Historic Preservation Program Elevated to Department

More than four decades since it began educating professionals to document, interpret, plan, and conserve sites of cultural significance, the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation has been granted departmental status by the University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees.

“Whether you live in rural Alabama or central Beijing, the stories found in the built world help us learn from the past, appreciate our differences, and work together to solve problems,” said Fritz Steiner, Dean and Paley Professor at the Weitzman School. “The preservation program has been at the forefront of that effort, and this transition helps ensure that it conducts its work at the highest level, well into the future.”

“This is a milestone not just for Penn but for the profession,” said Frank Matero, Gonick Family Professor and chair of the department. “At a time when cultural sites around the world face existential threats from climate change and armed conflict, the role and responsibility of preservationists are unprecedented.”

The Department of Historic Preservation counts more than 700 alums, 45 full-time students and nearly 30 faculty members, and operates three research units—the Center for Architectural Conservation, the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites, and the Urban Heritage Project—in addition to the Architectural Conservation Lab, a teaching facility.

Since it was established, in 1981, the Department has operated in almost every way that defines an academic department at Penn, managing its own curriculum, budget, student selection, and funded research. However, its status as a program required faculty members to be appointed into other departments at Weitzman, creating some inefficiency and potential confusion. 

Focusing on the historical and cultural value of our inherited environments, the Department trains students in the significance of cultural sites and their historic fabric, as well as the design of new techniques of adaptive use, planning, conservation, and management for buildings, cities, and regions. The Department offers a two-year Master of Science in Historic Preservation (MSHP), a one-year Master of Science in Design with a concentration in Historic Preservation (MSD-HP), and a Certificate in Historic Preservation for students in other graduate degree programs at Penn. All three curricula integrate the methods of history and the perspectives of historical change into the work of architects, landscape architects, engineers, archaeologists, urban planners, and other professionals.

Through its three research units, the Department has engagements with government agencies, foundations, and nonprofits in cities across the United States and abroad. Among them, the Center for Architectural Conservation (CAC) has been tasked with helping protect and plan for the future of two of the most important American architectural sites of the 20th century—the school and residence of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and his Arizona home and studio—by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. With support from Getty, the CAC is working with the National Park Service and Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps to develop conservation management plans for the Wupatki National Monument, which contains a record of over 1,000 years of Native American history in northern Arizona. With support from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the JM Kaplan Fund, the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (CPCRS) is working with students and faculty at Tuskegee University and members of the St. Paul Baptist Church to conserve the Armstrong School, a precursor to the Rosenwald Schools in Macon County, Alabama.

Graduates of the program leave Penn for work in local, state, and federal government agencies, such as state preservation offices, planning authorities, and historical commissions; the National Park Service; non-governmental organizations like The Getty Conservation Institute and the National Trust for Historic Preservation; and private practice in architecture, planning, engineering, and conservation firms.