMPORT & -
NHH
WESTERN OFFICE
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
ST MICHAEL'S CATHEDRAL
MISTORIC AMERICAN
ALAS-1
BUILDINGS SURVEY
SITKA. ALASKA
-
Plate 2. St. Michael's Cathedral in Sitka, Alaska,
(built 1844-48) burned in 1966 and was reconstructed
from measured drawings made by HABS.
95
Plate 3. HABS veterans of the 1930s convened in 1961
in Philadelphia. Standing, from left, Charles E.
Peterson, Worth Bailey, Charles W. Lessig, Samuel
Lapham, and Richard W.E. Perrin. Seated, from left,
Henry C. Forman, Earl H. Reed, William G. Perry,
Thomas C. Vint, and Virginia Daiker. (Photograph by
Jack E. Boucher, HABS files)
96
Plate 4. Charles E. Peterson served in the Navy from
1941-1946 -- the only hiatus during his thirty-three
years with the National Park Service -- before
coming to Philadelphia in 1950 to serve as resident
architect of Independence National Historical Park.
(Courtesy, Charles Peterson)
97
Plate 4
98
Plate 5. As head of Design and Construction and the
top-level administrator of HABS, Thomas C. Vint
championed HABS and defended it in Washington from
its inception in 1933 until his retirement from
the National Park Service in 1961. (From Historic
America)
99
Plate 6. Permanent and summer staffs of Independence
National Historical Park and the Eastern Office of
Design and Construction pose on the steps of the
Second Bank, Philadelphia. Standing, from left,
Edward Close, Ethel Reid, William J. Murtagh;
seated are Samuel Edgerton, Jr., Frank M. Boeshore,
William M. Campbell, David Connor, Charles S. Grossman,
Steven Wolf, Penelope Hartshorne (later Batcheler),
and G. Reigler. (From Independence: The Creation of
a National Park)
100
Plate 7. A student measuring team at Independence
National Historical Park, 1955. (HABS files)
101
Plate 8. Cooperative efforts with local historical
groups became a key strategy for building the HABS
collection after Mission 66. The first, initiated in
1958, was in Chester County, Pa. The Chester County
Historical Society produced the written data and
photographers Ned and Lila Goode did the photography,
including this image of the south front, center door
of Cross Keys Tavern (Chrome Hotel), a pre-1750
building in East Nottingham Township. (From the
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians,
May 1960)
102
THE
SOUTH ELEVATION
CALE BETERS
LARRY $ DEL
KALE
FEET
EVONER student TEAM
of
FOR ease PHILOGELPHIA
CUSTOM HOUSE AND PUBLIC STORES
HESTORIC AMERICAN
BULLINGS SURVEY
178 DERBY STREET
BALEM MASSACHUBETTS
Plate 9. With the establishment of the Eastern Office
of Design and Construction in 1954, Charles Peterson
began to dispatch HABS teams to National Park Service
properties outside of Philadelphia. This elevation of
the Custom House and Public Stores in Salem, Mass
,
a part of the Salem Maritime National Historic Site,
was made in 1958.
103
2
TRUSS ELEVATION
=
77
3
TRUSS ELEVATION
4
TRUSS ELEYSTION
R
1
diss
5
4
,
B
0
CONSOLE AT CUPOLA
JAME CUPOLA WINDOW
7
2
14)
DECTION THROUGH CUPOLA
- ⑉ so
!!!!
HITTORIC AMERICAN
FOR
CUSTOM HOUSE ANO PUBLIC STORES
BUILDINGS SURVEY
its DESS STREET
SALEV. CHUBETTS
Plate 10. Construction details, Custom House and
Public Stores, Salem, Mass,
104
Plate 11. HABS teams were sent to Harpers Ferry,
West Virginia, in 1955 and 1958 to document the
sites where John Brown staged his famous raid.
