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- Horace Marden Albright: former Director, National Park Service.
- Elbert Cox: Director, Virginia Commission on Outdoor Recreation.
- David Edward Finley: a founder of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and chairman of its board for the first 15 years.
- Herbert E. Kahler: National Park Service, History Branch;
- Eastern National Park and Monument Association.
- Ronald F. Lee: Special Assistant to the Director, Independence National Historic Park.
- Mrs. Mayo Hayes O'Donnell: preservationist, Monterey, California.
- Erling H. Pedersen: Philadelphia architect.
- Charles E. Peterson, F.A.I.A.: architectural historian; restoration architect; founder of the Historic American Buildings Survey.
- Charles M. Stotz: architectural historian in Pennsylvania.
- Samuel Wilson, Jr.: architect and architectural historian.
Series Descriptions | Processing and Related Materials
Charles Bridgham Hosmer, Jr. (1932-1993) was widely regarded as "the historian of the historic preservation movement." He devoted many years to the preparation of two books which chronicle the history of the American historic preservation effort: Presence of the Past: the History of the Preservation Movement in the United States before Williamsburg (Putnam, 1965) and Preservation Comes of Age: from Williamsburg to the National Trust, 1926-1949 (University Press of Virginia, 1981). These volumes have become standard teaching and reference texts in the field of preservation. Hosmer wrote in Presence of the Past, "the pioneers of the preservation movement prepared the American people to accept the ideas of spending money for the seemingly profitless activity of saving a few of the spots that contributed to the study of history or the enjoyment of beauty."
What began for Hosmer as a youthful interest in early American houses expanded into a life's work of dedication to the preservation movement in the United States. Hosmer's education background included a B.A. in history from Principia College, Elsah, Illinois (1953), followed by a Master's degree from Teacher's College, Columbia University (1956) and a Ph. D. in history (1961), also from Columbia University. For over thirty years, Dr. Hosmer was a faculty member at Principia College, where he held the Jay P. Walker Chair in History. He was active in many professional societies including the American Historical Association, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Eastern National Park and Monument Association, and the American Association for State and Local History, to name but a few. Hosmer was honored with special awards for service from the Eastern National Park and Monument Association as Distinguished Associate (1981); and from the American Association for State and Local History for co-authorship with Paul O. Williams of a 1967 guidebook on the historic resources of Elsah, Illinois entitled Elsah: a Historic Guidebook. (1968).
In the 1970s Charles Hosmer served on the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council. Beginning in the 1960s he wrote regularly for the Principia College alumni magazine on the history of Principia College's campus, designed by Bernard Maybeck. In April of 1993, through the efforts of Professor Hosmer, Principia College was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and named a National Historic Landmark.
Throughout the course of his career, Charles Hosmer carried out scores of oral history interviews with leaders in the preservation field. Hosmer's access to those individuals who influenced major preservation policy in the United States in the mid-20th century provided him with an unparalleled body of material from which to draw for his research and teaching. At the time of his death he was at work on a comprehensive biography of the renowned preservationist Charles E. Peterson.
Charles Hosmer retired from teaching at Principia College in June 1993. In early August 1993, Professor Hosmer and his wife assembled and donated twenty-seven cartons of materials to the University of Maryland at College Park Libraries. Professor Hosmer died in late August 1993.
The Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., materials relate directly to his two major published works on the history of preservation in the United States. This collection includes materials from 1901 to 1991 which were collected from approximately 1960 to 1990. There are biographical notes, interview tapes and transcripts, research notes and notebooks, manuscript drafts, photocopies of correspondence of late 19th- and early 20th-century preservationists, journal and newspaper articles as well as book chapters on various preservation topics, and course materials from his long teaching career.
Materials cover a broad range of subjects regarding preservation including the Colonial Williamsburg restoration; matters relating to the National Park Service; depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps projects; the establishment of the National Trust for Historic Preservation; and various preservation site projects within the United States.
In 1989 the Eastern National Park and Monument Association ("Eastern National") donated 82 oral history transcripts and audio tapes to the University of Maryland's National Trust for Historic Preservation Library Collection (NTL). Charles Hosmer had conducted these oral history interviews with leading American preservationists in the early 1980s. As he prepared for retirement in 1993, Professor Hosmer decided to place his research collection at the University of Maryland as a complement to the oral histories already residing in NTL. Hosmer's preservation books and periodicals (approximately 15 linear feet) were retained by the National Trust Library. His papers were placed in the Archives and Manuscripts Department, and the Eastern National oral history materials which had been housed in NTL were transferred to Archives and Manuscripts. Processing of Charles Hosmer's 1993 gift began in January 1994.
