Section 7. Encouraging Historic Preservation

 

The Urban Land Institute's case study of the 21c Museum Hotel in Cincinnati provides an example of adaptive reuse: a deteriorated historic downtown building was rehabilitated and given a new use that combines hospitality, art, and public cultural space. Projects like this can preserve historic resources while contributing to broader community development.

Historic buildings, neighborhoods, landscapes, cultural sites, and other places can tell important stories about the people who built, used, shaped, and cared for them. Those stories may reflect achievement and creativity, but they may also include conflict, exclusion, displacement, labor, migration, resistance, and other experiences that have shaped a community.

Historic preservation can help communities understand those histories while deciding how historic and cultural resources should continue to function in the present. Preservation is strongest when the people connected with a place – including residents, Tribal Nations, descendant communities, property owners, workers, cultural organizations, and others – have meaningful roles in identifying what matters and how it should be treated.

In this section, we'll look at historic preservation, why communities may choose to preserve historic and cultural resources, who should participate in those decisions, and the tools communities can use to protect, adapt, interpret, and sustain important places.

What do we mean by historic preservation?

Historic preservation is the practice of identifying, protecting, maintaining, interpreting, and appropriately using places and resources that have historic, cultural, architectural, archeological, or community significance.

Preservation is not limited to keeping an old building exactly as it looks today. Depending on the resource and its significance, preservation may involve maintaining historic materials, adapting a building for a new use, restoring features from a particular period, documenting archeological resources, protecting a cultural landscape, or recognizing continuing cultural relationships with a place.

Types of historic and cultural resources

Buildings and structures

Houses, commercial buildings, industrial facilities, schools, places of worship, barns, bridges, transportation structures, monuments, and other built resources may have historic significance because of their architecture, construction, use, age, association with people or events, or importance to a community.

A building does not have to be architecturally elaborate or associated with a nationally famous person to matter. An ordinary home, store, school, workplace, meeting hall, or other structure may be important because it reflects the everyday history of a community or the experiences of people whose stories have not always been included in traditional historical narratives.

Neighborhoods and districts

Groups of buildings, streets, public spaces, landscapes, businesses, and other features may together reflect an important period of community development or the history of a particular community.

Historic neighborhoods are also living communities. Preservation decisions should therefore consider housing affordability, accessibility, current residents, community culture, changing needs, and the effects that investment may have on displacement or property costs.

Tribal, Indigenous, and culturally significant places

Some places have continuing cultural, spiritual, historical, or community significance to Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples. These may include settlements, landscapes, burial places, traditional cultural properties, archeological resources, gathering places, sacred sites, and other locations whose importance cannot be understood only by looking at buildings or architectural style.

Tribal Nations are sovereign governments, and preservation involving Tribal lands, resources, or cultural heritage should include the appropriate Tribal governments, Tribal Historic Preservation Offices where applicable, and other people designated by the Tribe.

Some cultural information may be sensitive or not appropriate for public interpretation. Communities and preservation professionals should respect Tribal sovereignty, cultural protocols, and decisions about what information should or should not be shared.

Landscapes

Historic landscapes may include farms, parks, battlefields, transportation corridors, waterfronts, industrial landscapes, cemeteries, traditional cultural landscapes, and other places shaped by relationships among people, land, and natural resources.

Landscape preservation can involve physical features such as roads, fields, vegetation, waterways, structures, landforms, views, or spatial patterns, as well as the cultural meanings attached to them.

Archeological sites

Archeological resources can provide information about communities and time periods that may not be fully represented in written records. These resources may exist above or below ground and can include structures, artifacts, features, cultural deposits, and landscapes.

Archeological work should be conducted carefully and in accordance with applicable laws, professional standards, and consultation requirements, particularly when human remains, funerary objects, sacred materials, or Tribal cultural resources may be involved.

Objects and features

Signs, murals, public art, monuments, machinery, landscape features, street elements, industrial equipment, trees, walls, markers, and other objects may have historical or cultural importance.

