Trip to Philly in the Future?
I took yesterday off as an extra day pegged onto the end of a family vacation to Greece in order to go to the College Park, MD branch of the National Archives in order to get copies of the original architectural plans of the lighthouse. Christopher is (hopefully?) coming back down this weekend and I wanted to have the plans before we attempted to go out again to winterize so we could study them and come up with ideas for the restoration. I was a little concerned about only finding 3 records in the file searching online (as I posted earlier), and unfortunately my fears were ultimately proven true… somewhat. The plans are not at the College Park facility. All they had were three drawings, that I’m assuming were conceptual (2 of the front beacon and 1 of the rear that I already posted). Because what the heck is this?! It says it’s my lighthouse, but it certainly is not (but very cool and looks very art-nouveau for the 1870s).
I made copies of the three “photographs” and somewhat wished that funky design had been implemented. I was disheartened and wondering what to do next when the nice man in the research room who had helped me said, “hold on a minute - let me check one more thing”. He pulled a binder down off another section of shelving and opened it up. “What’s the name of your lighthouse again?” I responded that it is Craighill. “Ah, yes, here it is.” He showed me a computer printout sheet in the binder that listed seven plan titles for the front beacon, six for the rear, and one for the pair of Cutoff Channel lights (upper range). Then he pointed to the header. “Mid-Atlantic Office - Philadelphia”. So all the plans are up in Philly. Had I known that, I could’ve driven up first thing in the morning! Now what? He had no suggestions other than hiring a consultant, but a quick review of the listed consultants on the NARA website shows none in Philly.
I borrowed a paper and pencil and copied down each entry as listed and headed out to buy my son some birthday presents.
I’ve emailed the Philly office with the exact file numbers/listings as shown in that binder and am hoping someone can just make me copies and send them. Last time I sent an email, I never received a reply, so we’ll see. Otherwise, guess I’ll have to schedule another day off and head up on a road trip! I’m rather excited as several of the titles had “Exhibition Potential” checked! I noticed the file numbers written on these conceptual drawings are in the same series as the “old number” listed with the plans, so I’m guessing they have the original larger versions.
Here are the other two, one with what Craighill Front actually was built to look like.
