Peter J. Bier, born in Hungary, immigrated to the United States in 1904. Bier worked as an engineer for the Bureau of Reclamation in the Department of the Interior from 1923-1954, and continued to work as a consultant in the field after retirement. The collection includes materials related to his work with the Bureau of Reclamation, including project materials, drawings, designs, and inspection reports and data, along with materials documenting his time as an engineering consultant.
Scope and Contents:
The collection documents Bier's work with the Bureau of Reclamation on dams and power stations in the Pacific Northwest and Southwest regions of the United States and his contract work in the United States and Mexico. It includes project files, reports, correspondence, notes, blueprints, and technical drawings.
Arrangement:
This collection is arranged into four series.
Series 1: Biographical, 1918-1965
Series 2: Articles, Manuals, and Research Materials, 1923-1970
Series 3: Bureau of Reclamation, 1915-1970
Subseries 3.1: Projects, 1934-1958
Subseries 3.2: Inspections and Testing, 1915-1954
Subseries 3.3: Technical Drawings and Designs, 1923-1970
Subseries 3.4: Employee Related Documents, 1950-1954
Series 4: Contract Work, 1954-1967
Biographical / Historical:
Peter J. Bier was born on April 22, 1884 in Ujnely, Hungary. He completed his college education at the State Technical School at Timisoara, Hungary. In 1904, Bier moved to the United States and in 1906 he started a job at Babcock and Wilcox Boiler Company. He worked for a series of companies as a draftsman and designer, and in 1923 he began working as an engineer for the Bureau of Reclamation in the Department of the Interior in Denver, Colorado. Bier specialized in steel pipes and penstocks, which are pipes that deliver water to hydraulic turbines, for various dams.
Over the course of Bier's career, he was involved with project planning for irrigation and power developments, hydraulic structures and equipment, and inspections of equipment. He later supervised the design, specifications, and inspections for penstocks and related equipment. Bier wrote inspection manuals, monographs, and articles related to penstock and pipe design. Upon his retirement from the Bureaus of Reclamation in 1954, he remained active in the field and traveled as an engineering consultant.
Provenance:
Immediate source of acquisition unknown.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. Contact the Archives Center for information at archivescenter@si.edu or 202-633-3270.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
United States. Work Projects Administration Search this
Extent:
424 Linear feet
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Place:
North America
Date:
1928-1969
Scope and Contents:
The collection consists of the files of the central office and field offices, including many administrative files. Also included are several site files that include photographs and completed forms for data collected in the field and the laboratory. Mostly these include material collected by Smithsonian employees. There are also materials collected by archeologists outside the Smithsonian. For the most, however, this later type of material was retained by the many institutions that sponsored the work. The files of Harold A. Huscher and Carl Miller were separated because of their continued work on the data they contain.
Huscher's material largely concerns work along the Chattahoochee River. Miller's files mainly concern work in Virginia and North Carolina. Both of these men's papers also include material concerning some of their earlier work. Miller's papers, for example, include data concerning his archeological work for the Work Projects Administration. Similarly, some of Director Frank Harold Hanna Robert's documents concerning work not related to the RBS have been incorporated in the records of the Washington office.
Much of the material regarding sites is controlled by the system for designating sites developed by the Smithsonian. This consists of a three-part code that includes a number to indicate the state, an alphabetical abbreviation to indicate county, and a number for each site within a county.
Please note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or National Anthropological Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.
Historical Note:
The creation of the River Basin Surveys (RBS) grew out of preliminary work by the Committee for the Recovery of Archaeological Remains, an ad hoc group of anthropologists sponsored by the American Anthropological Association, Society for American Archaeology, and the American Council of Learned Societies, with liaison members from the Smithsonian Institution and the National Research Council. The committee's concern was the preservation of archaeological evidence threatened by public works programs, especially the construction of dams and reservoirs, that were carried out after World War II.
The result of the committee's work was a cooperative arrangement, called the Inter-Agency Salvage Program, among the Smithsonian, the National Park Service, the Corps of Engineers, many universities, and other public and private organizations to exchange information and finance and carry out salvage archeological work throughout the United States. The RBS was organized in 1946 to carry out the Smithsonian's part of the program. It was particularly active in field work in the Missouri Basin, states of the West Coast, Texas, and southeastern states. Initially, the arrangement was for the National Park Service to handle the financing of the work, using its own funds and requesting additional funds from other agencies. In time, the Park Service bore virtually all direct costs in its own budget, providing the RBS with funds and making contracts with state and other organizations to carry out part of the archeological work. In the mid-1950s, the Park Service became increasingly involved in field work and took over some of the field offices of the RBS.
