December 2013

2013 National HALS Challenge Prizes Awarded

The 2013 national HALS Challenge, "Documenting the Cultural Landscapes of Women," drew 30 entries nationwide as part of the Historic American Landscapes Survey, which collects data on significant American landscapes for future generations. The National Park Service administers the program. This marks the fourth year of the competition and the highest number of HALS Short Form Historical Reports entered in the competition! Two entries also included measured drawings, which are not required in the competition.

First place winner Laurie Matthews entered the Cultural Landscape Report that she completed for the Lord & Schryver Conservancy in 2012. She documented the history and present condition of the gardens at Gaiety Hollow, the designers’ home at 545 Mission Street SE in Salem, Oregon. The site served as Lord and Schryver’s test garden, showroom and retreat from 1932 to 1984

Lord and Schryver was the first professional, woman-owned landscape architecture practice in the Pacific Northwest. The Lord and Schryver landscape design firm was founded in 1929 by Salem-born Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver. Schryver’s specialty was design and construction, Lord’s was plant composition. Lord had worked in Ellen Shipman’s New York office in the early 1920s. Their work transitioned away from the formal, symmetrical garden style of Gertrude Jekyll and Ellen Shipman and evolved into a Northwest regional style often characterized as "informal formality" of creative compositions of subtle, but distinct plant palettes.

The awards were announced last month at the American Society of Landscape Architects conference in Boston. All entries will be archived in the Library of Congress, making them available to the public. The Library of Congress has acquired about 50,000 documents through HALS and companion HABS and HAER efforts to record historic works of American landscape, architecture and engineering.

Matthews was awarded the $500 cash prize for her first place entry.

Second prize went to a University of Arizona project on the Arizona Inn in Tucson, submitted by Gina Chorover, Jennifer Levstik, and Helen Erickson with University of Arizona Student Researchers Jae Anderson, Crystal Cheek, and Ryan Sasso.

Third prize went to a study of Gypsy Camp for Girls, in Siloam Springs, Arkansas by Benjamin Stinnett and Kimball Erdman.

The theme of the 2014 HALS Challenge is "Documenting Landscapes of the New Deal". Entries should be submitted as standard short format histories and no later than July 31, 2014 (c/o Paul Dolinsky, Chief of HALS, 202-354-2116, Paul_Dolinsky@nps.gov). The HALS Challenge is sponsored by the National Park Service Division of Heritage Documentation. Cash prizes will again be awarded to the top three submissions. Winning entries will be announced at the 2014 at the ASLA Annual Meeting and Expo in Denver. Good luck and thank you for helping to preserve American landscapes!

Submitted by David Driapsa, ASLA
Chair, FLASLA HALS Committee