The Historic American Buildings Survey or HABS was founded in 1933 during the Great Depression. This effort was spearheaded by Charles E. Peterson the Chief of the Eastern Division for the National Park Service (NPS) who submitted a proposal that involved enlisting a team of architects and draftsmen to systematically record important “antique buildings” of the United States. In 1934 HABS became a permanent program of the National Park Service, formally authorized by Congress as part of the Historic Sites Act of 1935.

The Historic American Engineering Records or HAER was founded in 1969 by the NPS and four engineering societies to document historic structures and sites related to industry and engineering. Subjects for HAER documentation include sites and objects, such as a bridge or steel works; as well as larger systems like railroads, transmission networks, and roads.

In October of 2000, NPS along with the American Society of Landscape Architects established a sister program to HABS called the Historic American Landscapes Survey or HALS, in an effort to document historic American Landscapes.

Since 1933 through cooperative agreements with the Library of Congress, the National Parks Service, and the private sector, the Library of Congress now holds more than 556,900 measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for more than 38,600 historic structures and sites dating from Pre-Columbian times to the twentieth century. This Collection is among the largest held by the library of congress and one of most heavily used in the Prints and Photographs Division. Aside from the Library of Congress, there are local repositories that hold HABS and HALS records. The Environmental Design Archives at UC Berkeley is the local repository for Northern California.