Completing a National Register Nomination

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Before beginning to write a National Register nomination, please contact the State Historic Preservation Office. Our staff will discuss your property and ask for some basic history and photographs of the property. This will help us to insure that the property is eligible for listing and determine if there are any potential issues with listing the property. In order to be eligible for listing a property must have historic significance and retain the majority of its historic character and materials.

A National Register nomination contains two major narrative sections. The first is a written description of the property. A description of individual building should include the major exterior and interior elements and materials of the building. Each of the visible elevations of the building should be described. Also the general layout, materials, and features of the main interior spaces should be discussed. This description should also include additions and alterations to the building that have been made over time.

The second major section is a written history of the building. The history needs to place the property in its historic context and clearly state why the property is historically significant. Properties can be considered significant for their association with a historic event, person, or design or construction qualities. It can also be significant for its potential to yield information about our history.

Completed nominations should be submitted to our office, along with pictures of the property and a map. The pictures should show both the exterior and main interior spaces of a building. A nomination for a historic district only needs pictures of the exteriors of buildings.

Once a nomination form is completed, it is reviewed by the State Review Board. The board meets three times a year and is composed of architects, archaeologists, historians, and planners from around the state. After the board approves a nomination it is sent to the National Park Service for official listing in the National Register.

Criteria for National Register

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The National Register's standards for evaluating the significance of properties were developed to recognize the accomplishments of all peoples who have made a significant contribution to our country's history and heritage. The criteria are designed to guide State and local governments, Federal agencies, and others in evaluating potential entries in the National Register.

Criteria for Evaluation

A property must have historic significance within one or more of the four criteria for evaluation. The criteria relate to a property’s association with important events, people, design or construction, or information potential. The National Register criteria recognize these values embodied in buildings, structures, districts, sites, and objects. The four criteria are as follows:

• Criterion A - That are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or
• Criterion B - That are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or
• Criterion C - That embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction; or
• Criterion D - That have yielded or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.

Criteria Considerations

Ordinarily cemeteries, birthplaces, graves of historical figures, properties owned by religious institutions or used for religious purposes, structures that have been moved from their original locations, reconstructed historic buildings, properties primarily commemorative in nature, and properties that have achieved significance within the past 50 years shall not be considered eligible for the National Register. However, such properties will qualify if they are integral parts of districts that do meet the criteria or if they fall within the following categories:

• A religious property deriving primary significance from architectural or artistic distinction or historical importance; or
• A building or structure removed from its original location but which is primarily significant for architectural value, or which is the surviving structure most importantly associated with a historic person or event; or
• A birthplace or grave of a historical figure of outstanding importance if there is no appropriate site or building directly associated with his or her productive life; or
• A cemetery which derives its primary importance from graves of persons of transcendent importance, from age, from distinctive design features, or from association with historic events; or
• A reconstructed building when accurately executed in a suitable environment and presented in a dignified manner as part of a restoration master plan, and when no other building or structure with the same association has survived; or
• A property primarily commemorative in intent if design, age, tradition, or symbolic value has invested it with its own exceptional significance; or
• A property achieving significance within the past 50 years if it is of exceptional importance.

Examples of National Register Nominations

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• Example NR Nominations

Commercial Buildings

Residential Buildings

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