The Friends-sponsored HALS Project, led by Friends member and landscape architect Lisa Gimmy and the liaison for the Southern California chapter for HALS Alison Terry and their terrific team, has been awarded the 2023 California Preservation Design Award!
The prestigious California Preservation Design Awards honor people deserving of special recognition for their outstanding preservation efforts. The winners are selected by a jury of top professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, planning, and history, as well as renowned architecture critics and journalists.
Congratulations to the entire team for their professionalism, resilience, and commitment to this incredible project. The Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) documentation represents a comprehensive survey of the development of The Virginia Robinson Gardens. It includes historical landscape plans, large-format photographic documentation, and a written history of the Robinsons and their estate. Once submitted to the Library of Congress, this report’s documentation will be available to academics and professionals worldwide and will be essential for use in preservation and design research. Professional landscape architects, designers, photographers, historians, and many others contributed thousands of pro bono hours to complete this project. Please see the full list of participants below:
Lisa Gimmy, Alison Terry, Nicole Volpe, Linda Endler, Cal Walsten, Elaine Lam Walsten, David Dahlke, Kelly Comras, Steven Keylon, Dennis Hill, Martin Bruinsma, Jin McFarland, Rogelio Nunez, Katharine Owens, Patrick Hoesterey, Kathleen Campbell, Libby Simon, Greg Applegate, and Mitchell Lam
The Friends congratulate this extraordinary HALS team and are eternally grateful to them for adding this remarkable achievement to the legacy of The Virginia Robinson Gardens.
A big thank you to Archive Chair Patty Elias who supplied essential documents about the history of the Robinsons from the family archives to historians Steven Keylon and Kelly Comras.
Lisa Gimmy thanked past President Betty Goldstein, the Founder of the Friends Joan Selwyn, Superintendent Emeritus Timothy Lindsay, and the Board of the Friends of Robinson Gardens for their enthusiastic and unwavering support for this three-year project. It will assist the Friends in fulfilling the requirements for House Museum status regarding the exterior of the Robinson estate. The document will also help with long-term maintenance of the Gardens. Please click on these links to see the documentation on this magnificent project, which includes a beautifully written and fascinating history of the early beginnings of Beverly Hills, the Robinsons and their estate:
- ASLA Article for HALS – VRG
- VRG CPF Submission 2023
- HALS – A Written History of VRG – NOV 2022
- Photos by Dennis Hill
- Drawings and Watercolors
Post by Patty Elias and Linda Meadows
Friends of Robinson Gardens Board Members
Celebrating HALS … Three Years and 30 Volunteers - Robinson Gardens
[…] interspersed with comprehensive interpretative watercolor drawings. This project earned the coveted Preservation Design Award for Cultural Research Studies for the HALS group given by the California Preservation Foundation. In addition, the Summer 2023 […]
HALS Documentation - DennisHill
[…] https://www.robinsongardens.org/hals […]