Reginald W. Bacon

author of a dozen books on regional history, music, architecture, preservation, and performing arts topics; a museum and history professional with specialties in 17th- and 18th-century New England architecture and domestic life, and early 20th-century vaudeville and circus

The HABS and the HABs Nots takes a look back at the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), the federal program that advanced historic preservation in the 1930s. For viewing pleasure, the book presents the crisp analog photos and elegant measured drawings for surveys conducted in Newburyport, Mass., a small coastal city known widely for the riches of its authentic 18th- and 19th-century domestic architecture.

The historic American Buildings Survey, the brainchild of National Park Service architect Charles E. Peterson (1906-2004), took shape in 1933 as a New Deal make-work program for unemployed architects and draftspeople. HABS teams were dispatched to all corners of the U.S. to document the most at-risk historic structures through rigorous data collecting, photography, and standardized measured drawings. Documenting structures of all types, in all regions, from all classes, was a key component of the HABS mission. The program’s historical objectivity and inclusivity, as well as its insistence on high standards of documentation, built the lasting legacy of the Historic American Building Survey that continues to influence the preservation profession today.

from The HABS and the HABs Nots by Reginald W. Bacon (Variety Arts Press)