Their significance may come from design, age, craftsmanship, use, association with a place or community, or the stories people connect with them.

Cultural heritage

Historic preservation can also connect with cultural heritage that is not limited to buildings or objects. Language, artistic traditions, foodways, music, craftsmanship, ceremonies, oral histories, traditional knowledge, and community practices may all be part of how people understand and sustain their history.

Protecting cultural heritage works best when the people whose heritage is involved help determine how it should be documented, interpreted, shared, and sustained.

Approaches to historic preservation

The U.S. National Park Service identifies four major treatments for historic properties: preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction. The appropriate treatment depends on the significance and condition of the property, its proposed use, available documentation, and the goals of the project.

Preservation

Preservation focuses on maintaining and repairing the existing historic materials, features, form, and character of a property. It generally emphasizes continued maintenance and limited repair rather than extensive replacement or new construction.

Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation allows a historic property to continue serving a useful purpose or take on a compatible new use while retaining the features that convey its historic, cultural, or architectural significance.

Rehabilitation may involve repairs, alterations, accessibility improvements, updated building systems, additions, or other changes necessary for continued use, provided that important historic characteristics are respected.

Restoration

Restoration focuses on depicting a property as it appeared during a particular period in its history. Features from that period are retained or restored, while some features from other periods may be removed when appropriate to the restoration goal.

Reconstruction

Reconstruction uses new construction to recreate a non-surviving building, structure, landscape, site, or other resource as it appeared during a particular historical period.

Because reconstruction creates something that no longer survives, it should be based on strong documentary and physical evidence and should be clearly identified as a contemporary re-creation.

The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties provide detailed guidance for deciding how preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction should be carried out. The appropriate treatment depends on the property rather than on a general preference for making something look "older" or returning it to an assumed original appearance.

Deciding what should be preserved

Preservation decisions may involve disagreement. A building may contain important features from several periods in its history. Residents may value a later addition that preservation professionals initially consider less significant. A property may be historically important while also needing substantial changes to remain useful, accessible, affordable, or environmentally responsible.

Questions to consider include:

• What makes the building, site, landscape, district, or object significant?
• What does it mean to the people and communities connected with it?
• Whose histories are represented, and whose may have been overlooked?
• What future uses are possible?
• How is the property currently used?
• What is its physical condition?
• What accessibility, safety, climate, environmental, or building-system improvements are needed?
• What are the costs and tradeoffs of different treatment approaches?
• What do residents, property owners, Tribal Nations, descendant communities, and other people connected with the property want?
• Are there requirements associated with grants, tax incentives, easements, public ownership, or other funding?
• Is appropriate preservation expertise available?
• Could preservation or redevelopment contribute to displacement, rising costs, or loss of community access?

Why encourage historic preservation?

• It can preserve community history, identity, and continuity. Historic places can help people understand how their community developed and how different generations and groups contributed to it. Preservation can maintain features that make places distinctive while keeping community history visible.
• It can help broaden whose histories are recognized. Preservation can document places connected with communities, workers, movements, cultural traditions, and everyday experiences that may have received less attention in traditional historical accounts.
• Reusing existing buildings can conserve resources. Rehabilitation may reduce demolition waste and make continued use of materials, infrastructure, and embodied energy already invested in existing buildings.
• It can preserve traditional skills and craftsmanship. Historic buildings may require specialized masonry, carpentry, plaster, metalwork, decorative arts, and other skills. Preservation projects can create opportunities to sustain and teach those trades.
• It can contribute to the character of a community. Historic buildings, landscapes, streets, and cultural places may help distinguish one community from another and strengthen residents' connection to place.
• It can contribute to community investment and economic activity. Rehabilitation may create construction and preservation jobs, provide space for businesses or housing, support cultural institutions, or contribute to tourism and commercial activity.
• It can create workforce-development opportunities. Paid apprenticeships and training in preservation trades can help participants develop transferable skills in construction, restoration, design, research, project management, and related fields.
• It can make creative use of buildings that no longer serve their original purpose. Schools, factories, warehouses, hotels, offices, transportation buildings, and other historic structures may sometimes be adapted for housing, cultural facilities, businesses, education, community services, or other uses.
• It may support economically viable redevelopment. Some preservation projects can use tax incentives, grants, loans, or other resources that make rehabilitation more feasible. Historic settings may also contribute to the identity of businesses, cultural institutions, housing developments, or tourism efforts.