Through most of its existence, the RBS was an autonomous unit of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Headquarters were in Washington, D. C. and from that office were carried out many of the projects not within areas of field offices. There was a major field office in Lincoln, Nebraska, that directed work in the Missouri Basin, and there were also field offices for relatively short periods of time in Austin, Texas, and Eugene, Oregon, that directed work in Texas and parts of the West Coast. When the Bureau was disbanded in 1965, the RBS became a unit of the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology (Department of Anthropology since 1968). In 1966, the headquarters were moved to Lincoln and, in 1968, the RBS was placed administratively under the director of the National Museum of Natural History. In 1969, the RBS was transferred to the National Park Service, but provision was made for the deposit of its records and manuscripts in the Smithsonian.
Related Materials:
The National Anthropological Archives holds the Bureau of American Ethnology records. Information about the Committe for the Recovery of Archaeological Remain may be found in the Frederick Johnson papers.
Restrictions:
The River Basin Surveys records are open for research.
Access to the River Basin Surveys records requires an appointment.
United States. Department of the Interior Search this
Extent:
1.16 Cubic feet (5 boxes)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Trade catalogs
Specifications
Notebooks
Charts
Date:
1908-1920
Scope and Contents:
Collection contains correspondence, specifications, contsruction estimates, proposals, photographs and blue prints of plans, sections, elevations, charts and diagrams for United States Department of the Interior, Reclamation Service Projects, 1908-1918.
Rancagua, Chile where they built a Rio Pangal Hydroelectric Power Plant and and extension of the Coya Power Plant
plans and specs done by the Braden Copper Company and the Hugh L. Cooper Consulting Enginners
Arrangement:
The collectioon is divied into five series.
Series 1: Correspondence
Series 2: Construction Estimates
Series 3: Projects
Series 4: Specifications
Series 5: Photographs
Provenance:
Collected for the National Museum of American History by the Division of Civil and Mechanical Engineering (now called the Division of Work and Industry). Date unknown.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research but is stored off-site and special arrangements must be made to work with it. Contact the Archives Center for information at archivescenter@si.edu or 202-633-3270.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
The scattered papers of federal arts administrator John DeWitt date from 1962-1979, and measure 1.4 linear feet. The collection primarily documents 1970s arts programs sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, an agency of the Department of the Interior. Found within the papers are correspondence concerning the department's art projects and exhibition files for The American Artist and Water Reclamation, 1972, and America 1976.
Scope and Content Note:
The scattered papers of federal arts administrator John DeWitt date from 1962-1979, and measure 1.4 linear feet. The collection primarily documents 1970s arts programs organized by DeWitt while working for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, an agency of the Department of the Interior. Found within the papers are scattered correspondence concerning the department's art projects, including the Preservation of Endangered Species Art Program and activities of the Hereward Lester Cooke Foundation. There are letters from artists Vija Celmins, Lamar Dodd, and Ethel Magafan.
Files for the two exhibitions organized by DeWitt for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, The American Artist and Water Reclamation and America 1976, include a wide variety of materials. There are correspondence, lists of artwork, printed materials, a scrapbook, financial materials, audio recordings of interviews with DeWitt, audio recordings of a symposium on America 1976, and numerous photographs of exhibited artwork and participating artists. There are also additional photographs of DeWitt and his colleagues and artists Joseph Raffael and Ann Wyeth McCoy.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 3 series; each series is arranged chronologically.
Missing Title
Series 1: Correspondence, 1965-1979 (Box 1; 10 folders)
Series 2: Exhibition Files, 1962-1978 (Box 1, 2; 1.3 linear feet)
Series 3: Photographs, 1970-1974 (Box 2; 1 folder)
Biographical Note:
John DeWitt was born in 1910 and was a wood sculptor and federal arts administrator in Washingon, D.C.
DeWitt began his career as a professional writer and was a wood sculptor connected with the Veerhoff Gallery in Washington, D.C. His wife, Miriam Hapgood DeWitt, was a painter. In the late 1960s, DeWitt was the Director of Art Programs for the Bureau of Reclamation, an agency of the Department of Interior responsible for water conservation in arid regions of the United States. At this time, the Bureau initiated a program to present its accomplishments to the public through arts commissions and exhibitions. Under the direction of DeWitt and Lloyd Goodrich of the Whitney Museum of American Art, some 40 artists including Ralston Crawford, Peter Hurd, and Norman Rockwell, were invited to depict the scope of reclamation projects in the American West. The artists were given a free hand to depict any scene in any medium as long as the subject matter pertained to the Bureau of Reclamation's program. The resulting artwork was displayed in an exhibition, The American Artist and Water Reclamation, that opened at the National Gallery of Art in April 1972, and then toured the country in a traveling exhibition sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution.
