Rehabilitation Guidelines
Best practices for the care of historic buildings include regular maintenance and sensitive rehabilitation to ensure their long-term preservation. Regular, proactive maintenance helps prevent the deterioration of original materials and features, reducing the need for extensive repairs or replacements in the future. By addressing minor issues – such as water infiltration, vegetation growth, or material wear – before they become major problems, maintenance supports the long-term preservation of a building’s historic fabric. Ongoing care not only protects the physical integrity of the structure but also upholds its historical, cultural, and architectural significance for future generations.
The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, issued by the National Park Service under the U.S. Department of the Interior, are considered best practices for the treatment of historic buildings. These standards offer a balanced, practical, and widely accepted framework that helps preserve the essential character and architectural integrity of historic properties while allowing for modern use and adaptive reuse. By guiding rehabilitation efforts in a way that retains significant historical features and materials, the Standards ensure that historic buildings remain functional, relevant, and sustainable in contemporary contexts. They are commonly applied to a broad range of historic preservation projects, including those involving major alterations or changes in use.
Rehabilitation is defined as the act or process of making possible a compatible use for a historic building through repair, alterations, and additions, while preserving those portions or features that convey its historical, cultural, or architectural value. This approach allows historic buildings to be adapted for contemporary needs without compromising the elements that define their character and value.
Rehabilitation is an approach that respects a building’s original design, materials, and character-defining features. The objective is not to make the structure appear brand new, but rather to ensure that it remains functional and usable while preserving its historic essence. New work should be compatible with the historic fabric in terms of scale, materials, and character, but also clearly distinguishable from the original. This avoids creating a false sense of historical development and maintains the authenticity of the historic property. Whenever possible, alterations or additions should be reversible, allowing the possibility of future work returning the building to its earlier condition if desired.
The Standards for Rehabilitation include:
- A property will be used as it was historically or be given a new use that requires minimal change to its distinctive materials, features, spaces and spatial relationships.
- The historic character of a property will be retained and preserved. The removal of distinctive materials or alteration of features, spaces and spatial relationships that characterize a property will be avoided.
- Each property will be recognized as a physical record of its time, place and use. Changes that create a false sense of historical development, such as adding conjectural features or elements from other historic properties, will not be undertaken.
- Changes to a property that have acquired historic significance in their own right will be retained and preserved.
- Distinctive materials, features, finishes, and construction techniques or examples of craftsmanship that characterize a property will be preserved.
- Deteriorated historic features will be repaired rather than replaced. Where the severity of deterioration requires replacement of a distinctive feature, the new feature will match the old in design, color, texture and, where possible, materials. Replacement of missing features will be substantiated by documentary and physical evidence.
- Chemical or physical treatments, if appropriate, will be undertaken using the gentlest means possible. Treatments that cause damage to historic materials will not be used.
- Archeological resources will be protected and preserved in place. If such resources must be disturbed, mitigation measures will be undertaken.
- New additions, exterior alterations, or related new construction will not destroy historic materials, features, and spatial relationships that characterize the property. The new work will be differentiated from the old and will be compatible with the historic materials, features, size, scale and proportion, and massing to protect the integrity of the property and its environment.
- New additions and adjacent or related new construction will be undertaken in such a manner that, if removed in the future, the essential form and integrity of the historic property and its environment would be unimpaired.
These standards provide a consistent framework for guiding rehabilitation projects to ensure that the historic integrity of a building is preserved. They serve as the basis for evaluating work under several preservation programs, including the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives Program. In addition, many state and local preservation agencies adopt these standards or use them as guidelines for reviewing and approving local rehabilitation projects. These standards help maintain consistency and quality in the treatment of historic properties across the country.
Further information on the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation and additional guidance for the rehabilitation of historic buildings can be found below.
In addition to the Standards for Rehabilitation, the National Park Service’s Technical Preservation Services has issued a series of Preservation Briefs and Preservation Tech Notes that provide guidance on best practices for treating specific historic materials and features. These publications help historic property owners identify and address common challenges before beginning work. They offer practical guidance and preservation-sensitive solutions. These publications also outline methods and approaches that align with the Standards for Rehabilitation and support the retention of a building’s historic character.
Technical Preservation Services has also issued various other publications for guidance on a wide variety of topics, ranging from historic materials to property types to building codes. Their publications and an index by topic are available below.
