State-of-the-Art Technology Applied to Architecture’s History
Also of Interest |
Get MoreNorthwestern Terra Cotta Collection
|
The National Building Museum is one step closer to sharing its collections with the world. The current collections contain approximately 75,000 photographic images, 68,000 architectural prints and drawings, 100 linear feet of documents and 4,500 objects, including material samples, architectural fragments, and building toys.
The technological leap forward is due, in part, to our large holdings of the Northwestern Terra Cotta collection . The collection includes over 50,000 drawings that show the use of ornamental terra cotta in buildings throughout the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. The Northwestern Terra Cotta Company was founded in Chicago in 1878, and one of the company’s projects was Chicago’s Steuben Club Building. Completed in 1929, the Steuben Club Building is currently undergoing a massive renovation to open next year as the Randolph Tower City Apartments.
Central Building and Preservation is responsible for the exterior rehabilitation of the Steuben Building. The firm quickly realized that in order to complete the renovation properly, it would need access to the building’s original blueprint drawings. However, because the blueprint drawings were completed in 1929, the era’s highly acidic paper has caused them to deteriorate rapidly and become incredibly fragile.
After consulting Museum staff and determining that the drawings were too fragile to be moved off-site, Central Building and Preservation and two of its partner firms generously donated the appropriate scanner in order for the digitization of these drawings to be completed on-site. After the donation of the scanner, 80 of the original Steuben Club Building blueprints were quickly digitized on-site at the National Building Museum and sent to Central Building and Preservation for the firm to use during the renovation process.
The donated Colortrac SmartLF G+ scanner enables us to digitize images up to 56 inches wide and at resolutions of up to 1000 dpi. Now we can improve digital image capture of our artifacts and lessen the need to move objects off-site to be scanned, which is expensive, involves risks, and is prohibitive for the collection’s documents that are extremely fragile.
The new equipment will enhance internal collections management, increase our ability to satisfy outside research requests, and open a range of possibilities for digitizing our collection. We are grateful to Central Building and Preservation and its partners.