As the Director of the Visual Arts Program for the Department of the Interior, DeWitt celebrated the Bicentennial by organizing the exhibition America 1976, for which he hired over forty realist painters including Vija Celmins, Ralston Crawford, Alex Katz, Philip Pearlstein, and Wayne Thiebaud, to depict a diverse range of Americana. DeWitt was employed by the Department of the Interior until 1977.
John DeWitt died in 1984.
Provenance:
The John DeWitt papers were donated in 1987 by DeWitt's widow, Miriam Hapgood DeWitt.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
Occupation:
Arts administrators -- Washington (D.C.) Search this
Genre/Form:
Interviews
Sound recordings
Photographs
Scrapbooks
Citation:
John DeWitt papers, 1962-1979. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Lantern slides depicting the people and landscape of the American Southwest. Images include those of Puebloan people, dwellings, churches, dances and ceremonies, archaeological excavations (including Pueblo Bonito and Neil M. Judd with his excavation party), pictographs, and landscapes. Tribes represented include Acoma, White Mountain Apache, Hopi (Mishongnovi), Laguna, Navajo, Taos, and Santa Clara. The slides were largely commercially distributed by the George W. Bond, Chicago Slide Company, Chicago Transparency Company (for the Santa Fe Railroad), Detroit Slide Company, Edward H. Kemp, National Geographic Society, and United States Bureau of Reclamation. The collection was listed as the "Casey collection" by Father John Montgomery Cooper when it was brought to the museum.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 32, USNM ACC 211312
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Artifacts donated by the Department of Anthropology, Catholic University of America in accession 211312 held in the anthropology collections of the National Museum of Natural History. Additional photographs donated by Catholic University of America can be found in Photo Lot 20 in the National Anthropological Archives.
Copy prints of original photographs held by the American Philosophical Society, National Geographic Society, and National Archives cannot be copied. Copies may be obtained from these repositories.
Genre/Form:
Photographs
Collection Citation:
Photo lot 33, Portraits of anthropologists, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
The papers of painter, illustrator, and educator Ethel Edwards (1914-1999) measure 11.2 linear feet and date from circa 1929 to 1999. The papers are comprised of biographical materials, correspondence, writings and notes, business records for the Wellfeet Art Gallery that she operated with her husband Xavier Gonzalez along with records for Edwards' personal business activities, printed materials, three scrapbooks, photographic materials, artwork, and 32 sketchbooks.
Scope and Contents:
The papers of painter, illustrator, and educator Ethel Edwards (1914-1999) measure 11.2 linear feet and date from circa 1929 to 1999. The papers are comprised of biographical materials, correspondence, writings and notes, business records for the Wellfeet Art Gallery that she operated with her husband Xavier Gonzalez along with records for Edwards' personal business activities, printed materials, three scrapbooks, photographic materials, artwork, and 32 sketchbooks.
Biographical materials consist of address, awards, membership documents, obituaries, resumes, and scattered teaching files for the Art Students League and the Truro Center for the Arts. Correspondence is with Xavier Gonzalez, galleries, and friends and colleagues including Franklin Backus, Sally Knudson Reynolds, Hall Groat, and Immi Storrs.
Writings and notes include a travel journal; various writings, essays, and notes about art by Edwards; a few writings about Edwards by others; and a speech transcript by Nelson A. Rockefeller. Business records consist of files for Wellfleet Art Gallery and Studio; documents concerning painting commissions for the Department of Interior Bureau of Reclamation; records of sales, inventory, and artwork donations; scattered exhibition files; and funding applications.
Printed materials include printed reproductions of artwork, brochures and clippings, exhibition catalogs and announcements, magazines and journals, posters, and press releases. There are three scrapbooks containing exhibition announcements, clippings, and photographs of artwork.
Photographs are of Edwards, her studio, family and friends, students, works of art, photographer Elaine Croce, and travel in Asia. Artwork includes sketches by Edwards, Ulrich Erben, and unidentified artists, as well as 32 sketchbooks by Edwards.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged as 9 series.
