Charles Peterson, preservationist, founder of HABS
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/9446470.htm
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Posted on Fri, Aug. 20, 2004
Charles E. Peterson, 97, preservationist
By Gayle Ronan Sims
Inquirer Staff Writer
Charles E. Peterson, 97, an eloquent and indefatigable spokesman for old buildings and their builders, died Tuesday of an aneurysm at Pennsylvania Hospital.
Mr. Peterson, who had lived in Society Hill since purchasing two rowhouses on Spruce Street for $8,000 each in 1954, is credited with shaping historic preservation in Philadelphia and around the country.
He came to Philadelphia in the early 1950s as a National Park Service architect for Independence National Historical Park and wrote the first study for the restoration of Carpenters' and Library Halls.
While creating the design of Independence National Historical Park, he was engaged in constant preservation skirmishes, trying to save the graceful buildings erected during the Colonial and Federal eras. He prowled the alleys in the area bounded by Front, Eighth, Walnut and Lombard Streets while documenting historical structures for the National Park Service.
Mr. Peterson is credited with dubbing the area "Society Hill" after discovering that William Penn's real estate group, the Free Society of Traders, had set up shop in the area in the late 17th century.
"This was a has-been neighborhood," Mr. Peterson said of Society Hill in an Inquirer interview in March. Back then, "no one had any idea of living here. It was a place to get away from."
Along with former city planner Edmund Bacon, Mr. Peterson attracted well-heeled friends to buy property for a song in the area. The Society Hill Civic Association has plans to install a plaque at Second and Spruce Streets honoring Mr. Peterson and Bacon for their contributions to the preservation of the neighborhood.
Mr. Peterson's most far-reaching work came a few decades earlier, when he had just begun working for the National Park Service.
A native of Madison, Minn., and fresh out of college with a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Minnesota, Mr. Peterson began working for the Park Service in 1929, thinking it was an outside job.
But shortly after he started work, the Park Service broadened its activities to include historic properties on the East Coast, and Mr. Peterson was reassigned.
Mr. Peterson would often say, "I wanted to work outdoors in the West, and I ended up working indoors in the East," his longtime assistant, Hilda Sanchez, said yesterday.
In 1931, Mr. Peterson, who considered himself a restorationist, saved the Moore House in Yorktown, Va., the site of the British surrender in the Revolution. He subsequently worked on historic properties from Massachusetts to the Virgin Islands.
In 1933, he established the Historic American Buildings Survey, the first nationwide program of the National Park Service to document and preserve historic structures.
Mr. Peterson's handwritten proposal resides in the National Archives. The program remains one of the few New Deal initiatives still in existence.
Throughout his career, Mr. Peterson, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, concentrated on the construction of old buildings. He identified with builders and understood the problems they faced and the techniques they used to solve them.
During World War II, Peterson was chief of the Advance Base Engineering Division for Adm. Chester Nimitz's staff at Pearl Harbor. He helped plan island-hopping invasions from Guam to Japan. After the war, he started the Philadelphia office for the National Park Service.
Mr. Peterson left the Park Service in 1962 and opened an architectural practice in his home on Spruce.
In 2000, he wrote The Life and Works of Robert Smith. Through the book, Smith - a leading architect, builder and engineer who designed and erected St. Peter's Church and Carpenters' Hall - became known as an important figure in the development of the city.
Mr. Peterson won many awards, including the Louise du Pont Corwinshield, the National Trust for Historic Preservation's highest honor, bestowed upon him in 1965.
He served on the Philadelphia Historical Commission from 1956 to 1964. Mr. Peterson served as historian of the Carpenters' Company of the City and County of Philadelphia and edited an edition of its 1786 rule book. And for 17 years, he wrote a column on historic American construction techniques for the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, an organization of which he served as president.
For the last two years, Mr. Peterson - who never really retired - had been confined to his home and office on Spruce Street.
"Every day, he wore pajamas, a robe and, always, a hat," said Sanchez, his assistant for 35 years.
Niece Karin Peterson purchased new pajamas and a robe for Mr. Peterson for a party planned for Monday, his 98th birthday.
In addition to his niece, Mr. Peterson is survived by another niece, Kristin Peterson-Harms, and a nephew, Erik Peterson.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Sept. 18 at Christ Church, 20 N. American St. Burial will be private.
Contact staff writer Gayle Ronan Sims at 215-854-4185 or gsims@phillynews.com.
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Tom Ferrick's column in Wednesday's Inky:
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/9604291.htm
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Tom Ferrick Jr. | He gave new life to what was old
By Tom Ferrick Jr.
Inquirer Columnist
Charles Peterson, who died last month at age 97, was one of those famous Philadelphians most Philadelphians don't know anything about.
There is one exception: Peterson did achieve some local fame as the man who named Society Hill, the Center City neighborhood he helped revive in the 1950s.
I learned in his obituary that the Society Hill Civic Association planned to honor Peterson and Ed Bacon, the other man instrumental in the neighborhood's revival, with a plaque marking their achievement.
Charlie would find it ironic (or, maybe, irksome) to have their names entwined on bronze, because Ed Bacon was often his nemesis.
Starting in the 1950s, they skirmished constantly. To oversimplify the roots of their conflict: Bacon ran around town looking to knock down old buildings, while Peterson ran around trying to save them.
