Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present

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Go directly to the collections, Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present, in American Memory, or view a Summary of Resources related to the collections.

The photographs and descriptions in Built in America: The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) 1933-Present, can be used to develop many critical thinking skills. Documents related to war memorials provide an opportunity to chronicle U.S. conflicts and the different ways in which they were remembered. Picture palaces from the 1920s provide an opportunity to understand the growing elegance and popularity of the motion picture industry. Buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright provide insight into the work of one of the nation's most famous architects. Other materials allow one to assess the conflicting interests of national defense and environmental conservation during the Cold War and to research the rise of power industries during the early-twentieth century.

Chronological Thinking Skills

A search on the phrase, world war memorial, produces a number of examples of monuments commemorating U.S. involvement in national and international conflicts. These works can be used to create a pictorial timeline of wars and to assess the changing architectural styles of the memorials themselves. For example, the Battle Monument in Baltimore, Maryland was completed in 1825 as "the first significant war memorial ever built in the United States," (page 2). The monument was designed to commemorate the September 1814 British attack on the city as did Francis Scott Key's Star Spangled Banner. It employs both Egyptian and Classical architectural elements and includes a sculptured figure at the top, griffins, and two reliefs on the shaft.

The Civil War memorial in Massachusetts's Mount Auburn Cemetery also prominently employs Egyptian architecture in the form of a sphinx, while the Civil War tribute in Michigan's Monument Park uses the Greek Revivalist style of a single column. The State Soldiers' & Sailors' Monument in Indianapolis, Indiana, however, commemorates the Mexican, Civil, and Spanish-American Wars with sculptured figures that populate a Classical stone column. The World War I monument in Rhode Island's Memorial Square also adopts a Classical style of architecture and "reflects the late 1920's popularity of Greek Revivalism in the use of a Doric column as the principal form," (page 3).

The Civil War memorial in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

• What do you think is the purpose of a war memorial?
• Who is the monument designed to memorialize?
• Who is its audience?
• Where are monuments generally constructed?
• Why do you think that these monuments use Egyptian, Greek, and other Classical forms to pay tribute to these wars? How did these styles change over time?
• How do these monuments compare to contemporary memorials (e.g., the Korean or Vietnam Memorials in Washington, D.C.)?
• Which monuments do you prefer? Why?

Historical Comprehension: Picture Palaces

The motion picture industry grew dramatically during the 1920s. Approximately 100 million people attended movie theaters each week -- almost double that of church attendance. In fact, some people argued that the movie theaters of the era had become the new places of worship.

Picture palaces offered a middle-class audience a sense of luxury for the price of admission. Ornate architecture, smoking lounges, powder rooms, and attentive staff created a fantasy world in the theaters long before the first reel of the motion picture began. A search on the phrase, movie theater, produces a number of examples. Loew's Theater was one of the first theaters in Jefferson County, Kentucky. Architect John Eberson, one of the three renowned theater architects of the 1920s, included detailed sconces and figurines in spacious lobbies and vestibules. He even included his own image as a bust among images of more famous men in the theater's vestibule ceiling (page 2).

The vestibule, . . .

lobby, . . .

and auditorium of Loew's Theater.

The HABS collection includes images of the Fox Theater in Seattle, Washington, and a description of the area's theater designs: The Fox Theater in Seattle, Washington.

Spacious lobbies with flowing staircases, glamorous lounges, smoking areas, and crying rooms were standard, while house and stage support functions were generally well-hidden from the patron in subterranean or backstage areas. Seattle's Coliseum featured a Turkish men's smoking room and a Mother Goose Nursery, and the Paramount its own "salon de musique." The Music Hall Theatre was notable for its small but elegant mezzanine lounge, and its generous suite of art-deco styled ladies' rooms.

The decorative style of the movie palace was always its chief character-defining feature. Often the degree of decorative elaboration progressed from exterior to lobby to inner auditorium, providing gradual immersion into the fantasy world within. Styles varied widely from expressions of traditional classicism to exotic idioms and eclectic mixes. (page 20)

Picture palaces were often a featured part of a larger commercial center but these palaces (whose numbers peaked between 1925 and 1930) were designed "to rival the fantasy of the motion picture itself. Theatres increased significantly in scale and plan, and seating capacities grew to well over 1000 patrons." (page 19).

• How do you think that picture palaces reflected the values, concerns, and
  dreams of its audience?
• Why do you think that architectural design plays such an important role in
  attracting an audience?
• What other forms of entertainment did picture palaces compete with during
  the era?
• What other forms of leisure use architectural design to attract business?
• How do you think that modern amenities such as stereo surround-sound and
  stadium seating compare to the features of the picture palaces?
• Do you think that movie theaters offer a different experience for an
  audience now? Why or why not?

