HAER as a Resource for Teaching Schoolchildren about History and Technology

The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), which emerged as an adjunct to the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), is part of the government's Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) administered by the US National Park Service (NPS). HABS originated in the 1930s as a works program for architects, draftsmen, and photographers experiencing unemployment during the Depression.¹ The goal was to document the country's architectural heritage. HAER was founded in 1969 to document industrial and engineering sites and structures. Housed at the Library of Congress, these two collections, along with the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS), comprise the nation's largest archive of historic architectural, engineering, and landscape documentation.² While this archive is obviously of significant interest to researchers and historians, HAER, the most technical of the three historical collections, also serves as a tool to teach Philadelphia schoolchildren about the history and technology of their city's pioneering water distribution system, housed in Philadelphia's iconic Fairmount Water Works.

Not surprisingly, Philadelphia is well represented in the HABS, HALS, and HAER collections. Richard J. Webster's Philadelphia Preserved: Catalog of the Historic American Buildings Survey lists over six hundred buildings in the city.³ One of these is the Fairmount Water Works, recognized as an important architectural and engineering site. This iconic structure was an engineering marvel when it was first put into service in 1815. It served as a water pumping station for almost one hundred years before being decommissioned in 1911.⁴ In 1975, the American Society of Civil Engineers declared Fairmount Water Works a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark as it was embarking on a major restoration. In 1978, HAER partnered with the Philadelphia Water Department to document past and present incarnations of the building and its machinery. The resulting report included thirty-six technical drawings, which recreated the changing technology that had been in use at the water works over the century it was in operation. They also include architectural plans and elevations, which help bring to life the building as a working pump station. In its last years of operation, the machinery in the building consisted of seven Jonval turbines that drove the water pumps. By the 1960s, only one of those turbine driven pumps remained. Several of the HAER drawings document this equipment with plan drawings, elevations, and detailed sections of select pieces of the pumping assembly.

The Fairmount Water Works is currently a museum and public education center maintained by the Philadelphia Water Department. Part of its mission is to educate the public about the city's past and present drinking water and wastewater systems.⁵ Over the years, it has provided a variety of lessons for schoolchildren, including instruction that used the HAER drawings of the preserved pump. Many Philadelphia schoolchildren have used these drawings to learn about the purpose and function of the Fairmount Water Works. Tracings the drawings on sheets of vellum, the students read and interpreted a technical scale drawing while sitting in close proximity to the very machine it depicts. Not only did the students learn about an important piece of historic technology, but they also used measuring skills and observation to understand the purpose of technical drawings themselves. A collection of undoubted significance to historians, HAER has thus served as a surprising tool for introducing the city's youngest residents to engineering and industrial technology.