(From Historic America)
105
Plate 12. Measuring John Brown's Fort at Harpers Ferry
in 1958, from left, Seymour R. Frolichstein, University of
Illinois; Russell V. Keune (on tower), University of
Illinois; F. Blair Reeves, team supervisor, University
of Florida; Mary M. Buchele, University of Illinois;
William A. Wisner, University of Kansas; and Henry
R. Baker, University of Michigan. (HABS files)
106
Plate 13. Measuring Independence Hall, Philadelphia, in
July 1961. (Photograph by Jack E. Boucher, HABS files)
107
Plate 14. Measuring the Johnson-Pratt House in Belfast,
Maine, as part of the 1960 Mid-Coast Maine HABS project.
From left, James Swilley, University of Florida;
Russell V. Keune, University of Illinois; and James
Replogle, Ohio State University. (Photograph by
James A. Moore, HABS files)
108
Plate 15. James Swilley measuring an interior detail
at the Johnson-Pratt House in Belfast, Maine, during
the summer of 1960. (Photograph by James A. Moore,
HABS files)
109
Plate 16. James C. Massey explaining the reproduction
of drawings by the Cronaflex method to the HABS
Advisory Board, 27 October 1961. (Photograph by
Jack E. Boucher, HABS files)
110
Plates 17-18. Prof. Perry E. Borchers of Ohio State
University proved to HABS the feasibility of using
architectural photogrammetry, a technique derived
from aerial map making, for recording large or
complicated structures. The process involves
converting images made on a pair of "stereocameras"
into accurate scale drawings with special plotting
equipment. (HABS files)
111
Plate 17.
112
Plate 18.
113
TOVER
ELEVATION
..
010
PARTIAL VEST ELEVATION
VEST ILEVATION
....
Phancy
&
and
LACRITESTORS Payment
NAME OF STRUCTURE
SURVET 8
THE
- arere -
HISTORIC AMERICAN
OF
THE
THE ISAAC M.VISE TEMPLE PLUM STREET. CINCINNATI, OHIO 1863-1865
BUILDINGS SURVEY
- - -
tom
PROVIDED
ABOUTENTIVE
STETE
-
reservey - 1054
MARCE
SHEET
or
SHEETS
1
Plate 19. The Plum Street (Isaac M. Wise) Temple in
Cincinnati, Ohio, drawn in 1958, was one of the first
American structures recorded with architectural
photogrammetry. Traditional hand measuring techniques
could not have captured the elaborate ornament of
the synagogue, built between 1863-1865.
114
409 CHRSTNUT STREET, PENNDYLVANIA
PROVIDENT LIFE AND TRUST COMPANY BANK
IMPACTURE I 8
8601
PA
I
I
I BURNET
PROVIDENT LIFE IND TRUST
MDANY BANK
*0*
CHESTURY
!
Plate 20. The Provident Life and Trust Company Bank
(1876-79, Frank Furness) in Philadelphia, was
drawn by HABS from images made using photogrammetry
in 1962, two years after it was demolished.
115
Plate 21. John Poppeliers in 1963, a year after he
joined HABS as historian and editor. Poppeliers
served as chief of HABS from 1972 to 1980. (HABS
files)
116
Plate 22. The HABS Advisory Board, meeting in Philadelphia
on 26-27 October 1961. Standing, from left, Samuel
Lapham, Richard W.E. Perrin, Earl H. Reed, George A.
Kubler, and W.S. Tarlton. Seated, from left, O'Neil Ford,
Carl Bridenbaugh, Turpin C. Bannister, and Harold D.
Eberlein. (Photograph by Jack E. Boucher, HABS files)
117
Plate 23. Charles E. Peterson and Thomas C Vint on
27 October 1961 at the meeting of the HABS Advisory
Board in Philadelphia. A few days later, Vint
retired after thirty-nine years with the National
Park Service, depriving HABS of its best friend in
Washington. (Photograph by Jack E. Boucher, HABS files)
118
Plates 24-26. The Jayne Building at 242-44 Chestnut
Street, Philadelphia, (built 1849, William Johnston
and Thomas U. Walter, architects) was an important
proto-skyscraper. It was demolished in 1957-68,
amid great controversy, by the National Park Service
to make way for the visitors' center at Independence
National Historical Park.
