Historic American Bldg Survey: Preservation’s Beginnings

Before America had official National Landmarks or historic districts, we had the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). The HABS project began in 1933, putting to work thousands of unemployed architects, draftsmen, and photographers to document America's historic buildings. Two of The Heritage Society's structures, the 1847 Kellum-Noble House and the 1850 Nichols-Rice-Cherry House, were recorded during the earliest days of HABS. In the fall of 2011, three more of The Heritage Society's historic structures were added to the archive. This exhibit features the intricate architectural drawings and photographs from those surveys and shows how the information is used to preserve the structures for the future