Architectural History and History

AECOM’s architectural history and history group offers a full range of technical expertise in the identification, documentation, and evaluation of historic buildings, structures, objects, districts, and landscapes. Our professionals regularly assist local, state, and federal agencies on a wide range of compliance and documentation projects. All of our architectural historians and historians meet the Secretary of the Interior’s Professional Qualification Standards and have extensive experience surveying and interpreting the built environment. Many staff members have worked for state historic preservation offices, state departments of transportation, and federal agencies throughout the eastern United States.

AECOM’s approach relies on integration—blending the skills of architectural and industrial historians, historians, preservation planners, conservators, and technical support staff. It is this diversity that gives us a keen understanding of a wide variety of resource types, including: transportation resources (historic roads, bridges, railroads, and airports); industrial properties (mills, breweries, manufacturing plants); institutional buildings (museums, churches, auditoriums); agricultural properties (farmsteads, outbuildings, cemeteries, rural landscapes); and urban resources (early transit systems, residential and commercial historic districts, mixed-use urban landscapes).

 Our architectural history and history services include: 

• Reconnaissance- and intensive-level historic architectural surveys
• National Register of Historic Places nominations
• Determinations of eligibility
• Assessments of effect
• Memoranda of agreement/programmatic agreements
• HABS/HAER/HALS documentation
• Local and state recordation and inventories
• Public education and outreach
• Historic preservation design guidelines
• State and federal historic preservation tax incentives projects
• Historic Context and Thematic Studies
• Historic structure reports
• Historic preservation plans

We also offer extensive experience conducting architectural history studies in compliance with federal regulations such as:

• Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act
• National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)

Section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act