As in many countries of the New World, early preservation in the United States was closely linked to the establishment of a national identity by focusing on those sites that were linked to the early settlement and independence movement, especially sites associated with the life of George Washington and to a lesser degree with other important figures of that period. Unlike other countries, however, the will to conserve and monumentalize such sites did not issue from either the central or the local government, but rather, from local citizen groups who valued the cultural, historic and patriotic sites that lay in their immediate community. For decades, the government offered little interest, no assistance, and no official recognition to any of these sites. Thus, from its very origin, the preservation movement in the United States has been characterized by being a grassroots effort driven at the local level and one that evolved in isolation from outside influences, responding only to perceived local needs. Until the middle of the 20th century, there was little communication with preservationists from other countries, and the evolution of the international preservation theories that had been evolving since the early 19th century were unknown in the United States until the 1960s.

The emphasis on the associative patriotic values linked to the early independence movement and the colonial period acquired a new sense of urgency with the large immigrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the prevailing Anglo-Saxon and protestant ethic of colonial and earlier settlers were perceived to be endangered by the massive influx of eastern and central Europeans, plus Catholics, Jews, Orthodox and others. Heritage sites were recruited for their didactic potential in inculcating the newcomers with the values of a dominant culture whose carriers were dangerously diminishing in their proportion to the overall population. This use of heritage meant a strong reliance on reconstruction and museography that could easily interpret and convey to the general public the social values that led to their original construction. As the preservation movement became more sophisticated, historic accuracy in reconstruction gained importance, and the field came to be dominated by historians rather than architects as was the case elsewhere. The work begun in the 1920s in Colonial Williamsburg under the sponsorship of John Rockefeller, is, of course, the pinnacle of this process, as well as our primary example of both historically accurate reconstruction and heritage in the service of a political message.

Certainly, there were a number of governmental efforts during this period, including the establishment of the National Park Service, the declaration of a number of national monuments by presidential decree and the passing of several federal protective laws mostly dealing with archaeological sites. While they may seem weak by today's standards, they set up a strong foundation for the work that was to follow. Other important actions of the 1930s had a profound pioneering impact on the preservation movement. Local preservation ordinances were established in New Orleans, Charleston and Alexandria. At the federal level, President Roosevelt's economic recovery programs put unemployed architects to work documenting historic buildings all over the country, an initiative that gave rise to popular awareness of our traditional architecture and established the Historic American Buildings Survey.

The Preservation Structure in the United States

An understanding of the institutional and procedural preservation structure in the United States requires some knowledge of the levels of government established by our constitution and the limits imposed on each. As a federal republic, the central government has no power over land use regulations, a responsibility that falls entirely on each of our individual states and territories. Thus, each state is free to implement its own protective mechanisms in accordance with the state constitution. What the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) then does, is create a framework for permanent cooperation among the federal, sate and local levels of governments plus the private sector.

The law obligates the federal government to a position of responsible leadership and high respect for the nation's heritage. Through stated obligations and fiscal assistance, the law stimulates each state to become involved in heritage conservation by appointing a State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) that will maintain the state inventory and guide preservation activities at the state level. Because zoning and other land use regulations are the realm of municipal governments to the various degrees that individual state constitutions allow, the NHPA fosters municipal control by certifying local governments that meet certain preservation performance and institutional criteria to receive direct assistance from the federal government.

It also provides, in conjunction with other laws, strong fiscal incentives, in the form of income tax deductions, to private owners who invest in preserving their properties when listed in the National Register.

First, the NHPA entrusted the Secretary of the Interior to establish the National Register of Historic Places, a broad official list of sites that are significant to our country at the national, state or local levels. Sites included in the National Register may be nominated to the list by any citizen groups or individuals concerned, as long as the sites meet stated criteria of significance and integrity.

Second, the NHPA also entrusts the Secretary of Interior to establish standards for the proper treatment, stewardship and management of sites listed in the National Register. These are known as the Secretary of Interior's Standards for Historic Preservation.

