Historic American Engineering Record
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT CRM VOLUME 23 NO. 4 2000 Historic American Engineering Record Thirty Years of Documenting America's Technological History U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR National Park Service Cultural Resources PUBLISHED BY THE VOLUME 23 NO. 4 2000 NATIONAL PARK SERVICE Contents ISSN 1068-4999 Information for parks, federal agencies, Indian tribes, states, local governments, Historic American and the private sector that promotes and maintains high standards for pre serving and managing cultural resources Engineering Record DIRECTOR HAER—Documenting Creativity 3 Small Steps and Giant Leaps—HAER Robert Stanton Dean Herrin Documentation of Static Test ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Facilities at NASA's Marshall CULTURAL RESOURCE STEWARDSHIP The Prehistory of HAER, Space Flight Center 33 AND PARTNERSHIPS Katherine H. Stevenson 1965-1968 5 Thomas M. Behrens Robert M. Vogel EDITOR Engineering Methods in Ronald M. Greenberg HAER and the Recording of Historical Research 35 ASSOCIATE EDITOR Technological Heritage—Reflections Justin M. Spivey Janice C. McCoy on the Beginning 8 Recording Industrial Sites with GUEST EDITOR Eric DeLony DeanHerrin CAD Technologies 39 HAER Documents America's Dana Lockett ADVISORS Park Roads and Parkways 12 David Andrews Editor, NPS Tim Davis The Institute for the History of Joan Bacharach Technology and Industrial Archaeology, Museum Registrar, NPS Through the Mill—Documenting the and HAER—A Ten-Year Randall J. Biallas Historical Architect, NPS Southern Textile Industry 15 Retrospective 42 John A. Bums Lisa Pfueller Davidson Dan Bonenberger Architect, NPS Harry A Butowsky Historian, NPS Futtocks, Buttocks, and Duck Tails— The International Connection—HAER Pratt Cassity HAER's Maritime Program 18 and the US/ICOMOS International Executive Director, National Alliance of Preservation Commrssions Richard K. Anderson, Jr. and Summer Intern Program 46 Muriel Crespi Todd A. Croteau Ellen M. Delage Cultural Anthropologist, NPS MatyCullen Director, Historical Services Branch Working the Lights—Photography, HAER, an Inspiration Across Parks Canada Documentation, and Coast Guard the Atlantic 49 Mark Edwards Hrstoric Preservation and Cultural Resource Group Manager Buoy Tenders 23 Keith Falconer URS Greiner Woodward Clyde Federal Services Jet Lowe Roger E. Kelly Archeologist, NPS Thirty Years of Documenting Antoinette J. Lee More than Cotton— Engineering and Industrial Heritage Historian, NPS Industrial Alabama 26 through HAER Publications 52 ASSISTANT Richard O'Connor Eric DeLony Denise M. Mayo Allegheny Oil Powers—Documenting Endangered Cultural Resources in Allegheny National Forest 29 An electronic version of this Christopher Marston issue of CRM can be accessed through the CRM homepage at Cover: Clockwise—section of the Beebe Windmill, Bridgehampton, New York, drawing by Chalmers <http://www.cr.nps.gov/crm>. G. Long, Jr., 1976; Eric DeLony and Charles Parrott get a grip on the cupola of the Troy Gasholder House, Troy, New York, photo by Robert Vogel, 1969; steam locomotives in the roundhouse of the East Broad Top Railroad shop complex, Rockhill Furnace, Pennsylvania, photo by Jack £ Boucher, 1986. Statements of fact and views are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect an opinion or endorsement on the part of the editors, the CRM advisors and consultants, or the National Park Service. Send articles and correspondence to the Editor, CRM, U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1849 C Street, NW, Suite 350NC, Washington, DC 20240 (U.S. Postal Service) or 800 North Capitol St, NW, Suite 350, Washington, DC 20002 (Federal Express); ph. 202-343-3411, fax 202-343-5260; email: <[email protected]>, to subscribe and to make inquiries; <[email protected]> to submit articles. 2 CRM No 4—2000 Dean Herrin HAER—Documenting Creativity he Historic American examined roads, bridges, and related landscape Engineering Record (HAER) features of many national parks. For the past came into existence in 1969, three years, as Lisa Davidson relates, HAER has almost four decades after the also conducted the Southern Textile Industry birth Tof its sister program, the Historic American Project, which seeks to place southern textile Buildings Survey (HABS). HAER was created in mills, workers' housing, and other community the image of HABS, but with significant varia structures in a larger regional and national per tions. The two programs, together forming a spective. Richard Anderson, Jr., Todd Croteau, division of the National Park Service, both use and Jet Lowe write about HAER's Maritime large-format photographs, measured drawings, Program, Anderson and Croteau relating the his and written histories to document national land tory of the program