Photographic Survey of Westmoreland County Architecture, 1978-1979

The photographic survey project was under the aegis of the Westmoreland Museum of Art (now Westmoreland Museum of American Art) and funded through a federal grant. Though Westmoreland County was settled since the colonial era, we decided to concentrate on structures built since 1865. Surviving structures built prior to 1865 had already been well documented in a landmark 1936 survey: "Architecture of Western Pennsylvania". The county saw rapid industrial and population growth after 1865, which had not been documented. The grant ran from 1978 through 1979 and gave me the opportunity to hone my skills with the 8”x10” view camera, which was the camera used for most of the photographs. The master set of over two hundred prints is housed in the Westmoreland Museum of American Art’s permanent collection. As the photographer of the three person team, I approached the aesthetic aspect of the imaging with the awareness of past greats, particularly Walker Evans. In fact Evans photographed in Westmoreland County in 1935 for the Farm Security Administration. My photograph of the Hecla Company Store was a special homage to Evans, who had photographed the same structure forty three years earlier.