Newsletter of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University
Serra Akboy, a Texas A&M doctoral student in architecture, has made a collection of drawings by Raiford Stripling '31, an Aggie architect who pioneered historic preservation in Texas, available to scholars by digitizing and creating an inventory of his drawings at Texas A&M's Cushing Library.
;Stripling is important because he came up with the notion of historic preservation before there was even a term for it," said Akboy, who presented her work with the drawings at a Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Association conference April 17 in West Columbia, Texas.
After graduating, Stripling worked with college architect Frederick E. Giesecke and staff architect Samuel Charles Phelps Vosper on many of the college’s important buildings designed during the Great Depression.
He later worked with Charles E. Peterson, who began the Historic American Buildings Survey, during a stint with the National Park Service in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Stripling then opened his own practice in San Augustine, Texas. His restoration projects in the state included historic sites at
After Stripling's death in 1994, his son, Ray, donated the contents of his father's office to the university's archives through the College of Architecture's Center for Heritage Conservation. The archive was created with a $40,000 grant from the Summerlee Foundation and a $2,000 grant from TOMFRA.
"When I started in 2008, I was asked to categorize all of Stripling's drawings and group them into different projects," said Akboy. "There were more than 1000 drawings and 250 projects."
In addition to historic sites, Stripling worked in a wide variety of building types, said Akboy, including banks, churches, hospitals, inns, museums, schools and residences.
After categorizing and creating an inventory of Stripling's drawings, Akboy used the Cushing Library's Digibook Suprascan to create digital files of many of the drawings, including at least one from each project, concentrating on drawings that were in poor condition.
The project was right in line with Akboy's academic interest.
"My specialization is integrating technology into architectural conservation and historical preservation," she said. "These drawings are part of Texas' cultural heritage, and have to be preserved."
Then, Akboy uploaded a drawing from each project to the library's collection on Flickr, an image-hosting website.
"I think that dissemination of data should be part of any heritage project," she said. "Anybody in any country interested in Stripling can have access to the data without having to come here."
To see Stripling's drawings on Flickr, visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/cushinglibrary/
- Posted: May. 12, 2010 -
