×

You are using an outdated browser that does not fully support the intranda viewer.
As a result, some pages may not be displayed correctly.

We recommend you use one of the following browsers:

Full text

Title
New perspectives to save cultural heritage
Author
Altan, M. Orhan

CIPA 2003 XIX th International Symposium, 30 September - 04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey
194
Republic of Panama as well, the second step of the
project was ready to start. This was the signing of the
cooperative agreement between organizations and
pertinent entities that were interested in documenting
the engineering, architectural and cultural aspects of
the Canal.
Knowing we had no hard copy of engineering
drawings in the United States, the PANAMA CANAL
DOCUMENTATION PROJECT had to approach the
mission of recording a historic structure that was
distant, and in another country, through obtaining
construction drawings, as it would have involved
many difficulties to have conducted the documentation
through field measurements. The VIRTUAL
APPROACH was decided.
Next, another decision came into place: the period to
document. The dates selected were 1904 to 1914 that
included the planning , the sanitary and the
construction periods of the Isthmian Canal
Commissions. We needed to locate and obtain the
digital images of these drawings, within the vast
amount of information (3,000.sq ft of drawings +/-
200.000 digital entries).
A selection of 30,000 scanned drawings, within a total
of 200,000 was copied to 37 CDs. But when
manipulating the scanned information at the
Washington office it was hard to access as it was
arranged numerically and there was no subject
reference for its retrieval. An exhaustive research at
the ACP led us to finding the Isthmian Canal
Commission’s LOG BOOK which became the key to
the following processes of the Documentation Project.
In order to understand what I just said, you must
understand that the actual work of the Panama Canal
began before it had been finally decided whether the
sea-level, or lock, type of canal would be adopted.
Much of the organization had been set in place before
Congress ordered that a lock canal be built. In the later
part of 1906, a designing force was organized, under
the Principal Assistant Engineer in the Washington
Office of the Isthmian Canal Commission. This force
presented studies for the lock masonry, the gates and
the emergency dams. A group went to the Isthmus of
Panama after the reorganization of the work in the
spring of 1907, and continued there developing the
studies for the masonry. However, the studies for the
lock gates and emergency dams were continued in
Washington. In July 1908, the designing of the locks,
dams and regulating works was consolidated and the
part of the force then in Washington was brought to
the Isthmus, and remained there until disbanded upon
completion of its work.
Finally, in 1908 the office force of the Assistant Chief
Engineer, engaged upon the designs was organized in
1908 into six subdivisions as follows:
MASONRY and LOCKS, including VALVES
LOCK GATES
OPERATING MACHINERY and ELECTRIC
INSTALLATIONS
EMERGENCY DAMS
SPILLWAYS
AIDS TO NAVIGATION
Cooperation among these subdivisions was essential
as the designs and plans prepared by each were more
or less affected by those of others; the plans as a whole
had to be in agreement, to avoid errors in construction.
Thus, the tracings originating in one subdivision were
submitted for review to every other subdivision whose
plans might be affected, and there, such affected
portions were checked and the tracings signed by
those in charge. Subsequent alterations or additions to
plans had to be conspicuously reviewed and the
revised tracing dated and initialed by all concerned. A
record was kept of all blueprints sent to the
construction divisions, together with the
acknowledgment of their receipt, and this is the LOG
BOOK that we found.
With the scanned digital drawings, the Log Book and
a reference library of 199 books acquired under a
long-term lease from the Panama Canal Commission’s
Washington office, six main subjects were selected to
approach the fifty-mile / 80 Kilometers waterway
connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. As
originally designed it was composed of three pair of
locks-Miraflores, Pedro Miguel and Gatun-one dam,
Gatun, and two lakes-Gatun and Miraflores, two port
facilities and a Railroad mainly. Later, in the mid-20th
century, the Bridge of the Americas that spans the
Canal, Madden Dam, and other improvements were
added. These aspects of the Canal are to be recorded
by the Historic American Engineering Record ~
HAER.
Singular buildings within the Canal Zone, like the
Administration Building at Balboa, the house of the
Administrator of the Canal, the Hospitals at Colon and
Panama City, the lock control houses, the lighthouses,
the railroad terminals, etc. will be documented through
the Historic American Buildings Survey ~ HABS,
being all fine examples of 20 th -century tropical
architecture.
The five U.S. community sites, the six forts, two air
force bases and the facilities of a single naval station
that were turned over to the Panamanian government
on December 31,1999, with the property transfer and
as part of the privatization process, typical changes in
the urban and architectural character of the Canal are
occurring, necessitating the need for documentation of
these early twentieth century landscapes as part of the
Historic American Landscapes Survey ~ HALS.
DELIVERABLES OF THE PROJECT
Two main deliverables -the database and the
drawings-, as also a huge electronic image bank and