In fact, the Society Hill project was a rare example of agreement.
In their battles, Bacon had the upper hand because he had the political backing. He also had the good luck to be Philadelphia's chief planner during the 15 minutes in American history when planners held real sway.
Postwar Philly was a crowded, gritty city, unchanged and unimproved since the Great Depression. Civic and political leaders looked at the antique place they had inherited and knew it wouldn't do. They wanted to remake it. They wanted it to be a world-class city. Above all, they wanted it to be modern. And they had the money and the will to raze neighborhoods to create their City of Tomorrow.
Fighting the current
Against this tide stood Charlie Peterson, often alone, though never daunted. He lobbied intensely to save buildings he believed should be saved.
By then, Peterson was nationally known as a founding father of the historic preservation movement, most famously as creator of HABS.
HABS stands for the Historic American Buildings Survey, begun by Peterson in 1933 when he worked for the National Park Service. It gave jobs to out-of-work architects by setting them off to measure and record details of the nation's historic buildings.
HABS turned out to be a marvelous way to unearth the methods of the old master builders and architects and apply them to modern restoration. HABS is still going strong, with 35,000 structures in its archives.
With the city in the throes of the modern, Peterson spoke out for its past.
His biggest argument with Bacon was over the plans for Independence Mall. Peterson said it would be better to keep the dense, connective streetscape, rather than clear many city blocks to create a grand European-style mall.
Writ large
Peterson's argument was that Philadelphia's future was inextricably linked to its past. It's an article of faith today. Fifty years ago, it was considered odd, obstructionist, and certainly not modern.
People didn't want the future to look like cramped Old City. Who would want to live there? They wanted sleek tall steel-and-glass towers, broad concrete plazas, super highways ringing the city.
As it turned out, while Bacon and Peterson were skirmishing, the City of Tomorrow was being built - not in Philadelphia, but in the open fields of lower Bucks County, by two brothers named William and Alfred Levitt.
They called their project Levittown.
Bungalows and split-levels, with backyards and drives, replicated several hundred thousand times over the next 50 years, became the new city.
The last time I saw Charlie was more than a year ago. He called me to his house on the 300 block of Spruce Street to worry out loud about the U.S. Naval Home, then in danger because of damage from fires.
He was 96, obviously ailing, confined to a chair, but he was still fighting the fight.
But as he put it once: "If you like old buildings, you have to fight for them. Don't assume you can take them or leave them. You'll never get them again."
A memorial service for Charles Peterson is scheduled for Sept. 18 at Christ Church in Old City.
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Bio from the National Park Service:
http://data2.itc.nps.gov/digest/prin...ews&id=690
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Passing of Charles Peterson
Charles Emil Peterson, founder of the Historic American Buildings Survey, passed away peacefully*Tuesday night following a routine day of work. He was six days shy of his 98th birthday. An obituary is not currently available - the following biographical information comes from the University of Maryland web site, which is home to the Peterson Archive and Library of Early American Building Technology and Historic Preservation:
Charles E. Peterson, F.A.I.A., architectural historian, restorationist, and planner, launched his professional career with the National*Park Service in 1929.* He began work as a restoration architect in 1931 at the Moore House in Yorktown, Virginia.* In 1933, Mr. Peterson originated the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS).* Today the HABS program of the National Park Service continues to produce measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories of historic sites, structures and objects that are significant to the architectural heritage of the United States. Mr. Peterson has contributed to the historic preservation field in myriad ways. He has lectured on architectural history and preservation before professional, academic and lay audiences across North America, Europe and the British Isles, and has published numerous papers and monographs.* He has devoted many years to the study of colonial architect Robert Smith, and has amassed a superb body of information on Smith's work in the mid-Atlantic colonies.* He was a charter member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and a founding member of the Association for Preservation Technology.* Mr. Peterson has supervised countless restoration projects throughout the United States.* His leadership in the 1950s of the revitalization of the Society Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, and his role during the same period as Resident Architect*for Independence NHP, have become legendary.
Charles Peterson has received many life achievement awards, including the National Trust's coveted Crowninshield Award (1966).* He was advanced to fellowship in the American Institute for Architects (AIA) in 1962.* In 1979 he received an AIA medal for his "vision and determination" in having established HABS, "a priceless archive in our architectural history."* He was awarded the AIA Presidential Citation in 1990.* The AIA joined with HABS in 1983 to create the Charles E. Peterson Prize, awarded annually for the best set of measured drawings of a historic building created by a student and deposited in the HABS collection.
Charles Peterson is a native of Madison, Minnesota, and a 1928 graduate of the University of Minnesota.* He holds the rank of Commander, Civil Engineer Corps, USNR (ret.). He served on*Admiral Nimitz's staff in World War II and was cited for his work in planning the Pacific Campaign from Guam to Honshu.
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There's quite a bit more about Peterson on the USHistory.org site in their online book about the creation of Independence Park, starting with this chapter:
http://www.ushistory.org/iha/dreams/dreams19.htm
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Cheers,
Jayfar
--
“I am indeed well aware of the history of Conventional (sic) Hall, both globally and locally, and can assure you that we are carefully exploring avenues for its future.” -- Penn President Amy Gutmann 5 days before demolition began.
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09-09-2004, 05:03 PM
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