I recently finished a book for the Hayashida family of Bainbridge Island, Washington, about their old family farmhouse on High School Road NE. The house will continue with new owners, who have renovated it. Some members of the Hayashida clan still live nearby, on other parts of the old family’s land, formerly a strawberry farm. The book is titled “The New Hayashida House of 1938”.
This book project started simply as a building photo documentation, using the format of the Historic American Building Survey (HABS), but with a digital camera instead of the traditional view camera with film required by HABS. Some people call this approach “HABS Lite”. The project was suggested by my brother-in-law, Greg Egashira. His mom, Tomi Hayashida Egashira, grew up in this house. We decided to distribute the photos to Tomi’s family by making an “print-on-demand” book with Lulu Press. I added comments from the family’s good-by visit to the home on March 30, 2022, and printed the first version. We circulated that first copy for more recollections and corrections. With print-on-demand publishing you can make a single finished copy at a very reasonable rate, which is great!
Then, using the improvements that my brother in law had collected from his family, I printed a second version of the book . We circulated that copy, and got more comments, including some circles and arrows on post-its with information about details in the house. I incorporated those notes in to the book, and printed a third comment copy. That version provoked a few more corrections, and then we published the family edition. In the future, I hope to add a bit more context to the book, and print an edition for local archives.
Leave a Reply