Historic American Buildings Survey
Click here to see the HABS photographs and plans of the Jail done in 1937.
In 1933, the National Park Service established the Historic Buildings Survey following a proposal by Charles E. Peterson, a young NPS landscape architect. It was founded as a constructive make-work program for architects, draftsmen and photographers left jobless by the Great Depression. Guided by field instructions from Washington D.C., the first HABS recorders were tasked with documenting a representative sampling of America's architechtural heritage. By creating an archive of historic architecture, HABS provided a database of primary source material and documentation for the then-fledgling historic preservation movement.
The permanent collection of HABS is housed at the Library of Congress.