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What’s All This? HABS/HAER/HALS
September/October 2022
 A digital page from the Library of Congress’s HABS file on the George W. Marston House, San Diego, 1905. |
 A HABS section and elevation of the Hotel del Coronado Ballroom, 1888 |
 La Jolla Woman’s Club, designed by Irving J. Gill, 1914; HABS photograph by Marvin Rand, 1971 |
 HABS elevation and floor plan of La Flecha House, Rancho Santa Fe, designed by Lilian Rice, 1923. All photos courtesy the Library of Congress |
Nestled among countless national treasures at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. are three print and photography collections of enormous value to preservationists, historians, designers, and others. In fact, the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS, started in 1933, the nation’s first federal preservation program) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER, 1969) are among the largest and most heavily used sections of the library’s print and photography collections. In 2000, the library added another layer to record the built environment: Historic American Landscapes Survey. All three kinds of surveys are administered by the library in partnership with the National Park Service and the private sector.
The library’s precisely documented “achievements in architecture, engineering, and landscape design” occur throughout the country and its territories, and range from churches to lighthouses, pueblos to bridges, gardens to windmills. About 200 of them are in San Diego, or were before their demise.
The meticulous, measured drawings and photographs are invaluable “blueprints” for accurate restoration and reconstruction after a historic building is damaged by earthquake, fire, or flood; and for restoring missing details. Hand-drawn plans, elevations, and details are now supplemented by laser scanning technology for measuring sites and creating educational components.
More uses: HABS/HAER/HALS are key to comparing materials and construction methods when studying buildings or landscapes of the same date, region, type, etc. HABS et al. can be crucial for house museum curators in making decisions for interpreting the home and its landscape. SOHO staff has used the collections not only for wide-ranging advocacy work, as you would expect, but also when researching interpretive exhibits and in custom design work for presentation and museum shop merchandizing.
Not least, the drawings and photographs are often very beautiful works of art, like the sites they portray. And, some serve as the nation’s memory by recording the essence of lost structures.
Resources
Start your search at the Library of Congress by entering California, San Diego (or another city) in the search box on this page.
Alternatively, begin by searching the National Park Service site in one of the three categories:
National Park Service Heritage
Documentation Programs
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