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National Historic Landmark Program>>>National Historic Preservation Act
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National Historic Preservation Act
Six years after the National Park Service created the National Historic Landmark Program, Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act. This act stipulated that each state must create an office devoted to preservation and a review board (Advisory Council on Historic Preservation: National Park Service, Section 101(a)). This legislation also created the National Register of Historic Places. This register was a list of structures, sites, objects, and districts that pertained to, in the words of the act, the "historical and cultural foundations of the nation (Advisory Council on Historic Preservation: National Park Service, Section 1)." The act charged the Park Service with maintaining the National Register, which became the official list of historic places in the nation. The Park Service continued to update its list of historic landmarks as well as the National Register (Advisory Council on Historic Preservation: National Park Service, Section 101(b)). In the first two sections of the NHPA, lawmakers argued that creating a list of historic home and publishing that document helped public awareness of these features. In officially identifying these sites as historic, this database also gave these places national and local importance, thereby transforming them into a national treasure and educating the public about history and the need for preservation (Advisory Council on Historic Preservation: National Park Service, Section 1-2, Title 1).
Owners of these features often nominated their own homes and property for the register (Advisory Council on Historic Preservation: National Park Service, Section 101). Along with bringing state and national recognition of the history and importance of a site, having one's property on the list provided an owner with tax incentives. Since the homeowners applied through state agencies, these tax benefits appeared on their state income tax returns. Unlike tax incentives under the National Historic Landmarks Program, owners, regardless of whether or not their properties produced income, could receive a twenty-five percent tax credit towards rehabilitating their home, with the precondition that the work done had to comply with the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation (Advisory Council on Historic Preservation: National Park Service, Section 112(b)).
Like the other federal program, the National Historic Preservation Act did not demand homeowners preserve, protect or hold onto their properties, unless they were seeking tax credits for rehabilitation. Both of these programs also emphasized that their plans would not interfere if local groups wanted to enact legislation to keep owners from destroying, damaging, or selling historic sites. Instead of laws to restrict what owners could do to their property, these national programs relied on creating a database of historic places in order to promote awareness and an interest in the preservation of historic homes and areas.