Photography for HABS, HAER and HALS Documentations

 

 

 

HABS, as the Historic American Buildings Survey is informally called, is arguably the finest recordation program in the world. Established in 1933 as a make-work initiative for struggling architects, it was originally intended to be a four-month New Deal program, but was so valuable that it has endured to this day and spawned two other documentation programs. Originally intended to create measured drawings of vanishing colonial-era buildings, it quickly embraced photography as a documentation tool and expanded into other historical eras as well.

 

 

From the onset the program’s intentions were to record "a complete resume of the builder's art," ranging "from the smallest utilitarian structures to the largest and most monumental" as proclaimed in the original HABS circular #1 from December 1933. The photography parameters soon settled on large format film and the quality standards emphasized clarity, sharpness and measuring scales in each view. In 1969, HAER – the Historic American Engineering Record – was developed to record America's pioneering but rapidly vanishing industrial and engineering history. And most recently, HALS the Historic American Landscapes Survey was founded in 2000 to record historic landscapes like parks, cemeteries and the cultural landscapes that did not fit into the architecture or engineering collections of HABS and HAER.

 

 

The current guidelines from the federal government can be found at the Heritage Documentations Programs (HDP) website HERE in various PDF documents regarding measured drawings, photography, historic reports and transmittal of the final artifacts to the National Park Service (NPS). HDP is the department of the National Park Service that administers HABS/HAER/HALS and upon reviewing the transmitted artifacts will transfer the documentations to the Library of Congress (LoC). Additionally many state and local agencies use documentation specifications similar or identical to HABS/HAER/HALS because they are the only parameters that meet the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Historical Documentation and are proven to produce artifacts that last for generations.

 

 

The HABS/HAER/HALS collections are stored by the Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division. The collections are America's historical architectural, engineering and landscape documentation treasures and their goal is to provide architects, engineers, scholars, preservationists, and interested members of the public with comprehensive information on the historical, technological, and cultural significance of historic resources.

The collection is always growing and comprises more than 550,000 measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for more than 38,600 historic structures and sites, all copyright free and in the public domain. The photos, drawings, and written histories are available online at the Library of Congress Built in America – American Memory website (HERE) and these documents serve as a permanent record of the growth and development of the nation’s built environment.

 

 

HABS/HAER/HALS documentation usually consists of large-format photographs and written data and sometimes also measured drawings that highlight the significance of an historic resource. There are three levels of recordation that generally break down into:

 

(1) Level One – Measured line drawings (architectural plans), historic drawings, detailed large-format photographs, copies of historic photos and a full written data package.

 

(2) Level Two – Numerous detailed large-format photographs, full written data package.

 

(3) Level Three – General large-format photographs, with a simplified written data package.

 

 

This documentation acts as a form of insurance against fires and disasters by permitting the repair and, if necessary, reconstruction of historic resources damaged by such disasters. It is also used for scholarly research, interpretation and education, and it often provides the basis for enforcing preservation easements. HABS/HAER/HALS documentations often are the last means of preservation of a property: when a property is to be demolished, documentation provides future researchers access to valuable information that otherwise would be lost.

 

 

A list of Frequently Asked Questions about HABS/HAER/HALS is available at my website www.HABSPHOTO.com

 

For more details from the National Park Service searching these terms:

• Heritage Documentation Programs
• Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Architectural and Engineering Documentation 
• Preparing HABS/HAER/HALS documentation for transmittal