National Register of Historic Places - Types of Properties

Types of Properties

See also: Property type (National Register of Historic Places) and Historic district (United States)

Listed properties are generally in one of five broad categories, although there are special considerations for other types of properties that in any one, or into more specialized subcategories. The five general categories for National Register properties are: building, structure, site, district, and object. In addition, historic districts consist of contributing and non-contributing properties.

Buildings, as defined by the National Register, are distinguished in the traditional sense. Examples include a house, barn, hotel, church, or similar construction. They are created primarily to shelter human activity. The term building, as in outbuilding, can be used to refer to historically and functionally related units, such as a courthouse and a jail or a barn and a house.

Structures differ from buildings in that they are functional constructions meant to be used for purposes other than sheltering human activity. Examples include an aircraft, a grain elevator, a gazebo, and a bridge.

Objects are usually artistic in nature, or small in scale compared to structures and buildings. Although objects may be movable, they are generally associated with a specific setting or environment. Examples of objects include monuments, sculptures, and fountains.

Sites are the locations of significant events, which can be prehistoric or historic in nature and represent activities or buildings (standing, ruined, or vanished). When sites are listed, it is the locations themselves that are of historical interest. They possesses cultural or archaeological value regardless of the value of any structures that currently exist at the locations. Examples of types of sites include shipwrecks, battlefields, campsites, natural features, and rock shelters.

Historic districts possess a concentration, association, or continuity of the other four types of properties. Objects, structures, buildings, and sites in a historic district are united historically or aesthetically, either by choice or by the nature of their development.

There are several other different types of historic preservation associated with the properties of the National Register of Historic Places that cannot be classified as either simple buildings and historic districts. Through the National Park Service, the National Register of Historic Places publishes a series of bulletins designed to aid in evaluating and applying the criteria for evaluation of different types of properties. Although the criteria are always the same, the manner they are applied may differ slightly, depending upon the type of property involved. The National Register bulletins describe application of the criteria for aids to navigation, historic battlefields, archaeological sites, aviation properties, cemeteries, and burial places, historic designed landscapes, mining sites, post offices, properties associated with significant persons, properties achieving significance within the last fifty years, rural historic landscapes, traditional cultural properties, and vessels and shipwrecks.