Thesis: Cohan

Thesis: Colin Cohan

Better Maintain Than Preserve: Preservation Maintenance as a Primary Tool for Historic Preservation

Regular maintenance is an aspect of historic preservation that is often overlooked as a simple obligation or another box to check. However, as a process that requires frequent interaction with structures and resources, its potential benefits are myriad. When approached as an active tool of engagement rather than a passive process born of necessity, preservation maintenance can represent the most cost-effective and minimally invasive method of protecting historic resources.

A graph displaying estimated costs of preventive maintenance vs. minor repair and major repair strategies. (“The Maintenance Series: Preparing a Maintenance Plan,” New South Wales Heritage Office, 1998)

Advocates for preservation maintenance have been active since the American Bicentennial. This wayside was placed directly outside Independence Hall shortly after the national celebrations. (Source: “NPS Reading List: Maintaining Historic Buildings,” Natio
This thesis examines the history and development of the concept of “preservation maintenance” through the lens of Preservation Maintenance Guides (PMG) and argues for a more standardized approach to their creation and implementation, particularly when applied to properties owned and operated by the US National Park Service (NPS). In the US, the process of preliminary historical documentation for historic and cultural resources has been codified into regulation for more than half a century in the form of Historic Structure Reports, but currently no standardized process exists to guide stewardship once work begins on-site.
Venn Diagram relating 32 documents dedicated to maintenance practices and their overlapping categorization as guides, guidelines, manuals, and regulations. (Source: Cohan, 2023)
Through critical assessment of a wide range of PMGs created both domestically and abroad since the mid-1970s, this thesis makes recommendations for how such a process of standardization may be accomplished in a way that maximizes cost-efficiency, small-scale intervention, and resource integrity.
Cover page of the Catoctin Mountain Park Preservation Maintenance Guide, created as a case study for this thesis. (Source: Cohan, 2023)

Catoctin Mountain Park’s log cabins represent some of the earliest iterations of the “rustic parkitecture” style pioneered by Albert H. Good in the 1930s for the National Park Service. (Source: Cohan, 2022)
To put those concepts into practice, also included is a case study centered around the creation of a PMG for the historic wooden structures at Catoctin Mountain Park, an NPS site in Thurmont, Maryland.

Thesis: Colin Cohan

Better Maintain Than Preserve: Preservation Maintenance as a Primary Tool for Historic Preservation

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