Welcome to Harthorn's Architectural Showcases: Notable & Traditional (HASNT).

This showcase aims to assemble in one place the most unique and noteworthy structures ever built: extant and non-extant, known and obscure. In its current form it is a visual index that is more brown-n-serve roll than finished baked good, so to speak-- halfway between a browser search and a work of scholarship in the traditional sense. The guiding philosophy has been one of prioritizing image compilation first and foremost, with minimalist citations and site development thus far to enable more time to be spent on research instead. (Due to the rapidly improving technology of reverse image lookups on search engines, however, full citations for a given photo should be within quick reach in most cases, especially given the source leads provided in each file name.) For architectural history research that is more historical narrative-based or architect-based, resources such as the National Register of Historic Places Database or SAH Archipedia may be more effective.

To keep the visual index as succinct as possible, the general approach has been to choose just one photo to represent a given structure, or on rare occasions both an interior and exterior shot, the rationale being that additional photos are generally accessible online via a quick search if desired. Similar to a wiki, this showcase will likely remain a perpetual work in progress, with the occasional addition of more complete citations, better-resolution images, or photos from different angles/years that better convey the designs.

Unlike the National Register of Historic Places or similar built heritage lists, in which notable architecture is intermixed with structures that are notable for other reasons, this collection focuses solely on architectural merit. For instance, the White House exterior, while justifiably iconic and historic, features design features that are within the bounds of what one would expect for a Neoclassical mansion, while the more unusual design of the Oval Office would make the cut. In the state-level compilations, structures that may be quite notable locally/statewide are sometimes omitted: many county courthouses, 1920s downtown brick hotels, and even state capitols are tremendous landmarks and certainly worthy of preservation, but are often omitted here since they too generally do not differ from the stylistic conventions of their type. But if they feature unique styling, unusual massing, or some other distinctive attribute, they've earned their place in the showcase alongside other such buildings.

With time, more obscure buildings, extant and non-extant, will be added as well, as research permits. Even just in the U.S. many tremendous structures were destroyed by fire or development in the decades before the National Register began in 1966, and such brevity often means that those contributions to a state's architectural heritage are sometimes lesser-known today. Even among extant buildings, the research and documentation requirements of the National Register mean that only a fraction (though a happily growing one) of notable structures have made that cut, providing a less-than-comprehensive sense of the nation's built heritage if that is the only source used. With this less stringent showcase, the process for adding a structure to the visual list takes seconds rather than weeks or months, making it possible to thus increase the number of included structures exponentially.

As this showcase is the work of one architectural historian, what is gained in having the consistency of a single reviewer is offset by certain omissions and biases, such as a notable preference for late 19th-century architecture and historical revival styles in general. Inherent in sifting through photos of thousands of buildings are lots of split-second judgement calls on what to choose, and some were included just for being excellent all-around specimens of their style while others were omitted for the time being as second-tier honorable mentions, still intriguing but slightly less notable.

Too often (though not always), modern architecture is rather placeless and homogenized, with citizens' unhappy reactions countered by claims from architectural trend-setters that such architecture is somehow the "architecture of our times." Implicitly or explicitly, the trend-setters posit that historical architecture is staid and strictured, that technology has moved on and that echoing the designs of old is an unnecessary distraction at best, postmodern or suburban tackiness at worst. But such a view does not take into account that technology has rapidly progressed in favor of access to architectural history too: the buildings in these showcases will display the full gamut of global architectural precedent through means and sources that would not have been possible even a quarter-century ago. As so many of the showcased buildings illustrate, there is tremendous untapped potential for innovative and creative application of that heritage in the designs of tomorrow.

But first, the showcases themselves. To simplify things, the description for each photo is contained within the file name, with a standard format as follows: Building name, location, and years constructed, added to (a), renovated (r), and destroyed (x). If on the National Register or a National Historic Landmark, an NRHP or NHL will follow. After a spaced hyphen comes details about the source it was taken from; a year listed on that side of the hyphen, if given, indicates the year the photo was taken. An index of file name abbreviations at the bottom of this page further decodes this makeshift shorthand.

Enjoy!

Edward Harthorn
Architectural Historian

a[year] = when notable structural additions were made 

c[year] = circa; generally for year of construction

HABS = Historic American Building Survey

HAER = Historic American Engineering Record

Hist Dist = National Register of Historic Places historic district.

NHL = National Historic Landmark

NRHP = National Register of Historic Places.

Wiki = Wikipedia and/or Wikimedia.

x[year] = when destroyed, either intentionally or otherwise