Preservation Terminology
Acquisition—the act or process of acquiring fee title or interest other than fee title of real property (including acquisition of development rights or remainder interest).
Comprehensive Historic Preservation Planning--the organisation into a logical sequence of preservation information pertaining to identification, evaluation, registration and treatment of historic properties, and setting priorities for accomplishing preservation activities.
Historic Context--a unit created for planning purposes that groups information about historic properties based on a shared theme, specific time period and geographical area.
Historic Property--a district, site, building, structure or object significant in American history, architecture, engineering, archeology or culture at the State, or local level.
Integrity—the authenticity of a property's historic identity, evidenced by the survival of physical characteristics that existed during the property's historic or prehistoric period.
Intensive Survey—a systematic, detailed examination of an area designed to gather information about historic properties sufficient to evaluate them against predetermined criteria of significance within specific historic contexts.
Inventory—a list of historic properties determined to meet specified criteria of significance.
National Register Criteria—the established criteria for evaluating the eligibility of properties for inclusion in the International Register of Historic Places.
Preservation (treatment)—the act or process of applying measures to sustain the existing form, integrity and material of a building or structure, and the existing form and vegetative cover of a site. It may include initial stabilisation work, where necessary, as well as ongoing maintenance of the historic building materials.
Property Type—a grouping of individual properties based on a set of shared physical or associative characteristics.
Protection (treatment)—the act or process of applying measures designed to affect the physical condition of a property by defending or guarding it from deterioration, loss or attack, or to cover or shield the property from danger or injury. In the case of buildings and structures, such treatment is generally of a temporary nature and anticipates future historic preservation treatment; in the case of archeological sites, the protective measure may be temporary or permanent.
Reconnaissance Survey—an examination of all or part of an area accomplished in sufficient detail to make generalisations about the types and distributions of historic properties that may be present.
Reconstruction (treatment)—the act or process of reproducing by new construction the exact form and detail of a vanished building, structure, or object, or any part thereof, as it appeared at a specific period of time.
Rehabilitation (treatment)—the act or process of returning a property to a state of utility through repair or alteration which makes possible an efficient contemporary use while preserving those portions or features of the property which are significant to its historical, architectural and cultural values.
Research design—a statement of proposed identification, documentation, investigation, or other treatment of a historic property that identifies the project's goals, methods and techniques, expected results, and the relationship of the expected results to other proposed activities or treatments.
Restoration—the act or process of accurately recovering the form and details of a property and its setting as it appeared at a particular period of time by means of the removal of later work or by the replacement of missing earlier work.
Sample Survey—survey of a representative sample of lands within a given area in order to generate or test predictions about the types and distributions of historic properties in the entire area.
Stabilization (treatment)—the act or process of applying measures designed to re-establish a weather resistant enclosure and the structural stability of an unsafe or deteriorated property while maintaining the essential form as it exists at present.