Design Standards for Rehabilitation
Any discussion of appropriate design in a historic district will illustrate the subjectivity of the issue. This can lead to problems especially when reviewing proposals for new construction in historic districts. Should architects for historic buildings make new work look old, or should it look new? Should it match the old in appearance, complement it, or contrast with it?Since it is unfair for property owners to be governed by too much subjectivity, communities should have procedures to rationalize this process. Through the adoption of design guidelines, the appropriateness of new work in a historic disctrict can be more fairly and regularly evaluated.
The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings (Revised 1990)
The Office of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, which administers historic preservation at the federal level, recognized the public's need for design guidance. Working with preservationists across the country, they developed standards and guidelines for both the rehabilitation of historic buildings and new design in historic districts. First published in 1979, the Standards for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings presents ten clear and brief statements representing appropriate design in a historic context. Supplemental to these standards, an extensive set of guidelines was also developed, providing more specific guidance on things such as exterior surfaces, roofs, windows, interiors--even sites and districts. These standards and guidelines can be used by historic district commissions to assist in determining whether proposed changes should be approved or disapproved. The standards and guidelines are nationally accepted, and represent the best thinking on appropriate methods of intervention.
The ten Standards for Rehabilitation are:
- Every reasonable effort shall be made to provide a compatible use for a property which requires minimal alteration of the building, structure, or site and its environment, or to use a property for its originally intended purpose.
- The distinguishing original qualities or character of a building, structure, or site and its environment shall not be destroyed. The removal or alteration of any historic material or distinctive architectural features should be avoided when possible.
- All buildings, structures and sites shall be recognized as products of their own time. Alterations that have no historical basis and which seek to create an earlier appearance shall be discouraged.
- Changes which may have taken place in the course of time are evidence of the history and development of a building, structure or site and its environment. These changes may have acquired significance in their own right, and this significance shall be recognized and respected.
- Distinctive stylistic features or examples of skilled craftsmanship which characterize a building, structure or site shall be treated with sensitivity.
- Deteriorated architectural features shall be repaired rather than replaced, wherever possible. In the event replacement is necessary, the new material should match the material being replaced in composition, design, color, texture and other visual qualities. Repair or replacement of missing architectural features should be based on accurate duplications of features, substantiated by historic, physical or pictorial evidence rather than on conjectural designs or the availability of different architectural elements from other buildings or structures.
- The surface cleaning of structures shall be undertaken with the gentlest means possible. Sandblasting and other cleaning methods that will damage the historic building materials shall not be undertaken.
- Every reasonable effort shall be made to protect and preserve archeological resources affected by, or adjacent to, any project.
- Contemporary design for alterations and additions to existing properties shall not be discouraged when such alterations and additions do not destroy significant historical, architectural or cultural material, and such design is compatible with the size, scale, color, material, and character of the property, neighborhood or environment.
- Wherever possible, new additions or alterations to structures shall be done in such a manner that if such additions or alterations were to be removed in the future the essential form and integrity of the structure would be unimpaired.1
1 The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation and Guidelines for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings (Revised 1990), (Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Preservation Assistance Division, 1990).
