Robert Louis Brandon Edwards was awarded the DOCOMOMO US/New York Tri-State Student and Emerging Professional Grant to attend the 2025 Preserving the Recent Past (PRP) Conference in Boston, MA.

In March, I attended the Documenting the Recent Past Workshop with the National Park Service’s (NPS) Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) at the Boston Architectural College (BAC). I must say, I could not stop taking notes. I learned so much, about so much! From NPS, Catherine Lavoie discussed the value of documentation, Daniel DeSousa discussed standards, guidelines, and practices, and Chad Randl discussed the challenges and opportunities of HDP. And although I was familiar with the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS), I did not realize that they made up what is known as HDP—so many programs with so many acronyms! Daniel later gave an introduction to laser scanning followed by a laser scanning demonstration by Wes Harp. Although I currently use the Polycam 3D scanning application on my iPhone pretty regularly in my practice, I’ve never had any formal training in using it, so Wes’ demonstration was really helpful. Tim Penich from Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates and Jonathan Spodek from Ball State University led the Gathering Data sessions. Tim’s session was especially fun and useful because it gave us an opportunity to practice hands-on documentation.

My team was responsible for creating a measured floor plan for a wall in the library which immediately took me back to architecture school and my love/hate relationship with architectural scales and fractions. After that, Wes demonstrated how to process the 3D scanned data into a floor plan and presentation and introduced us to Autodesk RECAP Pro, a computer software which helps process data. Overall, the workshop taught me about the different HDPs, their standards, guidelines, and practices, and about laser scanning and field measured drawings.

Afterwards, a group of us walked from BAC to the 30th Anniversary Opening Reception which was hosted by Docomomo US and Historic Preservation Education Foundation at Boston City Hall. There, I got to meet new colleagues and reconnect with old colleagues over some really good spring rolls and whatever that lemon-ginger drink was.

On the following days, I attended several sessions in the Beehive building at BAC including Challenges of Modern Materials and Assemblies and Conserving Materials and Finishes. Because my work currently focuses on a Streamline Moderne bus and station, I am really interested in metals, particularly aluminum and steel. And because I am a student at Columbia University and the Conserving Materials and Finishes session was moderated by Richard Pieper, I felt right at home. Kate Allen, who also teaches at Columbia was there and really taught me that the work with materials does not stop at the restoration but it actually begins with the maintenance.

Afterwards, I went over to the Hynes Convention Center for the Incentivizing Reuse session. There, Wes Cunningham, Senior Principal Investigator at Pinion Advisors gave a really interesting presentation on how a Kentucky hotel displaced a marginalized community and became the site for political corruption and a federal sting operation. After that, I went to “View Boston” at the Prudential Center for the Emerging Professionals Happy Hour. Again, I got to meet new colleagues and reconnect with old colleagues with an amazing view of Boston in the background.

I went to the Challenging Typologies session originally just to hear Erhard Koehler, Manager of Nuclear Ship Savannah Programs at the Maritime Administration talk about his work managing a ship because there are similarities between ships and buses but was completely blown away by Cameron Townsend’s presentation on impermanent buildings and Beth Jacob’s presentation on the rehabilitation of the Jackson Holiday Inn.

In conclusion, this was my first time attending a Docomomo US-sponsored conference and I am so glad I did. I learned so much and met so many great people that I will have to work with in the near future. I left inspired, encouraged, and with deep gratitude.

Thank you for this experience,
Robert

Robert Louis Brandon Edwards is a third-year PhD student in Historic Preservation at Columbia University, focused on Black mobility. He is currently working with the owners of the 1948 William Arrasmith designed Greyhound bus station in Cleveland, OH, to document the National Landmarked streamline moderne/art deco building.