HAER

The Historic American Engineering Record worked two summers to provide technical drawings for the two Prattville projects. The projects unveiled new information about Daniel Pratt and the two historic building complexes. The U.S. Park Service projects are invaluable tools for the advancement of our local Historic projects. The drawings and history are now documented in the United States Library of Congress.

The H.A.E.R. teams were praised for their work, on the two projects, by Alabama Senator Richard Shelby.

So much of our history would be lost without these two projects. Prattville history has been enriched by Mr. Richard O'Connor, Ms. Lee Ann Lands and the two teams hard work. The historic value these teams have added to the City of Prattville are beyond measure.

As the oldest Federal preservation program, the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER) produces graphic and written documentation of historically significant architectural, engineering and industrial sites and structures. Dating from 1934, the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) was chartered to document historic architecture--primarily houses and public buildings--of national or regional significance. Originally a New Deal employment/preservation program, after World War II, HABS employed summer teams of advanced undergraduate and graduate students to carry out the documentation, a tradition followed to this day. Many of the structures they documented no longer exist. Recognizing a similar fragility in our national industrial and engineering heritage, the National Park Service, the Library of Congress and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) formed the HAER program in 1969 to document nationally and regionally significant engineering and industrial sites. A short while later, HAER was ratified by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers (AIME). HAER documentation in the forms of measured and interpretive drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories, is archaically preserved in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, where it is readily available to the public.

Established by Daniel Pratt in 1840, the gin manufacturing company has produced gins and presses for over a century and a half. Along with William Gregg's Graniteville, SC complex, Prattville is considered a center of antebellum southern industry. The buildings comprising the manufacturing complex will be the primary subjects of the summer documentation project. For the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, gin manufacturing involved the assembly of custom designed and machined parts produced using tools typical of contemporary wood and metal shops. Very few, if any, of these survive. The buildings, on the other hand, represent a variety of nineteenth century factory designs and construction techniques. The early buildings, constructed in the 1840s and 1850s, may possibly bear the imprint of Pratt as architect, but almost certainly reflect his early upbringing in New England. In addition to some unusual truss work, other features of historical and technical interest include the race, wheel pit and dam remains.

Team Members

Project Leaders: Rich O'Connor, HAER Historian: Architectural Consultant: Thomas Behrens,

Field Supervisor: Catherine Truman, Yale School Of Architecture Project Architects: David Gole, U.S. ICOMOS /Robert Riddel Architects, Australia:

Sara Paschke, University of Illinois at U.C. Sara is a descendant of John Roebling engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge:

Fani Papakanellopoulou, U.S. ICOMOS/Athens University, School Of Architecture, Greece:

Pat Rhodes, (Floor) SCI-ARC: Tim Gazey, (Ladder) Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science: Project Historian:

Lee Ann Lands, Georgia Institute of Technology: Project Photographer: Jet Lowe, HAER Photographer.