TAKING
CARE OF YOUR OLD BARN
Historic Preservation Standards.
The common-sense approach to preserving
barns described here is based on the national guidelines for preserving
historic buildings, which are called "The Secretary of the Interior's
Standards for Rehabilitation." These standards are always to be applied
taking into account the economic and technical feasibility of any work
to be done. Although expressed in the vocabulary of historic preservation
and design professionals, the standards are still remarkably direct in
spelling out what makes sense and what does not when you are fixing a historic
building. When professionals say that work on barns should meet these standards,
they are saying that the work should follow the approach to barn preservation
described in this web site.
© 1995 Vermont Division for Historic Preservation and Vermont
Housing and Conservation Board. All rights reserved.
The Secretary of the Interior's
Standards for Rehabilitation
1. A property shall be used as it
was historically or be given a new use that requires minimal change to
its distinctive materials, features, spaces, and spatial relationships.
2. The historic character of a property
shall be retained and preserved. The removal of distinctive materials or
alteration of features, spaces, spatial relationships that characterize
a property shall be avoided.
3. Each property shall be recognized
as a physical record of its time, place, and use. Changes that create a
false sense of historical development, such as adding conjectural features
or elements from other historic properties, shall not be undertaken.
4. Changes to a property that have
acquired historic significance in their own right shall be retained and
preserved.
5. Distinctive materials, features,
finishes, and construction techniques or examples of craftsmanship that
characterize a property shall be preserved.
6. Deteriorated historic features
shall be repaired rather than replaced. Where the severity of deterioration
requires replacement of a distinctive feature, the new feature shall match
the old in design, color, texture, and, where possible, materials. Replacement
of missing features shall be substantiated by documentary and physical
evidence.
7. Chemical or physical treatments,
if appropriate, shall be undertaken using the gentlest means possible.
Treatments that cause damage to historic materials shall not be used.
8. Archeological resources shall
be protected and preserved in place. If such resources must be disturbed,
mitigation measures shall be undertaken.
9. New additions, exterior alterations,
or related new construction shall not destroy historic materials, features,
and spatial relationships that characterize the property. The new work
shall be differentiated from the old and shall be compatible with the historic
materials, features, size, scale and proportion, and massing to protect
the integrity of the property and its environment.
10. New additions and adjacent or related new construction shall be undertaken in such a manner that, if removed in the future, the essential form and integrity of the historic property and its environment would be unimpaired.