Architectural Drawings - The David S.Castle Collection

           Been busy for the past month.  Started a new project - interesting, but demanding.  The project is the processing of a collection of architectural plans designed by one of the most important early architects in the West Texas region.  His name is David S. Castle and he opened his architectural office in Abilene, Texas in 1915.  During his long career he designed many of the municipal buildings, courthouses, commercial buildings, churches, and residences throughout the West Texas region.  When he died his son, also an architect, closed the family business and moved elsewhere.  Before he left town he gave the plans from the Abilene office to the Tittle Luther Architectural firm.  They have preserved these important papers since the 1950s. 

            Our goal is to organize, inventory, and clean these papers so they can be digitized.  They have been housed in an unheated storage shed in either metal or cardboard canisters.  The plans are drawn on a variety of material - linen, tracing paper, vellum (waxy feeling coated paper, not calfskin).  The collection is large ( over 700 separate sets of plans) and has been touched only briefly during the 50 years the material has been in storage.  (The earliest set of plans so far dates to 1916- thirty years after Abilene was founded)  Processing the collection is a challenge because of the size of the individual pieces and their condition.  Dealing with material that is as large as 38” by 42” and is coated with resin is a little like wrestling slippery fish.  Learning the best method for handling, cleaning, and flattening the material safely and organizing it following the original order has been interesting and I will use other blogs to describe what we have learned as we learn it.  We only have one more week of work so I’m taking a brief break from this blog for the holidays. More in 2015 on archives, preservation, and architectural drawings and maybe fish.