Historic preservation does not automatically produce equitable community development. Investment may also increase rents, property values, or commercial pressure. Communities should consider who benefits from preservation, whether existing residents and businesses can remain, and how public investment can support both historic resources and community stability.

When should you encourage historic preservation?

Communities may consider historic preservation whenever decisions involving development, public investment, housing, land use, cultural heritage, or significant properties are being made.

• When the community is developing or updating a comprehensive plan. Historic and cultural resources can be considered alongside housing, transportation, environmental protection, economic development, accessibility, public space, and other community priorities.
• When neighborhood planning is underway. Residents can identify buildings, landscapes, businesses, cultural places, streets, and other resources that contribute to neighborhood identity and discuss how they should fit into future development.
• When an area is receiving new investment or has experienced long-term disinvestment. Rehabilitation of existing buildings can be part of broader community development, but planning should include residents and consider affordability, displacement, local ownership, accessibility, and who will benefit from new investment.
• When historic buildings can help meet an identified community need. An unused school, hotel, industrial building, office, or other property might be adapted for housing, education, community services, cultural uses, workplaces, or other purposes.
• When new development may affect historic or cultural resources. Preservation can be considered early in planning so that significant resources are identified before major design and investment decisions have already been made.
• When a community is documenting or commemorating its history. Anniversaries, oral-history projects, cultural programs, exhibitions, and other activities may create opportunities to identify places and stories that residents want to protect or interpret.
• When a historic or culturally important property is threatened. Demolition, prolonged neglect, environmental hazards, inappropriate alterations, climate-related risks, or development pressure may threaten significant resources.
• When communities are considering heritage and cultural tourism. Historic and cultural resources may support tourism when interpretation is accurate, community-led, respectful of living cultures, and connected with local economic opportunities.
• When preservation can support workforce development. Paid training and apprenticeship programs can teach preservation trades to young people, adults changing careers, and others seeking employment opportunities, including people who have experienced barriers to entering the workforce.

Workforce programs should build on participants' strengths and goals rather than defining people primarily by poverty, substance use, justice-system involvement, or other challenges they may have experienced. Training should provide meaningful skills, appropriate supervision, safe working conditions, accessibility, and fair compensation.

Who should encourage historic preservation?

Historic preservation affects more than preservation professionals. The people who live, work, worship, gather, conduct business, maintain cultural traditions, or otherwise have relationships with a place may all bring important knowledge.

• Residents and people connected with the place. People who experience a neighborhood or property in everyday life can identify meanings and histories that may not appear in formal records.
• Tribal Nations and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices. Tribal governments and designated cultural representatives should have central roles when projects may affect Tribal historic properties, ancestral places, sacred sites, archeological resources, or other resources of importance to Tribes.
• Descendant communities and cultural organizations. Communities connected with historic places through ancestry, migration, labor, religion, race, ethnicity, culture, or shared experience can provide essential knowledge about significance and interpretation.
• Public officials, planners, and public agencies. Government decisions involving planning, zoning, transportation, infrastructure, public land, funding, and development can significantly affect historic resources.
• Owners of historic properties. Homeowners, businesses, nonprofit organizations, institutions, developers, and other property owners often make the day-to-day decisions that determine whether historic resources are maintained, altered, adapted, or demolished.
• Community development organizations. Historic properties may be connected with housing, economic development, cultural activity, neighborhood investment, and other community priorities.
• Businesses and organizations connected with tourism and local economic activity. Hotels, restaurants, museums, stores, guides, cultural organizations, and other businesses may benefit when preservation contributes to responsible heritage tourism.
• Businesses and employers. Businesses may occupy historic buildings, contribute funding or expertise, participate in preservation partnerships, or benefit from community investment.
• Community organizers and preservation advocates. These participants may help document community priorities, bring people into planning processes, conduct research, organize projects, and communicate with public and private decision-makers.
• Historians, preservation organizations, and people interested in community history. These participants may contribute research, documentation, interpretation, and knowledge of historic resources.
• Architects, engineers, archeologists, landscape architects, conservators, craftspeople, and preservation professionals. Specialized expertise may be needed to understand a property's condition and develop appropriate treatment options.
• People with disabilities and accessibility organizations. Their participation can help ensure that preservation and accessibility are addressed together rather than treated as competing goals.
• Young people and educational institutions. Students can contribute oral histories, documentation, research, mapping, interpretation, and other work while learning about community history.

