In the Beginning

Public and Private Endeavors before 1966

National Historic Preservation Act

Tax Credits and Landmark Cases

New Relevance

The Future

In the Beginning

Williamsburg Savings Bank Tower, Brooklyn, NY Built in 1929. Still the tallest building in Brooklyn. In 1929, the four-faced clock on the building was the tallest in the world. Photograph purchased from Brooklynpix.com.

Early preservation efforts in the United States tended to revolve around a few similar themes. One, the places people rallied around usually related to a historical or famous figure or important event. Two, preservation organizations formed with private individuals and private money; government programs and entities did not develop until the late 19th-early 20th century.

While preservation efforts existed on the small scale before and directly after the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution, the first major preservation act occurred in Philadelphia in 1816. By this time, the state of Pennsylvania had made plans to demolish the Old State House – now known as Independence Hall - and sell off the parcels of land. Knowing the historical significance of the building and the site, citizens of Philadelphia appealed to the city to preserve the site. The City of Philadelphia agreed to their appeals and purchased the building and the land for $70,000, thereby preserving it for future generations. Thanks to the foresight of Philadelphians, the site existed long enough to become Independence National Historical Park in 1951 and a United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organizations (UNESCO) World Heritage Site in 1979.

The first preservation organization in the United States formed as a result of a letter between family members. As the famous story goes, Ann Pamela Cunningham’s mother stood aboard a steamship sailing down the Potomac River in 1853, aghast at the sight of George Washington’s deteriorating home. She wrote a letter to her daughter describing the building’s condition, and Ann Pamela Cunningham in turn began to form the Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union. When the U.S. Congress rejected their petition entitled “The Proposed Purchase of Mount Vernon by the Citizens of the United States, in Order that They May at All Times Have a Legal and Indisputable Right to Visit the Grounds, Mansion, and Tomb of Washington,” Ann Pamela Cunningham had the Ladies Association formally charted in 1856. She acquired funds from the Association’s members throughout the Union, which they used to purchase, restore, and curate Mount Vernon for visitors. The Mount Vernon Ladies Association still owns, maintains, and operates the historic site.

Exploration into western territories in the middle of the nineteenth century encouraged new thinking about the kinds of places in need of protection. The latter half of the nineteenth century also saw the beginning of government involvement in preservation efforts, efforts that increased rapidly in number and location during this time.

In 1872, the U.S. Federal Government designated Yellowstone National Park a federally protected area, the first such designation in the country. In 1889, the U.S. Congress appropriated $2000 for the preservation of Casa Grande in Arizona. In 1890, Congress passed legislation authorizing the preservation of American battlefields, Chickamauga Battlefield in Georgia and the Chattanooga Battlefield in Tennessee. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld U.S. vs Gettysburg Railway Company, a landmark case that gave the creation of a national memorial precedence over the development of private property. In 1906, Mesa Verde National Park in Arizona was established.

That same year, Congress passed the Antiquities Act, the country’s first federal preservation legislation. The Act allowed the designation of monuments on federal land, protected federally owned sites from demolition, and laid down legislative basis for future preservation policy.

Public and Private Endeavors before 1966

Tiffany & Company Building, New York, NY. Built in 1906. The New York headquarters of the famed retailer until 1940. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [Reproduction number, LC-USZ62-95761].

Preservation developments continued with the same pace in the twentieth century. The national reassessment of places in need of preservation continued as well, with the movement shifting to include built resources significant for their design and relationship to their surroundings. In addition, the government became increasingly more involved in preservation efforts throughout the country.

One of the most important preservation-related governmental developments was the establishment of the National Park Service (NPS) within the Department of the Interior in 1916. The NPS was created in large part to take over the maintenance and administration of sites too large to be cared for by private preservation entities, such as Jamestown. Today, the NPS oversees many programs related to historic preservation, including the National Register of Historic Places, Heritage Preservation Services, Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS), and the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT).

Though government was becoming increasingly involved in historic preservation, many large scale efforts were still being undertaken by private individuals. In 1926, automobile tycoon Henry Ford began collecting historic buildings and objects, such as the Wright Brothers Bicycle Shop, at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. That same year John D. Rockefeller, Jr., began funding the reconstruction and restoration projects at Williamsburg, Virginia. While neither of these large scale efforts has been without critics, they serve to show how involved the private sector was in preservation before the mid-twentieth century.