Missing Title
Series 1: Biographical Materials, 1936-1999 (0.5 linear feet; Box 1)
Series 2: Correspondence, 1940s-1990s (2.0 linear feet; Box 1-3)
Series 3: Writings and Notes, 1937-1980s (0.5 linear feet; Box 3)
Series 4: Business Records, 1949-1994 (0.5 linear feet; Box 3-4)
Series 5: Printed Materials, circa 1940s-1990s (2.0 linear feet; Box 4-6, 13)
Series 6: Scrapbooks, 1940s-1960s (0.2 linear feet; Box 6, 13)
Series 7: Photographic Materials, 1937-circa 1992 (3.0 linear feet; Box 6-9, 13)
Series 8: Artwork, circa 1929-1980s (0.2 linear feet; Box 9)
Series 9: Sketchbooks, circa 1936-circa 1994 (2.3 linear feet; Box 9-12, 14)
Biographical / Historical:
Ethel Edwards (1914-1999) was a painter, illustrator, and educator active in New Orleans, LA, New York City, Provincetown, RI, and Wellfleet, MA.
Ethel Edwards was born in New Orleans in 1914 and attended Newcomb College in 1933 on scholarship. Her instructor for life drawing, watercolor, and portrait drawing was painter Xavier Gonzalez, whom she married in 1936 in Texas, where Gonzalez ran a summer school. She studied in Paris from 1937 to 1938. She returned to Alpine, Texas where, in 1939, she won a national mural competition to paint a mural in the U.S. Post Office in Lampasas, Texas. In 1942 she completed a second post office in Lake Providence, Louisiana.
In 1942, Edwards and Gonzalez moved to New York City, where Edwards continued to paint, working with powdered color and egg-oil emulsion and experimenting with line in various media and surfaces. She also worked as a fashion illustrator for Town and Country and Fortune magazines in 1944 and 1945. In 1946, her illustrations for Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince were shown at the Museum of Modern Art. She regularly exhibited in New York City, Provincetown, and Wellfleet, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, where she and Gonzalez also operated the Wellfleet Art Gallery which served as a gallery, studio, and art school. For many years, she taught at the Art Students League and Truro Center for the Arts.
Edwards died in New York in 1999.
Related Materials:
Also found at the Archives of American Art are the papers of Ethel Edwards' husband, Xavier Gonzalez.
Provenance:
The collection was donated in 1999 by the estate of Ethel Edwards Gonzalez.
Restrictions:
Use of original papers requires an appointment and is limited to the Washington, D.C. Research Center.
Rights:
The Archives of American Art makes its archival collections available for non-commercial, educational and personal use unless restricted by copyright and/or donor restrictions, including but not limited to access and publication restrictions. AAA makes no representations concerning such rights and restrictions and it is the user's responsibility to determine whether rights or restrictions exist and to obtain any necessary permission to access, use, reproduce and publish the collections. Please refer to the Smithsonian's Terms of Use for additional information.
A letter dated August 4, 1971 from the Executive Director, American Society of Civil Engineers, New York, NY, to Julian Hinds stated: "This is addressed to you as an Honorary Member of the Society at the request of the ASCE Committee on the History and Heritage of American Civil Engineering to bring attention to the possibility that you may wish to place papers of historical significance to the civil engineering profession in the Biographical Archives of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. There such material would become available to scholars for historical research. It is hoped that these archives would grow through a systematic and continuing program of gathering such papers from files of contemporary leaders of the civil engineering profession."
The collection consists of correspondence with the curator and members of the group of consultants for various dam projects, reports by various municipalities, reports by consulting firms, copies of papers published by the American Society of Civil Engineers, technical magazine articles, and Federal Government publications.
Since the investigation of the location for dams, the analysis of the feasibility of the project, and the final construction of dams was the main thrust of the professional work of Julian Hinds, his alphabetical listing of dams that he had some activity with forms the basis for referencing most of the collection. There was a fire that destroyed some of the material he had collected over the years, and that may account for the fact that some listed dams have no recorded reports etc.. The collection contains, however, a 124 page summary by Julian Hinds entitled "A Descriptive Listing Of The Writer's Dams" that does briefly refer to all dams in
Series 2.
In addition to the reports on dams, the collection included publications on the subjects of aqueducts, linings for canals, steel and concrete pipe, research and design, international meetings, and books/pamphlets on the dams in California and Washington.
