Tippetts/Weaver has extensive experience in historical projects; applying the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, as part of the National Park Service’s Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit Program. We maintain a high level of interest in the preservation, restoration and adaptive reuse of historic and existing buildings and sites. Our expertise in working with existing and historic structures, coupled with our beliefs that architecture of the twenty-first century should speak to our time, our social context and to the construction technologies of this era, create a very interesting and compelling dialogue between the modern aesthetic and the historic or existing context.

There are four approaches to working with historic buildings, as laid out by the National Park Service. Preservation focuses on the maintenance and repair of existing historic materials and retention of a property’s form as it has evolved over time. Rehabilitation acknowledges the need to alter or add to a historic property to meet continuing or changing uses, while retaining the property’s historic character. Restoration depicts a property at a particular period of time in its history, while removing evidence of other periods. Reconstruction re-creates vanished or non-surviving portions of a property for interpretive purposes.

A few of the items that are considered when selecting a treatment for a historic building are historical significance, physical condition, and proposed use.