 | Cultural Resources - Buildings
Historic Structures and Transportation Projects |
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| Pennsylvania's legacy of historic buildings has been evolving now for over three centuries. It's a diverse and important legacy that includes magnificent public buildings, imposing industrial complexes, private offices and residences, rural settlements and farms, and entire districts and neighborhoods of related structures. Taken together, they constitute a key element of a |  |
| landscape that's distinctively Pennsylvanian. Transportation projects can affect historic buildings and districts in profound ways. To ensure that those effects are avoided when possible, and minimized or mitigated when they can't be avoided, PennDOT implements practices intended to maintain the historic fabric of the landscapes and communities we serve. |
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 | When a transportation project is contemplated, architectural historians working for the Department begin their work with extensive background research on the local history and with surveys of buildings and districts that may be eligible to the National Register of Historic Places. The information produced by this research is factored into the planning and design of the project, and our first choice is a complete avoidance of effects |
| to important buildings and structures whenever possible. When unavoidable effects occur, the Department will implement minimization or mitigation practices. These practices take into account the significance of the affected buildings and the severity of the project effects, they conform to the Secretary of Interior's standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, and they're developed in consultation with the State Historic Preservation Office. They range in scope from simply screening properties with shrubs or other landscaping elements, through precise architectural recording of buildings for the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record prior to demolition, to stupendous feats of engineering like moving the King of Prussia Inn. Transportation enhancement projects, using Federal Highway Administration funds earmarked for the purpose, have been used to conduct major historic preservation rehabilitations and adaptive reuse projects in communities across Pennsylvania. |
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| If you'd like to know more about historic structures and transportation projects please contact:
Kara Russell
BOD/EQAD Architectural Historian
(717) 705-1484
krussell@pa.gov | |
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