By the early twentieth century, architecture, site, and neighborhood were gaining significance as motivations for preserving historic built resources. In 1931, Charleston, South Carolina, became the first city in the U.S. to establish a historic district with regulatory control. Despite the lack of legal precedent and enabling legislation, Charleston formed a historic zoning ordinance and a board of architectural review. The success of the risky venture was due largely to the community, who supported the efforts in order to prevent the destruction of many of Charleston’s historic buildings occurring at the time.

Charleston’s historic district became the template for subsequent historic district formations. The Vieux Carre section of New Orleans had been unofficially designated a historic district in 1925, through efforts to preserve the French Quarter. In 1936, Louisiana amended its state constitution to formally authorize the Vieux Carre historic district. Other historic district designations followed in the next two decades, including San Antonio, TX, in 1939, Alexandria, VA, in 1946, Williamsburg, VA in 1947, Winston-Salem, NC, in 1948, and Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, in 1950.

When the Great Depression hit the U.S. in 1929, the federal government began to take a larger role in preservation. As part of the effort to increase employment rates through New Deal policies, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the formation of the Historic American Buildings Survey, or HABS, in 1934. HABS was the result of an agreement among the NPS, the Library of Congress, and the American Institute of Architects, and it sent thousands of people to work photographing, drawing, measuring, and surveying historic built resources. The program fell to the wayside during the 1940s, but experienced a resurgence in the 1950s, and remains active today. Continuing with the purpose of documentation, the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and the Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS) were established as well, in 1969 and 2000, respectively.

Following the formation of HABS, the U.S. Congress passed the Historic Sites Act, which created the National Historic Landmarks Program and served as a means to construct preservation policy.

As part of the movement of preservation toward the inclusion of various historic sites, the National Council of Historic Sites and Buildings formed in the late 1940s. In 1949, through a Congressional Charter signed into law by President Truman, the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) formed. The NTHP was created to serve as a connective historic preservation thread between the government and private sectors. The NTHP is now the largest historic preservation non-profit in the U.S., with activities including instituting important programs, forming partnerships, advocating policy in Congress, and hosting an annual preservation conference, among other efforts. Though they worked in concert with the federal government for many years, the NTHP became independent of federal funding in 1998.

National Historic Preservation Act

By the middle of the twentieth century, preservation efforts in the U.S. had become so prevalent, in number and among various locations, that it was necessary for the federal government to make legislation that would create programs and stronger means of advocacy. The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) was passed in 1966, creating government programs still in existence as well as the basis upon which all preservation legislation created since has been based.

NHPA changed preservation in the U.S. in several ways. First, it created several crucially important programs still in existence, the National Register of Historic Places and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. The National Register of Historic Places is a comprehensive survey of all historic sites, buildings, districts, objects, and structures deemed historically, architecturally, or archaeologically significant through an evaluative process, involving local, state, and federal preservationists. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation oversees the Preserve America Program and the Section 106 process, wherein all projects receiving federal funding must be evaluated to determine their possible impacts on historic resources.

Second, in addition to the programs NHPA created, the legislation is important because it established the need for partnerships on local, state, and national levels. NHPA created State Historic Preservation Offices, or SHPOs, state offices in charge of designating and reviewing the historic resources in their respective states.

Finally, NHPA became the basis for several tax credit and incentive programs that encourage historic-building owners to preserve their buildings by providing financial assistance to make the projects’ costs competitively inexpensive with new construction.

Tax Credits and Landmark Cases

The years after NHPA saw exciting developments in the preservation world. The Tax Reform Act of 1976 encouraged preservation and rehabilitation of older and historic structures with the creation of the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit (HRTC) for commercial properties, and the Historic Preservation Tax Incentive, or historic preservation easements, for historic-home residents and owners. The HRTC program gives a 20% tax credit to historic commercial property owners seeking to rehabilitate their buildings provided the project passes the SHPO’s evaluation for historic appropriateness. The Historic Preservation Tax Incentive (HPTI, or preservation easement program) allows owners of properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places to claim a tax deduction for appraised loss of value resulting from the restrictions preservation easements place upon the property. In 2006, U.S. Congress passes legislation that provided new incentives and safeguards for the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentive Program (easements).