Historical Analysis and Interpretation: Frank Lloyd Wright and Organic Architecture

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was one of the nation's most famous and influential architects. In the late nineteenth century, he began amending mentor Louis Sullivan's classic design maxim, "form follows function," with the notion, "form and function are one." Wright's organic architecture attempted to reinterpret principles found in nature by creating a harmonious relationship between the design of a building and its purpose. His work included banks, resorts, office buildings, a gas station, synagogue, beer garden, and art museum. A search on Frank Lloyd Wright produces examples spanning his seventy-year career.

The E.E. Boynton House in Rochester, New York exemplifies Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie home design.

The Oak Park complex in Illinois.

The 1889 house and studio in Oak Park, Illinois, includes the first residence Wright built for himself. The documents accompanying the photographs in this collection explain that "the House and Studio are a source and proving ground for ideas and forms which were put to dramatic use throughout Wright's career," (page 2).

Wright created his largest collection of buildings for the campus of Florida Southern College. After going over budget for the first building, college President, Dr. Ludd Spivey, and Wright agreed to build the campus with student labor. Wright’s students designed the campus while "Dr. Spivey's students would then take time from their classes to build the buildings," (page 2). The architect called for the construction of promenades to allow movement through a citrus grove. They were placed at ninety, sixty, and thirty-degree angles to preserve the trees and to protect students from rain showers. However, "Mr. Wright's ecological consideration . . . was thwarted by a heavy freeze which killed the citrus in one night," (page 4).

During the Great Depression and World War II, Frank Lloyd Wright attempted to improve the design of houses for middle- and upper-class homeowners. Descriptions of the Walter Lowell House (1950) in Iowa explains how occupants and nature harmonized "psychologically and spiritually" through a design that employed natural light and reduced the amount of furniture needed: "Tables, shelving, cabinets, and some seating are built into the house. . . . This room is skillfully subdivided so that one portion provides the space and built-in shelving, sideboard, and tables needed for dining," (page 4).

Additional information on Frank Lloyd Wright is available in the Library of Congress exhibit, Designs for an American Landscape, 1922-1932.

• How did Frank Lloyd Wright's different designs embody the principles of organic architecture?
• What types of projects did he take on during his career?
• How do you think that Frank Lloyd Wright's style developed over time?
• How do you think that his designs influenced other architects in the United States?

Historical Issue-Analysis and Decision-Making: Missile Defense

The end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War prompted the United States military to create a missile defense system. In 1954, the Army introduced the Nike Ajax guided-missile system as an improvement on anti-aircraft artillery. It was the first step in an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union over long- and short-range missile silos. Four years later, the second-generation missile, the Nike Hercules, was designed to carry nuclear warheads and destroy incoming explosives and nuclear weapons.

A search on Nike missile produces images and data pertaining to a variety of missile defense sites across the nation. For example, the Mt. Gleason Nike Missile Site was the first missile base constructed in California's Angeles Forest.

It was built in a very short period of time, due to its priority status. The site was in operation . . . before the installation of water and sewer lines . . . . The rushed construction of Mt. Gleason symbolizes the nationwide American effort to counteract the potential "Red Scare" of enemy intervention. (page 27)

The entrance to Silo "Alfa" at Mt. Gleason.

The jurisdiction of the National Forest Service changed in 1969, however, when Congress established the National Environmental Policy Act. This legislation was created to "declare a national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment." The report notes that the Forest Service, "backed by federal legislation now, pressured the Army to dispose of the military installation in a manner consistent with the Forest Service's environmental management standards," (page 37).

All Nike Missile defense systems began deactivation three years later when President Richard Nixon signed the SALT I treaty to limit anti-ballistic missile systems in the United States and the Soviet Union.

• How did the construction of the Mt. Gleason site impact the Angeles Forest?
• Why do you think that the construction was allowed to occur despite its environmental impact?
• How do you think that the interests of national defense compared to the interests of environmental conservation during the Cold War?
• How do you think that the two issues are viewed in contemporary society?

Historic Research Capabilities

The Death Valley Ranch solar heater.

The HAER collection allows for a close examination of the energy industries that developed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For example, the mining industry is represented by buildings such as Maryland's Consolidation Coal Company Mine and Montana's Lombard Coke Oven, which "represents a specific stage of technological development in the coking coal industry," (page 2).

Other featured technologies include traditional constructions such as the Gregg Shoals Dam & Power Plant in South Carolina as well as alternative sources such as New York's Gardiner Windmill and the Death Valley Ranch Solar Heater. The latter technology is an example of the solar industry that thrived in southern California before World War II and the widespread use of natural gas.

• How did the energy industries change over time? How are the power demands and resources different in contemporary society?
• What were the demands of using fossil fuels such as coal?
• How did the nation change after the construction of dams and power plants during the early twentieth century?
• Why do you think that solar power was a short-lived alternative in California prior to World War II?