How do you encourage historic preservation?

Communities can support historic preservation through planning, incentives, funding, regulations, technical assistance, education, community participation, and stewardship.

The appropriate combination depends on local law, ownership, community priorities, the type and significance of the resource, and whether state, Tribal, or federal requirements apply.

Incentives

Financial and development incentives can make preservation more feasible when rehabilitation costs are higher than conventional construction or when preservation provides a public benefit.

Tax incentives

Tax incentives may include:

• Tax credits. A tax credit generally reduces the amount of tax owed when eligibility requirements are met.
• Tax deductions. A tax deduction generally reduces the amount of income subject to taxation rather than directly reducing the tax owed.
• Tax abatements or property-tax incentives. State or local governments may reduce qualifying taxes for a defined period or under specific preservation programs.

The federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives Program currently provides a 20 percent tax credit for qualifying rehabilitation expenses involving certified historic structures used for income-producing purposes. The rehabilitation must meet the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation and receive the required certification.

State and local preservation incentives vary substantially. Property owners and project sponsors should use current information from the National Park Service, State Historic Preservation Office, Tribal Historic Preservation Office where applicable, tax authorities, and relevant local agencies.

Other incentives

Depending on local law, governments may also use:

• Grants or low-interest financing
• Rehabilitation assistance
• Zoning flexibility
• Density or development incentives
• Technical assistance
• Support for accessibility, energy efficiency, environmental remediation, or code-related improvements
• Public infrastructure investments connected with preservation projects

Preservation incentives should not be treated as permission to bypass necessary health, safety, accessibility, environmental, or building requirements. Where historic conditions make compliance difficult, project teams can work with preservation professionals, code officials, accessibility specialists, engineers, and others to identify appropriate solutions.

Grants and loans

Government agencies, foundations, nonprofit organizations, financial institutions, and other funders may support:

• Preservation or rehabilitation of historically and culturally significant properties
• Historic transportation facilities, routes, bridges, stations, and related resources
• Historic and scenic transportation corridors
• Heritage areas and regional cultural landscapes
• Tribal historic properties, cultural resources, and preservation programs
• Historic sites associated with civil rights, labor, transportation, agriculture, military history, maritime history, migration, industry, and other subjects
• Research, documentation, planning, and interpretation
• Preservation work supported by foundations and nonprofit organizations
• Accessibility, climate resilience, energy efficiency, and adaptation of historic properties

Programs and eligibility requirements change. Use current official guidance when identifying funding rather than relying on older program lists.

Regulations and preservation policy

Regulations can help communities identify significant properties and establish a process for reviewing proposed demolition, alteration, or development.

Regulatory approaches vary considerably by state, Tribal Nation, municipality, and property type.

Historic districts and local designation

Historic districts may be recognized at the federal, state, Tribal, or local level, but different forms of designation have different legal effects.

Listing a privately owned property in the National Register of Historic Places does not, by itself, impose federal restrictions on what a non-federal owner may do with the property unless federal funding, licensing, permitting, or another federal action is involved. State, Tribal, or local laws may establish separate requirements.

