November 2, 2016 Library of Congress Announces Winner of 2016 Holland Prize

A drawing, by a team of Puerto Rican students, of a 19th-century health institution in Puerto Rico, Lazaretto Isla de Cabras, is the 2016 Holland Prize winner, the Library of Congress and National Park Service announced today.

Honorable Mention winners include a drawing of the Chess Pavilion on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago by a team of students from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a drawing of the Plaza at the Mission of San Juan Bautista, California, by Cate Bainton.

The Leicester B. Holland Prize recognizes the best single-sheet, measured drawing of a historic building, site or structure prepared to the standards of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) or the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). It is an annual competition administered by the Heritage Documentation Programs of the National Park Service. The competition’s jury recommends winners to a special program, the Center for Architecture, Design and Engineering in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, which supports the prize through the Paul Rudolph Trust.

Students from Universidad Politécnia de Puerto Rico created the winning HABS drawing of Lazaretto Isla de Cabras. They include Anexyulianne Thillet, Alneris Lugo, Monica Ortiz, Angel Marrero, Jessica Martinez, Fabian Rivera, Natalie Santa and Emmanuel De La Paz. Their faculty sponsors are professors Claudia Rosa Lopez and Jose Lorenzo Torres.

The lazaretto’s original purpose in San Juan, Puerto Rico was to house patients with infectious diseases. Today, however, the structure is part of the historical landscape of San Juan Bay, with a distinctive profile that has been appreciated by generations of residents and visitors to Old San Juan.

The Honorable Mention winners from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago—for their HABS drawing of the Chess Pavilion—are Joyce Ramos, Melanie Bishop, Brenda Bohnen and Meredith Stewart. Their faculty sponsor is Charles Pipal, AIA.

The Chess Pavilion is an open-air structure that was built in Chicago in 1957 out of concrete and Indian limestone. The site where the pavilion is located has been a popular gathering place for chess players since the 1930s. The Chess Pavilion received a citation of merit from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects at its Civic Pride Luncheon in 1957.

An Honorable Mention also went to Cate Bainton, a landscape historian in Richmond, California, for her HALS drawing of the Plaza at the Mission of San Juan Bautista, which was established in 1797. Despite repeated damage from earthquakes on the adjacent San Andreas Fault, the Mission of San Juan Bautista was never moved from its original location and has been in continuous use as a church since its establishment. The mission’s environs are still largely agricultural, and the plaza has been restored to reflect the spirit of its 1870 state.

The Holland Prize is intended to increase awareness, knowledge and appreciation of historic sites, structures and landscapes throughout the United States, and to encourage the submission of drawings by professionals and students. All the drawings accepted for the competition will be added to the permanent HABS, HAER and HALS Collection in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Visit this site for images of Holland Prize drawings.

The prize honors Leicester B. Holland (1882-1952), who was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA); chairman of the American Institute of Architects’ Committee on Historic Buildings; head of the Fine Arts Division of the Library of Congress and first curator of the HABS collection; a co-founder of the HABS program in the 1930s; and the first chair of the HABS Advisory Board.

The Center for Architecture, Design and Engineering is a program in the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress. It was established by a bequest from the distinguished American architect Paul Rudolph, who was a proponent of the art of architectural drawing. The program sponsors activities and publications to engage the public with the Library’s rich collections. For more, visit loc.gov/rr/print/adecenter/adecent.html.

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