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Posted by: Kristi Finefield
The following is a guest post by Ryan Brubacher, Reference Specialist, Prints & Photographs Division. While chatting with a colleague some time ago, we realized our overlapping interest in finding faces in what the Prints & Photographs Division calls the HABS/HAER/HALS (Historic American Buildings Survey, Historic American Engineering Record, Historic American Landscapes Survey). She shared …
Posted in: Architecture, HABS/HAER/HALS
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
The following is a guest post by Aliza Leventhal, Head, Technical Services, Prints & Photographs Division. Have you ever walked by a building and seen the resemblance of a face? Once you start, it’s hard to stop! While faces are often easiest to see in a building’s exterior elements, they can also be found in …
Posted in: Architecture, HABS/HAER/HALS, Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Water towers dot the landscape, almost always the tallest structure in the nearby area. When taking long road trips, they catch my eye, especially ones where the tower has been painted to reflect something about the region or when the tower itself is an unusual shape. For example, the tower above, in Gaffney, South Carolina, …
Posted in: Architecture, HABS/HAER/HALS, Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
The following is a guest post by Ryan Brubacher, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division. In late November, the winners of the 2021 HALS Challenge were announced. The announcement offers a good opportunity to highlight the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) collection, including the historical reports found within this collection, as well as the National …
Posted in: Architecture, Drawings, HABS/HAER/HALS, Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
What do a carousel horse, Theodore Roosevelt, and a lighthouse have in common? Look closely at the drawing below from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial – can you spot two Roosevelts? There is, of course, the large drawing of the Roosevelt statue featured at the memorial on Theodore Roosevelt …
Posted in: Architecture, Drawings, HABS/HAER/HALS, Visual literacy
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
A log cabin, a city row house, and a Baptist church. As a list of buildings, it is unremarkable. When I describe these three structures with a focus on their places in history, the list gets much more interesting. They are also: the slave quarters on the Tennessee plantation owned by Pres. Andrew Jackson, the …
Posted in: African American History, HABS/HAER/HALS, Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, Prints & Photographs Division. The Library of Congress and the Heritage Documentation Programs at the National Park Service have named the first winners of a new prize for the best single-sheet drawing prepared to the standards of the Historic American Buildings Survey, Historic American Engineering …
Posted in: Architecture, Drawings, HABS/HAER/HALS, News & Events
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
In a career spanning forty-six years, Jack E. Boucher traveled through forty-nine states and two U.S. territories to photograph for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and its sister projects, the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). Boucher passed away recently, so I asked colleagues here to share stories …
Posted in: Architecture, HABS/HAER/HALS, Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Thanks to a recent initiative by Library of Congress and National Park Service staff, the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog has grown by nearly 400,000 records. Through a bit of technical wizardry, there is now a record for each digital image in one of our cornerstone collections: the Historic American Buildings Survey/ Historic American Engineering …
Posted in: Architecture, Drawings, HABS/HAER/HALS, Photographs