The Carrère & Hastings Digital Collection is a collaborative project with Flagler College. The collection was created through a Saving St. Augustine’s Architectural Treasures project grant to conserve and digitally preserve an irreplaceable collection of the earliest architectural drawings of John Carrère (1858-1911) and Thomas Hastings (1860-1929). Created in the 1880s for Henry Flagler in St. Augustine, Florida, these drawings had been “lost” for decades. The few people who knew of their existence were unaware of their historical significance. Stored in a basement boiler room under high Florida temperatures and humidity, and exposed to insects and rodents, this treasure trove remained unknown and endangered until its rediscovery in 2004. The Carrère & Hastings Digital Collection includes over 200 architectural drawings from the 1880s-1920s for the Ponce de Leon Hotel (now Flagler College), the Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Augustine, and select others by Carrère & Hastings. The original drawings are housed in the Architecture Archives at the University of Florida.
Funding for preservation and digitization of the drawings by Carrère and Hastings was provided in part by the National Park Service, through a "Save America's Treasures" grant awarded in 2009 and completed in 2012 (full grant proposal). Project team members blogged about their work on this project here.