Harold Bush-Brown Photograph Collection
Collection
Identifier: VAC003
During his thirty-four years at Georgia Tech, Harold Bush-Brown was a professor, administrator, and architect. He designed numerous buildings on the Tech campus, such as the Brown and Smith Dormitories, the original Ceramics Building, Brittain Dining Hall, and the School of Architecture building. In addition to his duties at Georgia Tech, Bush-Brown was also a District Officer for the Historic American Buildings Survey (United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service) in the 1930s. This collection mainly consists of photographs, notes, and printed materials relating to the United States Department of the Interior/Historic American Building Survey (HABS). However, there are also several Georgia Tech-related items in the collection. .
(five document cases)
None.
All photographs in this collection are subject to approval before publication may be permitted. Permission to publish materials from this collection must be obtained from the Head of Archives and Special Collections.
2 Linear Feet
The Harold Bush-Brown Photograph Collection includes information mainly from the Historic American Buildings Survey conducted in the mid-1930s. This portion of the collection contains photographs, negatives, printed materials, and Bush-Brown's notes. All photographs and negatives are housed separately (See box and folder lists). Also within this collection, there are many Georgia Tech-related materials, such as correspondence dealing with Tech students' measured drawings.
All photographs are gelatin silver prints. A portion of the photographs has negatives. Deterioration has occurred in most of the photographs, such as fading, loss of detail, and silver mirroring.
Harold Bush-Brown was born in 1888, in Paris, France, and he and his parents immigrated to the United States, settling in the outskirts of Newburgh, New York. Bush-Brown entered Harvard University in 1907, but his date of graduation is unknown. In 1921 or 1922, he started teaching at Georgia Tech, and by 1925, Bush-Brown was the director of the School of Architecture. He held this position until his retirement in 1956.
While at Georgia Tech, he was instrumental in the designs of numerous buildings on campus, such as the Cloudman and Towers Dormitories and the School of Architecture Building. Another accomplishment of Bush-Brown's was his drive to have Georgia Tech inducted into the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Tech was the first southern school to hold such an honor.
During the 1930s, Bush-Brown was the District Officer for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), which was part of the National Park Service under the United States Department of the Interior. In 1936, he worked on the "Outline of the Development of Early American Architecture." This report analyzed early American architecture geographically, separated by each state. Bush-Brown directed the state of Georgia.
After his retirement from Georgia Tech, he published Beaux-Arts to Bauhaus and Beyond: An Architect's Perspective in 1976. Harold Bush-Brown died on 27 February 1983, at the age of 94.
Bush-Brown married Marjorie Conant Bush-Brown. In 1936, Marjorie painted a portrait of former president of Georgia Tech, Lyman Hall.
Divided into four series, as follows:
Accession #2001.145.
(five document cases)
Jody Lloyd processed these photographs in 2001.
Part of the Archives and Special Collections, Library, Georgia Institute of Technology Repository