Biographical / Historical:
Julian Hines (1881 - 1975) was born at Warranton, Alabama, grew up on a farm in Bullard, Texas, and without a High School Diploma entered the University of Texas, Austin, Texas, the fall of 1904 and was graduated with a B.S. Engineering Degree in 1908.
After graduation he was an instructor at the Univ. of Texas for one year then went with private industry designing precast concrete railway bridges. That design work lead to engineering concrete irrigation works with the Bureau of Reclamation in Sunnyside, Washington, and then later at various other locations involving the construction of dams. He resigned from the Bureau in 1926 to work in Mexico on dams and irrigation systems. The Calles Dam was notable among early "trail load" arches. In 1929 he became Assistant General Manager and Chief Engineer for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. In that capacity he assumed charge of planning and design work on the Colorado River Aqueduct, a $40 million dollar project. He retired in 1951 as General Manager and Chief Engineer.
Post retirement (1951 - 1971) consulting with the Bechtel Corporation, Department of the Army (U.S.E.D.), the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and the World Bank involved many of the dams constructed on the Columbia and Colorado Rivers, and in the States of Montana, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and south of the border, Mexico. It is estimated that he was employed on 150 dam projects.
During his engineering career he wrote many technical articles and was a co-author of "Engineering for Dams" by Creager, Hinds, and Justin and contributed to references on hydraulics and dams.
Among honors received was the "Distinguished Aluminus" citation given by the University of California in 1957; Member of Tau Beta Pi (an Engineering Honor Society); member of Sigma Xi; Honorary Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers; and Honorary L.L.D., University of California, 1957.
Provenance:
Collection donated by Julian Hinds, 1974.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Photographs made during the Rio Grande Project in New Mexico, Salt River Project in Arizona, and Yuma Project in Arizona and California. The collection includes images of scenery, roads and wagons, Apache workers, dams, farms, and remains of Fort Selden, Fort McRae, and Mesilla Jail. There are also two images, possibly not made by Lubken and probably made before 1900, of Casa Grande castle.
Biographical/Historical note:
Walter J. Lubken (1881–1960) was an official photographer for the United States Reclamation Service (now Bureau of Reclamation) from 1903 to 1917. While in this position, he documented irrigation projects in the American West. Lubken left the Reclamation Service and the photography profession in 1917, but returned to photograph the construction of the Hoover Dam (formerly Boulder Dam) in the 1930s.
Local Call Number(s):
NAA Photo Lot 87-2H
Location of Other Archival Materials:
Additional photographs by Lubken can be found in the National Anthropological Archives in Photo Lot 24 and the BAE historical negatives.
The National Archives and Records Administration and the Sharlot Hall Museum hold photographs by Lubken.
Contained in:
Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology photograph collections, undated
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research.
Access to the collection requires an appointment.
Rights:
Contact the repository for terms of use.
Genre/Form:
Photographs
Citation:
Photo lot 87-2H, Walter J. Lubken photographs of the Salt River, Rio Grande, and Yuma Projects, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Protohistoric Pawnee hunting in the Nebraska Sand Hills : archeological investigations at two sites in the Calamus Reservoir : a report to U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Great Plains Region ; [Donna C. Roper, editor and principal investigator]
A Design for Salado research : Roosevelt platform mound study, Arizona State University / edited by Glen E. Rice ; with contributions by Carol A. Griffith ... [et al.] ; submitted to the United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation ; submitted by Office of Cultural Resource Management, Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University
Hohokam archaeology along phase B of the Tucson Aqueduct Central Arizona project / edited by Jon S. Czaplicki and John C. Ravesloot ; contributions by Jon S. Czaplicki ... [et al.]
Proceedings of "Not in my back yard" : a symposium held at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. on Friday and Saturday, September 22 and 23, 1989
Title:
Not in my back yard
Material world
Author:
United States Bureau of Reclamation Great Plains Region Search this
Classic period occupation on the Santa Cruz Flats : the Santa Cruz Flats archaeological project / edited by T. Kathleen Henderson and Richard J. Martynec ; with contributions by Greg L. Bowen [and others] ; submitted to U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Arizona Projects Office
The archaeology of Schoolhouse Point Mesa, Roosevelt Platform Mound Study : report on the Schoolhouse Point Mesa Sites, Schoolhouse Management Group, Pinto Creek Complex / by Owen Lindauer with Peter H. McCartney ... [et al.] ; submitted by Arizona State University, Office of Cultural Resource Management, Department of Anthropology ; submitted to the United States Department of the Interior, Burea...