119
Plate 24. The Jayne Building, C. 1855 engraving.
(From Historic America)
120
Plate 25. The Jayne Building, rear view, during
demolition, January 1958. (From Historic America)
121
& .r.o
2
2
HISTORIC AMERICAN
1
:
BUILDINGS SURVEY
2
1 I
PA 188
C
,
of
-
o
is
note
SOUTH ELEVATION
SCALE IN RECT
SCALE IN METERS
Note: Sections not
included are not
242 244 242-244 CHESTNUT ST., PHILADELPHIA, PENNA.
I 8
original.
see
note
JAYNE - SON. DRUGCISTS
JAYNE BUILDING
JAYNE
see
note
1
DF
X
1
NORTH ELEVATION
Plate 26. This elevation was part of extensive HABS
documentation made of the Jayne Building before its
demolition.
122
STAIRMALL
INTERER CLEWATOW
GRAPHIC SCALE
of
-
SCALE FULL SIZE
WILL
SCALE or
SCALE
-
ELEVATION OF TOMBUE ONET NOTIF
-
-
- -
-
PROFILE OF PLASTER CORNICE
PILL ⑉
--
-
and
-
-
Y.
ELEVATIONS OF DOOR AT
A
- -
-
,
-
-
are
-
1
-
1
I
-
MORTH SIXTH STREET
****
I
- LACE
- - -
FLOOR
-
- -
use
.
-
rid.
$
SECOND FLOOR PLAN
INTERIOR WINDOW ELEVATION
TYPEAL
-
Ran
a
.
Date.
KALE
-
B
EASTERN OF FICE, PHILADEL PHIA PA.
HETPORIC -
ROBERT M. LEE HOUSE AND LAW OFFICE
PA
- INDIVEY
1052
Plate 27. The Robert M. Lee House and Law Office
(built 1769-74) at 109-11 N. Sixth Street, Philadelphia,
was demolished in 1959, shortly after measured
drawings were made by HABS.
123
THE
Plate 28. The Provident Life and Trust Company Bank
(built 1876-79, Frank Furness) was an architecturally
significant work by an important architect. It stood
at 409 Chestnut Street, as part of Bank Row, across
from Independence National Historical Park. (From
the Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians, May 1960)
124
Plates 29-30. The Provident Life and Trust Company
Bank falling to the wrecker's ball in 1960. (Courtesy,
The Athenaeum of Philadelphia)
125
7
Plate 29.
126
Plate 30.
127
PRO-PETS WERE
1170 INSURANCE SURVEY MEN.
ORIG HIGHER
TIONS MALISTRADE ow GOOF
LATER ELEVATOR
LAWD DOEMERS IN POSITION
PENTROUM -
or ORIGINAL ours
CRIMMEY
WOOD SMINGLE -
LATER GOODING
W
MODILION CORMICE
MUTUAL
commen
0
0
LORAB OF
DEPLACED BACKWOOK
GRAND MKK MICHES
BITH - use
STOMES (MM/Y -
- DOBE NOT
BULT)
A
- -
Or
BRICKWORK OF
- -
or
FLEWINGH said with
REMCILED JOINTS
OUTLINE OF
INSTO -
:
NO ORIGINAL MM
REMAINS
-
.
+
FORMELS -
o
QUESM CLOSSES
ALLEY
-
MODERN
FROM
BUTT JOINT
1
1
KM OF MATER
TABLE
** ST% GRADE
BEICKS BIRTH
POLES - SUBMIT
- COVER - -
STUB or FORMES BOX # I
- UTBANCE
366 BRADON ans
Y
WEST ELEVATION
EAST ELEVATION
- Kas
one- MALE
FS PROFILE OF BRICK BELT
COURSE - EAST ELEVATION
SPECTOR (1958) O'GOOMAN (%0) DEL,
- OF -
- -
-
HISTORIC -
EASTERN OFFICE PHILADEL DHIA PA
CAPT
JAMES
ABERCROMBIE
HOUSE
- SURVEY
-
- -
-
" STD
SOUTH
second STREET
PRIA
DA
Plate 31. The rear ell of the Capt. James Abercrombie
House, a notable C. 1759 Georgian town house on
Second Street in Philadelphia, was demolished to make
way for an underground garage ramp. The front section
of the house was restored.