and showing the ways in marks, but HAER's emphasis on America's engi which measured drawings in particular can reveal neering and industrial legacy requires it to pay as significant information, and Lowe discussing how much attention to function as to form. HAER a photographer approaches a maritime subject. has spent over 30 years not only recording his HAER has also documented diverse indus toric technological sites, but also explaining how tries within various regions around the country. they worked, why what happened on these sites was important, and why Americans should care to preserve at least a portion of them. This issue of CRM looks both to the past and to the future, HAER(Net) exploring how HAER came into existence as well as new directions the program is taking now that he HABS/HAER Collection is the preservation of engineering and industrial Tavailable to the sites has become more widely accepted. public in the Prints and Photographs Of all the early advocates for a program to Division of the Library of Congress, but document significant engineering and industrial all of the HAER collection—histories, sites, perhaps the most important and persistent drawings, and photographs—will soon be was Robert Vogel, then Curator of Mechanical available online. Through a generous and Civil Engineering at the Smithsonian donation from the Shell Oil Foundation, Institution. Both he and Eric DeLony describe in the HAER collection is currently being this issue the founding of HAER by the digitally scanned by the Library of Smithsonian, HABS, the American Society of Congress for its American Memory web Civil Engineers, the National Park Service, and site <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ the Library of Congress. Since its creation in hhhtml/hhhome.htmlx Over 30 years of 1969, HAER has documented over 7,000 sites HAER documentation will be searchable and structures, and has helped to establish the by keyword, subject, and location. The standards for the recording of technological com HABS/HAER collections are among the plexes. While HAER still documents numerous largest and most heavily used of all the individual sites around the country, much of the materials in the Prints and Photographs program's current work focuses on multi-year Division of the Library of Congress, and projects examining multiple sites representing this online catalog will give the general broader and more contextual themes. Tim Davis' public easy access to the collections. article, for example, describes HAER's Park Roads Program, now in its 12th year, which has CRM No 4—2000 3 Richard O'Connor describes how HAER has Industrial, Military and Naval Programmes in intensively studied the state of Alabama, produc English Heritage. The final article in the issue is a ing documentation that testifies to its reputation bibliographic essay by Eric DeLony, Chief of as a bastion of southern industry. In HAER, describing the program's numerous pro Pennsylvania, as described by Christopher ject and program publications. Marston, HAER teamed with West Virginia Architectural historian Reyner Banham has University's Institute for the History of written of the "teeming fecundity" of technologi Technology and Industrial Archaeology to cal invention, which has produced "a record—all research the oil fields of Allegheny National too often ignored—of human creativity so multi Forest. Most of HAER's work has focused on farious, determined, and persistent that the only older engineering and industrial sites and appropriate response is a decent humility."2 In processes, but Tom Behrens looks at HAER's over 30 years of work, HAER has attempted to documentation of more recent engineering, document that fertile and creative world, a world NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center of grain elevators, machinery, and lean factories in Huntsville, Alabama. In the following articles, that inspired Modernist architects and painters; Justin Spivey and Dana Lockett reveal new tech of structures and objects, brimming with variety, niques HAER has incorporated to study techno movement, and irregularity, that give form to the logical sites. While HAER documents engineer phrase picturesque eclectic; and of still other ing sites, rarely has HAER used engineering structures and sites that can only be called the analysis to gather information about a structure. unpicturesque eclectic, a motley assortment of Spivey describes a project in which such analysis utilitarian, vernacular, and nondescript buildings, was successfully used to resolve questions about a towers, machines, and complexes, all of which bridge's mysterious design. Lockett discusses how together compose our modern technological HAER, without totally abandoning traditional world. HAER will continue to work so that this hand-drawing techniques,