News and Information About HABS, HAER and HALS Photography
This is a list of most Stephen D. Schafer’s Historic American Buildings Survey, Historic American Engineering Record and Historic American Landscapes Survey projects since 2003. I say ‘most‘ because I had to make the list shorter at one point to fit it on one page, so I removed a bunch of HABS, HAER, and HALS…
The Crossroads of the World historic district was a large-scale HABS photography documentation, with 105 views, that I should have posted these HABS photos back in 2023, after they were accepted into the Library of Congress HABS collections, but something probably came up. Something always does. CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD Photography by Stephen D. SchaferHABS No….
A Born-Digital HABS Photo Standard is Coming Someday, but not yet. The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS*), the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) programs are the way America documents its significant inherited environment. For the last 93 years HABS has documented built America exceptionally well, with honest, unmanipulated…
Lately, there’s been a lot of discussion about the Vaillancourt Fountain at the Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco. The fountain is historic, and these two photographs were taken of the plaza and fountain in 2022 when I was documenting the Market Street Historic Landscape District, a 2.3 mile-long section of Market Street from The Ferry…
My Path to Preservation: Insights from a HABS Photographer INFO LINK Members Non-Members FREEDate: May 20, 2025Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Join the California Preservation Foundation for our My Path to Preservation series, a webinar program with the goal of sharing insights with students, interns, graduates, emerging professionals, and anyone interested in a…
Today, I got an official HABS number from HDP, after looking through some files and finding the negatives. HABS CA-3002. This week the motel was lost in the Palisades Fire.
Just found two new sets of scanned records on the HABS site today. As the LoC slowly gets through the backlog of HABS/HAER/HALS photos waiting for scans from the last couple decades. It’s nice to see some of my photos out in the public domain where they belong. These two examples of historic survey photography…
HABS TO DO LIST, what Historic American Buildings Survey photo are next?
I’m doing a presentation. 🗺 At Cal State Northridge. I hope you can be there and see the marvelous and amazing maps that they have, and learn a bit about the HABS/HAER/HALS programs and how I use maps for research before every project. If you’d like more information about HABS, HAER or HALS photography take…