128
MANHATTAN
BUILDING
Plate 32. The Manhattan Building (built 1888, Thomas
P. Lonsdale, architect) at 330-36 Walnut Street,
Philadelphia, was recorded by HABS before its 1961
demolition. (From Recording Historic Buildings)
129
AMPLICANCE
medern
i !
BURLDRING SURVEY
: I
NORTH ELEVATION
i
DENNA
1033
GEORGE - - STRUCTURE GORDON BUILDING
PHILADELPHIA PENUSYLVANIA
scale o*
1 1
THE
300 AECH STREET
caller
entrence
0
EAST ELEVATION
0
100.00
handers
modern
i
John D Mins. del 1963
withou OFFICE order
Plate 33. The George Gordon Building (built 1856) at
300 Arch Street, Philadelphia, was an early example
of a cast-iron, commercial building. It was measured
and drawn by HABS in 1963, shortly before its
demolition.
130
Plate 34. The LaTour Warehouse (built 1817-18) was
selected to be recorded by HABS in 1958 because it
was an interesting and picturesque example of the
early waterfront structures of Philadelphia. Nine
years later, it was destroyed. (From Historic
America)
131
Road break
Third Ploor
Floor
Ridea
Piret Piner
Grade
I
HISTORIC AMERICAN
BLALDING SURVEY
+ o I 1
sheet matel
sheething
1 I
PA
1056
Roofing
Replacement sosh
EAST ELEVATION
BCALL
SCALL IN METERS
dateil. :
nedo hjuosom
puiuado hruoson
'uado husan
71
Cut down
chimney
cornise detail
see wheet
, I
Scueta roofed over
LATOUR WAREHOUSE 508 S. WATER ST. Philadelphia Pa.
Wood will
Refl (Ron roofing
WEST ELEVATION
Grede
JANES SPILLMAN, ORL
Plate 35. The LaTour Warehouse, elevations.
132
Plate 36. James C. Massey started with HABS as a student
architect in 1953. He supervised HABS eastern operations
from Philadelphia from 1962 to 1966, when the survey
moved to Washington where he served as chief of HABS
from 1966 until 1972. (From Philadelphia Preserved)
133
Plate 37. HABS dispatched photographer Jack E. Boucher,
who arrived just in time to document the final minutes
of President U.S. Grant's summer cottage in Long
Branch, N.J. in 1963. (From Historic Preservation,
July/August 1966)
134
494 HEM
Plate 38. The HABS Chicago project in 1963-65 and 1967
was the survey's first, concerted effort to record
modern architecture. Chicago's early skyscrapers and
large, complex buildings, such as the Auditorium
Building (1887-89, Adler and Sullivan), posed
technical challenges to the summer teams. (Photo
by Cervin Robinson, from The Chicago School of
Architecture)
135
Plate 39. By 1963, when HABS documented the Robie House
in Chicago (1908, Frank Lloyd Wright), the survey had
greatly expanded the bounds of its recording efforts
beyond the 1860 cut-off date that had prevailed for
decades. (Photograph by Cervin Robinson, from The
Chicago School of Architecture)
136
BUAD 100M AMMONS
B
R
FOOT SICOL
LIVING ROOM CHAR
MMG BOOM CHARL
CAS
- state BEL
FREDERICK C. ROBIE HOUSE
Plate 40. The Robie House documentation included this
measured drawing, in recognition of the integral role
of Wright's furnishings in the architect's total
architectural concept. (From Historic America)
137
Plate 41. Ernest Allen Connally in 1964. (From The
Beginnings of a New National Historic Preservation
Program)
138
Plate 42. Russell V. Keune in 1969. (From The
Beginnings of a New National Historic Preservation
Program)
139
HOTEL
Plate 43. Keeper of the National Register William J.