And finally, the NHPA obligates all Departments and agencies of the federal government to assess all of their building and site inventories to identify those that meet the National Register criteria, and to nominate them to the National Register. Furthermore, every agency is also required to protect and manage these sites in accordance with the Secretary of Interior's Standards. The implementation of these two simple obligations has meant that the historic preservation ethic has permeated all the way into the administrative structure of every federal agency, including the armed forces, the post office, etc.

One final obligation contained in Section 106 of the NHPA is that any action undertaken, funded or licensed by any agency of the federal government having a detrimental effect on the significance of ANY site listed in the National Register must be mitigated at the cost of the federal agency.  Determination of detrimental effect is arrived at through a process of consultation that allows for comment from any concerned private or public entity, and that must be approved by the State Historic Preservation Officer of the State or territory where the site is located. If there is no agreement on the process of mitigation, the dispute is referred to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, whose members are appointed by the President.

The National Park Service, the lead agency for historic preservation in the federal government, also provides technical assistance to professionals and private citizens, such as the CRM Bulletin, a magazine dedicated to issues on management and interpretation of heritage sites.

A number of important programs of the National Park Service are now being initiated and managed by the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training (NCPTT) in Louisiana.

More than 40 years after the passage of the NHPA, every state and territory has established a Historic Preservation Office that coordinates all state-wide actions and support the initiatives of private groups and local government. The State Historic Preservation Officers, in turn, are grouped into the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers (NCSHPO) an organization that defends the shared heritage interests of the states in Washington.

Because of the autonomous nature of our federal system, there is a wide variety of actions and approaches to preservation at the state level. A deeper investigation of individual states is possible by visiting the website for each SHPO. Most individual states maintain websites, and the following are a few contacts:

The Municipal Government Role

Municipal governments regulate the conservation of historic buildings and sites in their communities through ordinances which establish zoning and historic districts, and the more specialized historic preservation ordinance. While there is even a greater diversity among municipal preservation ordinance in terms of their effectiveness and limitations of private owner rights to alter historic properties, some traits are fairly common. One is that all permits for demolitions and alterations in listed buildings must be approved by a historic preservation review board or commission, usually consisting of an uneven number of members appointed by the mayor or county supervisor.

The other common trait is that the Secretary of Interior's Standards have been adopted by most communities in the United States as the norm to guide acceptable treatment. Local government preservation agencies are constituted in the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions.

The Role of the Private Sector

The complex preservation mechanism of the United States is based on the assertion that it is ultimately the responsibility of the private sector to ensure that our built heritage is transmitted to future generations. As in most free market countries, the vast majority of our built heritage is in private hands, and the state recognizes that its own resources, though considerable, will always be insufficient to ensure its preservation. This responsibility falls on individuals, non-governmental organizations and community groups, who in turn rely mostly on their own resources and private philanthropy to fund the effort, plus fiscal incentives and tax exemptions to enhance the potential. An effective mechanism for providing incentives are the "preservation easements."

While there are many foundations that fund various aspects of preservation at the local, state, national and international levels, the bulk of the financial support in the United States comes from individual sources. Another source for funding, and one that is rapidly growing corporate sponsorship by private for-profit enterprises whose sense of corporate social citizenship has been growing in the past decades, especially as the originally scarce government funding for culture has continued to dwindle.

An important trait of the United States is the close relationship that exists between elected government officials and the general population. In order to make sure that the interests of the preservation community are considered by our lawmakers in the US Congress (an activity known as "lobbying"), a membership organization known as Preservation Action has been formed to manifest the needs of our nation's heritage of Congressmen and to alert the preservation community about draft legislation being considered in Congress that might affect our ability to properly preserve our heritage.

