Historic Preservation ― Caring for Our Expanding Legacy

This book offers an up-to-date synthesis of the field of historic preservation, cast as a social campaign concerned with the condition, treatment and use of the legacy of existing properties in the United States. It explores topics such as preservation economics and finance, context and design, ethics and advocacy, and the importance of religious activities in our cultural understandings, some of which are generally given short shrift or ignored almost completely. Drawing on a wide range of research, experience and scholarship over the last fifty years, it challenges us to re-think past and current ideas in preservation. It explores how their interests lie within the cognitive framework of the activities taking place now and with the people who will care in the future.

Michael A. Tomlan is the Director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation Planning in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University. With nearly four decades of teaching and field experience, Professor Tomlan serves students pursuing degrees not only in historic preservation but also in archaeology, architecture, city & regional planning, history, public administration, real estate, and urban studies. A published author with a wide range of interests, he also edited Preservation of What? For Whom? A Critical Look at Historical Significance (1998). He currently serves as a Project Director for the National Council for Preservation Education, having established a cooperative agreement for that organization with the National Park Service in 1995 that supports the longest-running preservation internship program in the country. Dr. Tomlan is a Fellow of the Association for Preservation Technology, a former board member of the Society of Architectural Historians, former consultant to the World Monuments Fund and advisor to the Global Heritage Fund, working on significant sites in India, China and Cambodia. He regularly travels abroad as the Treasurer of Heritage Watch International, based in Siem Reap, and the President of Yosothor, a publishing firm in Phnom Penh, in Cambodia. He also remains the Chair of the New York State Barn Alliance, and the President of Historic Urban Plans, Inc., based in Ithaca, NY.