Murtagh speaking in January 1968. At left is George
B. Hartzog, Jr., director of the National Park Service;
at right is Ernest Connally. (From The Beginnings of
a New National Historic Preservation Program)
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1958.
Bailey, Worth. Safeguarding a Heritage. Washington:
NPS/DOI, 1963.
Borchers, Perry E. "The Measure of the Future and the
Past. " Journal of the American Institute of
Architects 28 (October 1957): 352-355.
Burns, John A. "Architects and the Historic American
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American Institute of Architects, 1990.
ed. Recording Historic Structures. Washington:
American Institute of Architects Press, 1989.
Carver, John A., Jr. "An Inexact Business." Journal of the
American Institute of Architects (February 1963):
31-35.
Connally. Ernest Allen. "Origins of the National Historic
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1986): 7-10; (April 1986): 9-14.
"Preserving the American Tradition: The National
Park Service Program for Students." Journal of the
AIA 35 (May 1961): 56-60.
Corkern, Wilton C., Jr. "Architects, Preservationists. and
the New Deal: Historic American Buildings Survey.
1933-1942." Ph.D. diss., George Washington
University, 1984.
"Documenting a Legacy: 40 Years of the Historic American
Buildings Survey. " Reprint from The Quarterly
Journal of the Library of Congress (October 1973):
269-293.
Glass, James A. The Beginnings of a New National Historic
Preservation Program, 1957 to 1969. Nashville: The
American Association for State and Local History,
1990.
Greiff, Constance M. Independence: The Creation of a
National Park. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1987.
Harney, Andy Leon. "Racing Against Oblivion." Historic
140
141
Preservation 35 (January/February 1983): 38-45.
Historic American Buildings Survey. Microfilm and
Electrostatic Prints of Measured Drawings in the
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Congress, 1974.
Holland, Leicester B. "H.A.B.S. Redivivus." The Octagon 6
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Hosmer, Charles B., Jr. Preservation Comes of Age: From
Williamsburg to the National Trust, 1926-1949. 2
vols. Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1981.
Jacobs, Stephen W. "The Education of Architectural
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Preservation and Conservation: Principles and
Practices. Washington: Preservation Press, 1976.
Kapsch, Robert J. "HABS/HAER: A User's Guide. " APT
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Keune, Russell V. and James Replogle. "Two Maine
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38-39.
Mackintosh, Barry. The Historic Sites Survey and National
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NPS/DOI. 1985.
-------
The National Historic Preservation Act and the
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1986.
Manson, Grant C. "Training Architects for Restoration. "
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
14 (May 1955): 28-29.
Massey, James C. "Preservation Through Documentation. "
Historic Preservation 18 (July/August 1966):
148-151.
-------
The Architectural Survey. Preservation Leaflet
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Preservation, n.d.
Massey. James C., Nancy B. Schwartz, and Shirley Maxwell.
142
Historic American Buildings Survey/ Historical
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September. 1990.
Miller, Hugh C. The Chicago School of Architecture: A Plan
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Mulloy, Elizabeth D. The History of the National Trust for
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"HABS News. " Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians 17, no. 1 (March 1958)
30.
-------
"Architectural Student Summer Program. 1958. "
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
16, no. 4 (December 1957) 29-30.
-------
"The Historic American Buildings Survey Continued."
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
16 (October 1957) 29-31.
-------
A National Park Service Historic Structures Report:
The Moore House: the Site of the Surrender
-Yorktown. 1935. Reprint. Washington: National
Parks & Conservation Association. 1981.
-------
"Our National Archives of Historic Architecture."
The Octagon 8 (July 1936) 12-16.
-------
"Photogrammetry for HABS. " Journal of the Society
of Architectural Historians 16, no. 4 (December
1957) 29.
-------
"Photogrammetry. The Magic Scaffold. " Journal of
the Society of Architectural Historians 17. no. 2
(Summer 1958): 27.
