HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDING SURVEY
The Heritage Documentation Programs administers Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), the Federal government’s oldest preservation program, and companion programs Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). Documentation produced through the programs and housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, constitutes the nation’s largest archive of historic architectural, engineering and landscape documentation. The HABS, HAER, and HALS documentation, consisting of measured and interpretive drawings, large-format photographs, and historical reports, is developed by a combination of career National Park Service (NPS) staff, students and professionals through sponsor funded projects, and donations to the collection. HABS, HAER and HALS work in cooperation with groups in both the public and private sectors to help underpin preservation efforts, including rehabilitation, community development, advocacy, and historical interpretation.
In the summer of 2016 I participate with my fellows architecture interns Diana Serrano, Janirat Williams and Caleb Sloan in the program. That year the team documented in New York the Contagious Desease Hospital, Isolation Ward I. We were under the supervision of Architects Robert Arzola, Paul Davison & Daniel De Sousa.
Opened on June 20, 1911, Isolation Ward I was one of three detached isolation wards build as part of the Contagious Disease Hospital complex of the Ellis Island U.S. Immigration Station. Independent and distinct from the Contagious Disease Hospital’s, three isolation wards were design to provide receiving, discharging, and hospital facilities for immigrants suffering from serious contagious diseases and their combinations such as scarlet fever and diphtheria. Calling for a greater degree of isolation, these three wards were locates on the far northeast end of Island 3 and where originally free standings. In 1914, however, Isolation I & K has their exterior walkways raised, covered, enclosed, and connected to the hospital’s main corridor.
Design by Jame Knox Taylor, the Supervising Architect of the Treasury, Isolation Ward I contains two ward units on either side of the building’s party wall. Each ward unit contained its own discharging rooms, linen closets, and a kitchen on the first floor and bedrooms, a bedroom and sitting/dinning room on the second floor for USPHS nurses. Isolation Ward I’s exterior was executed in the same Georgian Revival mode as the rest of the Island 3 hospital: red tile roof, pebble and dash stucco wall treatment complemented the style and monumentality of the Island 2 general hospital while detailing and lower scale made it visually distinct. During their forty-three years of occupation, the isolation wards proved to be flexible spaces responding to the various needs of patients and staff. Isolation I remained relatively less altered than the other two, but it too has walls removed, tile added, and other modifications that affected its appearance and use over the years. The Ellis Island U.S. Immigration Satation ceased operation on November 12, 1954 and the complex has remained unoccupied.
