Recent Past
In American historic preservation, the fifty-year rule is the generally held belief that a property cannot be listed in the National Register of Historic Places unless it is at least fifty years old. Actually, this rule is not a hard rule at all; it is an exception to the National Register's criteria for evaluation. As stated by John H. Sprinkle, Jr., Deputy Director of the Federal Preservation Institute, “this ‘rule’ is only an exception to the criteria that shape listings within the National Register of Historic Places. Of the eight “exceptions”, Consideration G, for properties that have achieved significance within the past fifty years, is probably best-known, yet also misunderstood preservation principal in America.”
With each passing year a new group of resources crosses the fifty-year threshold, that were before considered “too recent” for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (unless they were exceptionally significant). The preservation of these “underage” resources, has gained increasing attention in recent years.
Read more about this topic: National Register Of Historic Places
Famous quotes containing the word past:
“Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else.”
—Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)