-------
"The West Indies. " Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians 14, no. 1 (March 1955)
28-30.
-------
"Thirty Years of HABS. " Journal of the American
Institute of Architects 40 (November 1963): 83-85.
A Record in Detail: The Architectural Photographs of Jack
E. Boucher. Columbia, Mo.: Univ. of Missouri Press,
1988.
"S.A.H. News. " Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians 10, no. 1 (March 1951): 27.
Smith, Carol C. Fifty Years of the Historic American
144
Buildings Survey. Alexandria, Va.: HABS Foundation.
1983.
Tinkcom, Margaret B. "The Philadelphia Historical
Commission: Organization and Procedures. " Law and
Contemporary Problems 36 (1971) : 386-397.
U.S. Department of the Interior. National Park Service.
Advisory List to the National Register of Historic
Places, 1969. Washington: NPS/DOI. 1970.
A Checklist of Subjects: Addition to Survey
Material Deposited in the Library of Congress Since
Publication of the HABS Supplement, January
1959-January 1963. Washington: HABS/ Division of
Design and Construction/NPS/DOI, 1963.
Annual Reports, Historic American Buildings Survey
to the National Advisory Board, 1958-1961.
Washington: NPS.
Early Architecture of Chester County, Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia: HABS/EODC/NPS/DOI. 1960.
Excerpts from Specifications for the Measurement
and Recording of Historic American Buildings and
Structural Remains. Philadelphia: HABS/EODC/NPS.
4 March 1958.
Historic American Buildings Survey Advisory Board
Meetings, Digests of Meetings. Washington:
HABS/NPS/DOI. 1958, 1961, 1967.
Historic American Buildings Survey Catalog
Supplement: Catalog of the Measured Drawings and
Photographs of the Survey in the Library of
Congress, Comprising Additions Since March 1, 1941.
Washington: HABS/ Division of Design and
Construction/NPS/DOI. 1959.
Historic American Buildings Survey Newsletter.
1961-1964.
-------
Historic American Buildings Survey, Summer
Recording Team Rosters. 1960-1966.
Historic Architecture of the Virgin Islands.
Philadelphia: HABS/EODC/NPS. February 1966.
145
Preservation Through Documentation. Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1968.
Report of Special Committee on Historic
Preservation. Washington: NPS/DOI, 30 September
1966.
Specifications for the Measurement and Recording of
Historic American Buildings and Structural Remains.
Washington: HABS/Planning and Construction
Division/NPS/DOI, January 1951.
Specifications for the Measurement and Recording of
Historic American Buildings and Structural Remains.
Washington: HABS/Division of Design and
Construction/NPS/DOI. July 1958.
Tripartite Agreement for Continuing the Historic
American Buildings Survey. Philadelphia: HABS/EODC.
1962.
Webster, Richard J. Philadelphia Preserved: Catalog of the
Historic American Buildings Survey. 2d ed.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981.
Wirth. Conrad L. Parks, Politics and the People. Norman,
Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.
Taped interviews were conducting with the following
individuals:
Batcheler, Penelope Hartshorne. Philadelphia, Pa., 24
January 1991.
Boucher, Jack E. Telephone interview, 14 February 1991.
Cliver. E. Blaine. Washington, D.C., 16 January 1991.
Connally, Ernest Allen. Washington, D.C., 12 February 1991.
Keune, Russell V. Washington, D.C., 13 February 1991.
Massey, James C. Washington, D.C., 12 February and 13
February 1991.
Murtagh, William J. Telephone interview, 9 February 1991.
'Gorman, James F. Telephone interview, 12 March 1991.
146
Peterson, Charles E. Philadelphia. Pa., 20 February, 15
March, and 18 April 1991.
Poppeliers, John. Washington, D.C., 15 January 1991.
Robinson, Cervin. Telephone interview, 27 March 1991.
Waite, John G. Telephone interview, 19 March 1991.
Fine Arts Library
University of Pennsylvania
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