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The Historic American Buildings Survey is our oldest federal preservation program! It was established in 1933, and its aim is in the name: they document America's historic buildings. (And they also provided jobs for out-of-work architects and photographers, because 1933 was during the Great Depression.)

HABS was initially proposed to last only ten weeks, but it was so successful that it's still around. It even sprouted two sister programs: the Historic American Engineering Record, in 1969, and the Historic American Landscapes Survey, in 2000. The three are collectively Heritage Documentation Programs, which is a division of the U.S. National Park Service.

While creating a lasting publicly accessible archive for future generations, the rich HABS collection of period-specific architectural details also aids in the restoration and rehabilitation of historic properties as well as new designs based on historical precedents. As a national survey, the HABS collection is intended to represent "a complete resume of the builder's art." Thus, it ranges in type and style from the monumental and architect-designed to the utilitarian and vernacular, including a sampling of our nation's vast array of regionally and ethnically derived building traditions to tell all American stories. [Source]

So it's not just documenting the fancy stuff, it's also an archive of how everyday American people have lived. It's very cool. I'm glad it exists.

Thus far, they've documented more than 46,000 historic sites, producing more than half a million associated documents in total. The entire collection of reports, measured drawings, and photos are archived with the Library of Congress. 310,000 of the images have been added to Wikimedia Commons, which is how I stumbled on it in the first place. [Note: the Commons is a bit easier to peruse if you're on your phone.]

In addition, plenty of sites that the HABS/HAER/HALS teams visited are not the kind that regular people generally have access to—private properties, sure, but also places like the interior of a Coast Guard vessel's galley and control room. Or an atomic power station.

Because the photos were taken during the course of a government employee's job, they're all in the public domain! Which I really appreciate, as so many of the pictures are really lovely to look at, and I've spent six years curating a #safe as houses tag on my blog. HABS is like my own personal catnip.