The United States is fortunate that its citizens are inclined to join organizations that will bring together individual concerns, and maximize the effectiveness of professional and volunteer efforts of individuals. There are also important research organizations such as the Getty Conservation Institute. The following is a partial list of such organizations and their websites:

Preservation Training in the United States

There are many preservation training programs in the United States, some at the Graduate level (granting both Master's and Certificates), a few at the Undergraduate level. The National Council for Preservation Education, serves as an informal accrediting body (no formal accreditation for historic preservation programs currently exists), setting minimum standards for programs seeking recognition and membership. At the Graduate level, programs include those at

Other interesting programs include:

Specialized training is offered by many groups, including:

For a complete list of training programs in the United States, go to the US/ICOMOS Training Committee Website at (soon to come, please check back)

There are two main official governmental venues for the United States to assist other countries in heritage conservation. One is the Cultural Affairs Office of the United States Embassy, which can at times provide for Preservation specialists from the United States to teach or lecture in local universities or helping local government agencies in various ways. The other mechanism is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which undertakes large development projects that may include cultural and heritage components as long they are linked to economic and social development. (The recent cultural tourism enhancement work of US/ICOMOS in Ghana is an example). Both types of assistance are entirely dependent on agencies and non-governmental organizations in other countries to express their needs to the local US Embassy or AID office, and formalize their requests at the local level. All of these project are identified and initiated in the field and not at headquarters in Washington. For this reason, it is important for preservation agencies and ICOMOS National Committees interested in receiving support from the United States, to keep the Cultural Affairs Officers at the US Embassy informed of your committee's activities, programs and needs.

An important private foundation providing grants to conservation projects all over the world is the Getty Grant Program (GGP), a branch of the J. Paul Getty Trust of Los Angeles. The GGP offers three levels of support to not-for profit organizations (including government agencies) for conservation of heritage sites that are listed at the highest category of national significance: project identification, project preparation and project implementation. Letters of preliminary inquiry are required before formal submissions are accepted. Contact: The Getty Grant Program, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Ste 800, Los Angeles CA 90049-1685 USA .

• See current activities of the HABS program
  • View the HABS collection online at the Library of Congress website

   

It was not until the 1960s that the modern preservation movement began to emerge very rapidly in the United States as the result of a sequence of important national and global events. It began in the 1930s with the Great Depression, bringing on extreme poverty to many of our people and halting building construction for almost a decade, only to be followed by the global conflict of World War II, when our entire national attention was focused on wartime military production. Thus, the country emerged into the early 1950s with a severe building and housing shortage, yet a vision of the future that the same technology that had made military victory possible could now serve the civilian needs of the population. This population had unprecedented aspirations of well-being and comfort whose seeds had been planted in the 1939 New York World's Fair.

The zeal for modernization in all aspects of our life has been well-documented, and also is a process that was shared by many countries in the world. We now look on this era as one of a naive optimism perpetually under the cloud of possible nuclear annihilation, and whose lighter side has been caricatured by the Jetsons. A darker side emerged, however, with the wholesale destruction of entire traditional urban neighborhoods in the name of modern urban renovation which only worsened urban blight. As landmarks tumbled and freeways worked their way into the heart of our cities, many clamored for a saner approach to managing our built environment. Thus, the evolution of the preservation movement was once again driven by grassroots groups concerned with the immediate well-being of their communities.

The central protagonist that catalyzed the local concerns was the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which had been chartered and funded by Congress as a non-governmental organization in 1946 with the objective of leading the private sector's involvement in heritage conservation. By 1964, it became clear that new federal protective legislation was needed, and that the federal government needed to control the negative impact of its own actions on the country's heritage. In 1965, a high level congressional delegation visited major historic European cities to understand how conservation and development could be conjoined. The trip planning was a direct result of the contacts that Robert Garvey had established in the foundational meeting of ICOMOS in Poland. The result of this vast effort was the drafting of a new law by the National Trust that was adopted in 1966: the National Historic Preservation Act.

The 1960s, then, marked the opening of the internationalization of preservation thinking in the United States. As a clear manifestation of this new trend, the Venice Charter provided the doctrinal foundation for the Secretary of Interior's Standards for Historic Preservation. It was also in the 1960s that US/ICOMOS was founded, and the decade also saw the first wave of Americans acquiring international training by attending ICCROM.