Historic preservation

Historic preservation (US), built heritage preservation or built heritage conservation (UK) is an endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historical significance. It is a philosophical concept that became popular in the twentieth century, which maintains that cities as products of centuries' development should be obligated to protect their patrimonial legacy. The term refers specifically to the preservation of the built environment, and not to preservation of, for example, primeval forests or wilderness.

Paid work, performed by trained professionals, in historic preservation can be divided into the practice areas of regulatory compliance, architecture and construction, historic sites/museums, advocacy, and downtown revitalization/rejuvenation; each of these areas has a different set of expected skills, knowledge, and abilities.

In the United States, about 70% of professional, paid practice in historic preservation is in the area of regulatory compliance, which is driven by laws, regulations, and guidelines promulgated at the federal, state, and local levels. At the federal level, these include the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and associated regulations, such as Section 106 (54 U.S.C. § 306108, formerly known as 36 CFR 800), National Register of Historic Places (54 U.S.C. §§ 302101–302108), and the Secretary of the Interior's Standards (36 CFR 67); many states have laws that reference these federal regulations or create parallel regulations, using federal regulatory language. At the local level, preservation laws and regulations are known as "preservation ordinances" and define the need for private property owners to seek a "certificate of appropriateness" when making modifications to existing buildings that are listed in a local historical register. Refer to the table, below, for the full breakdown of various practice areas in the United States.

According to a 2008 survey conducted by the National Heritage Training Group, the size of the built heritage conservation sector, and how its various specializations break down, is not known.

In 1790, Aubin-Louis Millin submitted a report to the Constituent Assembly regarding the demolition of the Bastille, using the term "monument historique" (transl. historic monument). The idea of preserving sites linked to the Ancien régime and earlier circulated as a result, and under impetus of Talleyrand, the Assembly, on the 13th of October, created the commission des monuments (transl. Commission of Monuments) whose function was to "study the fate of monuments, arts, and sciences." The following year, Alexandre Lenoir was appointed to create the Musée des Monuments français (transl. Museum of French Monuments), which opened in 1795 and exhibited fragments of architecture Lenoir had saved and salvaged from destruction over the previous years. The museum was ultimately closed during the Restoration by Louis XVIII, and its collection was returned to the original owners and their families.

The vandalism and widespread destruction which accompanied the French Revolution had inspired several such responses, and the first known register of such buildings was an inventory of the castles begun by Louis XVI by the conseil des bâtiments civils (transl. Council of Civil Buildings), which was completed in 1795. Between 1804 and 1834, several archaeological societies were formed, notably the Société des antiquaires de France in 1804 (originally the Académie celtique), the Société française d'archéologie in 1834, and the Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques also in 1834.

In 1819, the Ministry of the Interior provided an allowance for monuments historiques for the first time, and, on 21 October 1830, François Guizot (then Minister of the Interior) proposed the creation of a post, the Inspector General of Historic Monuments [fr], to classify buildings and distribute funds for their preservation. This post was first assigned to Ludovic Vitet on 25 November 1830, and later to Prosper Mérimée on 27 May 1834. In 1837, Bachasson, in his capacity of Minister of the Interior, officially established the Commission des monuments historiques (transl. Commission for Historic Monuments) to carry out the work of classification and producing an inventory, as well as distributing funding and training architects for restoration work (Eugène Viollet-le-Duc among them). The Commission published its first inventory in 1840, and subsequently continued its inventory work, as well as create visual records for any future restoration. To this end, it created the Mission Héliographique to photograph monuments in 1851. During this period, the combination of reluctance to understand the government's prerogatives and the fact that the classification of private property required the owners' consent resulted in the gradual decrease in the number of registered monuments.

On 2 May 1887, a law was passed establishing procedures for the classification of historic monuments as well as establish provisions for a body of Architecte en chef des monuments historiques [fr] for their upkeep. In 1906, French law laid down principles of classification of natural sites. Under the 1905 Law of Separation of Church and State, local communities and the government were entrusted with the care and upkeep of religious buildings, however, this led to refusal to care for buildings not of "national interest" by some and the auctioning off of heritage by others. Per consequence, on 13 December 1913, a law was passed which widened the field of protection for classified monuments, including changing "national interest" to "public interest" and allowing the classification of private property without the consent of the owner. During the 1920s and 1930s, classification further opened up to private property; additionally, monuments post-dating the Ancien régime began to be classified. In 1925, a second order of classification was introduced: inscription à l'inventaire supplémentaire des monuments historiques (transl. inscription in the supplementary inventory of historical monuments).