Hello reader and welcome to my Blog! My name is Mónica and I was hired by the Latino Heritage Internship Program to work as a Historic American Building Survey Architect for the summer. During the next couple of weeks I will be keeping you posted about my opportunities and experiences with LHIP and HABS.

 But first let me tell you a little bit about myself.

 I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, which is also where I got my Architecture degree at the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico. During those five years I became interested in the preservation and conservation of historic buildings since the island is filled with structures that were built by the Spanish during the time of their rule. Researching, documenting and encountering historic documents inspired me to do my graduate degree in Historic Preservation, which I’m finishing next year at the University of Pennsylvania. I have always been interested in HABS and have participated in two of their competitions, which brought me to this opportunity to work with them and learn more about documentation and heritage preservation.

 What is HABS? you ask;

 The Historic American Building Survey is one of the oldest preservation programs of the country. It started in 1933 to “mitigate the negative effects upon our history and culture of rapidly vanishing architectural resources” ¹ It is one of three programs including the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) and The Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS) which are administered by the Heritage Documentation Program. All the documentation they produce can be found at the Library of Congress, behind the United States Capitol in DC. They also produce competitions and guidelines for research and documentation of historic places.

This summer I’m going to be working at the Department of Interior with a HABS Architect and a HBCUI intern, we are going to document (hand sketch, measure, laser scan and draw in CAD) row houses in the Washington, DC area. The first house is around 100 years old, it was built using brick and designed to allow for more natural light inside the space.

See you in two weeks,

-Mónica

Ps. Some link that may interest you

Heritage Documentation Program https://www.nps.gov/hdp/

Competitions https://www.nps.gov/hdp/competitions/index.htm

Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/collections/historic-american-buildings-landscapes-and-engineering-records/about-this-collection/

¹ https://www.nps.gov/hdp/habs/index.htm