With NHPA as a strong legislative basis, preservation entities had precedence upon which they could build – and win – court cases against private developers looking to overturn preservation restrictions. In 1978, Penn Central Transportation Company applied to the New York City Landmarks Commission for approval of the construction of a 55-story addition to the 1913 Grand Central Terminal Building. The Landmarks Commission denied approval, and Penn Central attempted to have Grand Central’s historic designation overturned. The New York Court of Appeals upheld the Landmarks Commission ruling, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Landmarks Commission ruling was upheld at the federal level in a six-to-three decision. The case has become an important benchmark for the cause of preservation, as it supported the legitimacy of historic preservation as a governmental goal and responsibility and showed that historic ordinances function as the methods to accomplishing the goal and the responsibility.

New Relevance

Washington Monument, Mt. Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD. First large scale monument built to George Washington. Built from 1815-1830. This monument still stands. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [Reproduction number, HABS, MD, 4-BALT, 40-1].

As seen throughout the history of historic preservation in the U.S., ideas behind historical, architectural, and social significance have expanded and reformed over time. By the 1980s, preservation efforts went from focusing on the homes of historical figures and sites of historical events to preserving architecturally significant buildings and historic neighborhoods. Preservation in the 1980s and 1990s continued in this vein, seeking to be relevant in the lives and causes of more Americans, as goals and missions expanded and overlapped.

In 1980, the NTHP instituted the Main Street Program, advocating preservation in smaller cities, towns, and villages all over the United States. The Main Street Program sought to revitalize historic business districts, focusing on local economies and walkable communities, efforts that have been and continue to be quite successful.

In the continuing movement to expand the umbrella of historic preservation, preservationists realized our historic built resources were not only the unmoving structures lining streets. In 1988, the Federal Abandoned Shipwrecks Act was passed, placing emphasis on the need for maritime preservation and establishing state management of significant shipwrecks.

In the 1980s, awareness of the injustices imparted upon Native American nations throughout the U.S. was growing. In efforts to respect and recognize the autonomy of these Native American nations, the U.S. Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990. NAGPRA requires that institutions and entities receiving government funding maintain a record of Native American cultural items and human remains and return them to the nations from which they came. In 1992, NHPA was amended to provide the framework for the creation of Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (THPOs). THPOs work in much the same way SHPOs do, designating and reviewing historic resources in their respective nations.

The Future

Throughout the past 200 years, historic preservation in the U.S. has expanded to include sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant due to their inhabitants, events, architecture, surroundings, contributions to neighborhoods, meaning to their societies, and relationship to cultural identity. In the twenty-first century, historic preservation continues to be a viable social cause. With concern for climate change at the forefront and the recognition of our built environment’s impact on the natural world, preservationists are recognizing and advocating the reuse of existing resources, such as our historic structures, to continue the fight against climate change.

In the past few years, there have already been successful milestones in the growing relationship between historic preservation and sustainable development. The Christman Company Building, formerly known as the Mutual Building, in Lansing, Michigan, became the world's first LEED double-platinum-rated building, earning the platinum rating in LEED Core and Shell and LEED Commercial Interiors in 2008. Built in 1928, this historic, National Register-listed building sat on a brownfield site in Lansing in a state of disrepair when SmithGroup decided to rehabilitate the structure as an example of how historic preservation and sustainable building form a natural relationship. See our sustainability page for other similar case study projects.

The future for sustainability and preservation looks bright. Due to the efforts of the NTHP, the AIA, and their coalition of preservationists working with the United States Green Building Council, LEED 2009 and LEED-Neighborhood Development, to be introduced in 2009, have been re-evaluated to incorporate new metrics that encourage the rehabilitation of existing structures.

As we venture further into the twenty-first century, preservation in the U.S. will continue to develop partnerships and think creatively about how the message can be expanded so that the protection and reuse of historic built resources not only maintains vestiges of our past but creates vibrant spaces of the future.