Local historic districts or landmarks may be subject to design review or other preservation ordinances. Depending on local law, review may address:

• Exterior alterations and design. Changes to windows, entrances, additions, architectural features, materials, signs, or other visible elements may be reviewed.
• Building scale, height, or massing. New construction may be reviewed for compatibility with surrounding historic resources.
• Building materials. Review may consider whether proposed materials are compatible with the historic property or district without requiring new construction to falsely imitate historic buildings.
• Landscapes and site features. Historic vegetation patterns, walls, paths, trees, open space, and other landscape elements may be considered where they contribute to significance.
• Demolition and new development. Communities may establish processes for considering how demolition, additions, or new construction affect designated historic resources.

Historic buildings and structures

Depending on applicable law, communities may establish review processes for demolition or major alteration of designated historic properties.

Preservation review should also consider:

• Whether the building can reasonably be repaired or adapted
• Which materials and features convey its significance
• Accessibility
• Fire and life safety
• Energy efficiency
• Heating, cooling, electrical, plumbing, and other building systems
• Climate resilience
• Environmental hazards
• Whether new additions are distinguishable yet compatible

Historic preservation, accessibility, environmental responsibility, and continued use do not have to be treated as mutually exclusive goals. They may require thoughtful design and technical expertise, but many historic properties can be adapted while retaining the features that make them significant.

Community participation and oversight

Communities may establish historic commissions, preservation boards, resident advisory groups, Tribal preservation programs, or other bodies that participate in preservation decisions.

These bodies should use transparent procedures and provide meaningful opportunities for property owners, residents, Tribal Nations, descendant communities, people with disabilities, cultural organizations, and others affected by decisions to participate.

Community participation should not begin only when a property is threatened. Ongoing surveys, oral histories, planning, mapping, and cultural-resource inventories can help identify significant places before decisions about demolition or redevelopment are urgent.

Help and support

Historic preservation may require specialized knowledge that many property owners and community organizations do not have. Technical assistance can make preservation more feasible and improve the quality of the work.

Sources of assistance may include:

• Colleges and universities. Faculty and students in architecture, history, archeology, planning, engineering, landscape architecture, public history, preservation, and related fields may contribute research or technical assistance.
• Preservation professionals and skilled tradespeople. Architects, engineers, conservators, craftspeople, historians, archeologists, and others may contribute paid or volunteer expertise.
• Government agencies and preservation offices. Local agencies, State Historic Preservation Offices, Tribal Historic Preservation Offices, and federal agencies may provide guidance, review, training, or technical resources.
• Historic preservation and cultural organizations. These organizations may provide training, research, technical information, networking, or community engagement.
• Accessibility and sustainability professionals. Their participation can help historic properties remain useful while addressing access, energy, climate, and environmental needs.

Support documentation and appropriate designation

Communities and organizations may help research historic properties, prepare surveys or nominations, document oral histories, identify cultural landscapes, or navigate appropriate local, state, Tribal, or federal preservation processes.

Formal designation is not always the best or only preservation tool. Communities should first understand what designation means, what protections it provides, what responsibilities may follow, and whether property owners and communities support that approach.

Volunteer and community support

Community members can contribute to preservation in many ways, including:

• Historical and archival research
• Oral-history projects
• Photography and documentation
• Community surveys and mapping
• Public education and interpretation
• Fundraising and grant development
• Appropriate maintenance or restoration work under qualified supervision
• Community events and cultural programming
• Monitoring properties for maintenance or preservation concerns

Volunteer participation should complement professional expertise where specialized construction, conservation, archeology, safety, or technical work is required.

Public education and interpretation

Preservation is easier to sustain when people understand why a place matters and have opportunities to connect with its history.

Interpretation should present history accurately and acknowledge complexity. A historic place may carry different meanings for different communities, and difficult histories should not be removed simply because they complicate a celebratory story.

