News

New NPS Resources on Sustainability, Energy Efficiency, Resilience, and Historic Buildings

April 15, 2024

New Website on Sustainability, Energy Efficiency, Resilience, and Historic Buildings

Historic properties can be made more sustainable, energy-efficient, and resilient, improving their performance and use while also preserving their historic character. Doing so not only improves their efficiency and livability but helps to ensure their long-term preservation as well.The NPS has been providing guidance and technical preservation information on these issues in relation to the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties for decades since producing one of its first Preservation Briefs on the subject of energy efficiency in 1978.Current NPS guidance and information are collected and presented in a new webpage for easy access to further explore these topics

New Guidance on Resilience to Natural Hazards and Historic Buildings

New guidance on resilience to natural hazards has been issued. It is adapted from the “Resilience to Natural Hazards” section in The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties with Guidelines for Preserving, Rehabilitating, Restoring and Reconstructing Historic Buildings (2017) and from The Guidelines on Flood Adaptation for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings (2021).

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NPS Issues Reports Highlighting Success of Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives Program

Feburary 28, 2024

The National Park Service issued two reports highlighting the successes of the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives Program this week.

The NPS issued a press release about the Annual Report on the Economic Impact of the Federal Historic Tax Credits for Fiscal Year 2022 prepared in collaboration with the Rutgers University Center for Urban Policy Research. The Center analyzed the economic impacts of the historic tax credits on the national economy, and, as the report identifies, the level and breadth of the economic impacts resulting from the Federal HTCs in FY 2022 are quite significant. The report also includes information on the cumulative economic impact of the Federal HTCs for the past 45 years, starting in 1977–78 with the first completed rehabilitation project to be certified by the NPS under the program.

The second report, Federal Tax Incentives for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2023, focuses on the program’s accomplishments in the last fiscal year. Program activity remained high, and nearly half (46%) of all certified rehabilitations were under $1 million in Fiscal Year 2023. Estimated rehabilitation costs totaled $9.49 billion for preliminary certifications and $8.81 billion for final certifications. Since 1977, the historic preservation tax incentives have generated a total of $131.71 billion in estimated rehabilitation investment in 49,263 rehabilitation projects.

The reports also include case studies of successful projects in Ohio, Virginia, and Indiana.

The Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentives Program is administered by Technical Preservation Services, National Park Service and the Internal Revenue Service in partnership with the State Historic Preservation Offices. It is the nation’s most effective program to promote historic preservation and community revitalization through historic rehabilitation.

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Historic Preservation Certification Application Submission is Going Electronic

June 30, 2023

As of August 15, 2023, all historic preservation certification applications must be submitted electronically, both new applications submitted to State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs) and materials submitted to the NPS in response to requests for additional information.
More information on electronic submission

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Federal Tax Incentives for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings Annual Report for 2022 Released

March 1, 2023

The Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2022 highlights $6.56 billion investment in the rehabilitation of historic buildings. With over 48,000 completed projects since its enactment in 1976, the program has leveraged over $122.90 billion in private investment in the rehabilitation of historic properties—spurring the rehabilitation of historic structures of every period, size, style, and type in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.