Series I:
Correspondence, 1960-1990
Dr. Hosmer's correspondence files were, in most cases, arranged alphabetically by correspondent and chronologically within each file. Series I contents pertain to the preparation of Hosmer's books. Correspondents include architectural historians, restoration architects, National Park Service officials, and preservationists in local communities. Topics of correspondence cover such preservation projects as the Vieux Carre´, New Orleans; matters related to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA); the restoration of certain California missions; and the formation of the National Park Service (NPS). Three folders contain correspondence related specifically to matters preparatory to the release of Preservation Comes of Age, such as permissions and pre-publication announcements. Current arrangement of this section remains as Hosmer had it in his files.
Some examples of correspondents are as follows:
Series II:
Research Notes, 1960-1985
Hosmer made these notes on half-sheets of notebook paper. Some of the notes reflect the research he conducted at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA); the Essex Institute Historical Collection; the National Park Service, History Branch; and other repositories. Additional notes in this series relate to articles from such publications as The New Mexico Historical Review regarding preservation work in Santa Fe; The Southern Atlantic Quarterly, about the acquisition of Monticello; the Historical Sketch reporting work on Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, Virginia; and Knowland's California regarding the Mission San Gabriel. Articles or collections on which Hosmer based these notes date from 1880 to 1975. The notes have no apparent topical or chronological order.
Series III: Manuscript Chapter Drafts, undated
This series contains copies of penultimate drafts of some chapters or partial chapters from Hosmer's Presence of the Past and Preservation Comes of Age, these are incomplete and undated. Some partial or complete chapter titles include: "Monticello: the second Mount Vernon" from Presence of the Past, and "Historic Communities Awaken," "the New Deal and Historic Sites Act" (title slightly modified in book), "Federal Programs in the War Years," and "Growth of Professionalism" from Preservation Comes of Age.
Series IV: Historic Preservation Interviews and the Eastern National Oral Histories Project, 1960-1985
A. Historic Preservation Interviews.
Charles Hosmer conducted the Historic Preservation Interviews between 1951 and 1981 as part of the original research for the publications of his two books. These were completed between 1961 and 1981.
B. Eastern National Oral Histories Project.
The Eastern National Oral Histories Project was completed by Hosmer for the Eastern National Park and Monument Association between 1980 and 1983.
The files in both subseries A and B are retained in the alphabetical order by interviewee's surname in which Hosmer had kept them.
A detailed index to Hosmer's oral history interviews is available here.
Series V: Research Materials, 1860-1992 and undated
Series V consists of the primary and secondary source materials that Hosmer assembled during the course of his research and upon which he based many of the research notes in Series II. The series has been arranged into two groups. The first portion of the series is arranged in alphabetical order by state, and then by specific sites, projects, and persons. Individual subject files, arranged alphabetically, make up the second group of this series.
Series VI: Photographs and microfilms
In this series there is one photograph only. It features the advisory architects for the Colonial Williamsburg restoration project (circa 1928).
Two microfilms are also part of this series: One reveals an article by William Sumner Appleton which appeared in Art and Archaeology, May-June 1919. The other film shows letters to and from the Levy family regarding the ownership of Monticello (circa late 19th century). This film was obtained from the Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlotteville, Virginia, May 1962.
A preliminary inventory was done of the collection and decisions were then made regarding designation of series headings and content. The Hosmer collection was then refoldered and reorganized where necessary and placed in Hollinger boxes within these stated series designations.
Though some parts of the Charles B. Hosmer, Jr., collection were organized into units before it arrived at the University of Maryland at College Park Libraries, items such as resource notes and subject materials were loosely boxed with no apparent order. Materials were transferred to archival containers, refoldered and organized according to type of material and subject matter. Wherever possible paper clips, staples and mechanical binding materials were removed and replaced with similar archival units.
Related Materials
Tapes and transcripts of eighty three interviews conducted by Hosmer with people important in historic preservation in the United States from 1926-1950 are available for research, with some restrictions, at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. Transcripts reveal both professional and lay persons involved in preservation projects and societies across the United States within the stated time period. An index to this collection is available at the Maryland Room in Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland.
University of Maryland at College Park Libraries retains copies of Hosmer's two published works. Presence of the Past, call number E159.H77 (3 copies) and Preservation Comes of Age, call number NA106.H67 (2 copies).
Principia College, Elsah, Illinois, holds a collection entitled "[Letters relating to his collection of interviews made with the idea that they will serve as source material for his book on the history of the historic preservation in the United States from 1926 to 1949]," dating from 1972 forward.