Public education may include:

• Guided and self-guided tours. Walking, bicycling, driving, or virtual tours can connect people with local history and historic places.
• Signs and interpretive displays. Signs, plaques, digital interpretation, and other resources can explain the significance of buildings, landscapes, people, and events.
• Maps, brochures, and community guides. These can help people discover historic and cultural resources throughout the community.
• Community presentations and conversations. Libraries, schools, cultural organizations, neighborhood groups, faith communities, and other organizations can provide places to learn about and discuss local history.
• Arts and cultural programming. Performances, exhibitions, storytelling, public art, oral histories, and other creative approaches can help interpret historic places and experiences.

Use media and digital communication

Local news organizations, newsletters, podcasts, community websites, social media, videos, digital maps, and other communication channels can share information about historic places, preservation projects, community history, and opportunities for participation.

Digital platforms can also provide virtual tours, oral histories, photographs, archival materials, interactive maps, and links to preservation resources.

Digital materials should be designed with accessibility in mind and, when cultural or Tribal information is involved, should respect decisions about what information is appropriate to make public.

Include preservation in education

Schools, colleges, museums, libraries, youth programs, and community organizations can help young people learn about local history and historic places.

Activities might include:

• Walking tours
• Oral-history projects
• Archival research
• Mapping neighborhood history
• Photographing and documenting historic places
• Studying architecture and landscapes
• Learning traditional building and preservation trades
• Working with museums, historical societies, Tribal cultural programs, or preservation organizations

Students do not need to pursue careers in historic preservation for these experiences to be valuable. They can develop research, observation, communication, technical, and civic skills while learning how their community has changed over time.

Participate in public decision-making

Historic preservation decisions may involve planning boards, historic commissions, Tribal governments, public agencies, elected bodies, property owners, developers, funders, and other decision-makers.

Community members and organizations can participate by:

• Conducting and sharing research
• Participating in public meetings and hearings
• Serving on planning or preservation committees
• Providing comments on proposed plans
• Working with property owners and developers
• Identifying alternatives to demolition
• Participating in comprehensive and neighborhood planning
• Seeking funding or technical assistance
• Using appropriate administrative or legal processes when preservation requirements are not being followed

Effective participation focuses on the significance of the resource, community experience, available evidence, costs, alternatives, legal requirements, accessibility, environmental considerations, and possible effects on residents and property owners.

Not everyone will agree that a particular property should be preserved or about how preservation should occur. A strong process considers those differences openly rather than treating disagreement simply as opposition that needs to be overcome.

Continue stewardship over time

Historic preservation is an ongoing process. A building that has been successfully rehabilitated still needs maintenance. Landscapes change. Climate and weather may create new risks. New research may reveal histories that were previously overlooked. Community priorities may also change.

Continue asking:

• Is the historic or cultural resource being maintained?
• Is its significance accurately interpreted?
• Are people connected with the place still involved in decisions?
• Are accessibility needs being addressed?
• Are climate or environmental risks changing?
• Is the property financially sustainable?
• Is the current use compatible with its historic character?
• Are preservation investments contributing to displacement or unequal access?
• Have new histories, perspectives, or cultural relationships been identified?

In Summary

Historic preservation can protect buildings, structures, neighborhoods, landscapes, archeological resources, cultural places, and other resources that help communities understand their histories and identities.

The four major approaches recognized by the National Park Service – preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction – serve different purposes. The appropriate approach depends on the property's significance, physical condition, proposed use, available documentation, and community goals.

Historic preservation can support community identity, environmental responsibility, adaptive reuse, housing, cultural activity, workforce development, tourism, and economic investment. At the same time, preservation decisions should consider accessibility, affordability, displacement, climate resilience, cultural sensitivity, property rights, and who benefits from public and private investment.

Strong preservation efforts include the people most closely connected with the place, including residents, Tribal Nations, descendant communities, property owners, cultural organizations, people with disabilities, preservation professionals, businesses, public agencies, and other affected groups.

Communities can support preservation through planning, incentives, funding, appropriate regulations, technical assistance, education, interpretation, workforce development, and participation in public decision-making.

Preserving history does not mean freezing a community in the past. It means understanding what places and stories matter, deciding together what should continue into the future, and finding ways for historic and cultural resources to remain meaningful, useful, accessible, and connected to the people whose lives they represent.