Does Your Township Have Historic Properties?

Posted on March 16, 2022 |

The Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (PA SHPO), a bureau of the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission, is conducting a multiyear inventory of older and historic places that are underrepresented in the statewide inventory. 7,500 properties were added in 17 counties across the state in the first year.

PA SHPO is asking Pennsylvanians who live and work in the following counties to suggest older and historic places in their communities for this baseline survey initiative: Berks, Bucks, Butler, Carbon, Crawford, Delaware, Fayette, Greene, Lawrence, Lehigh, Luzerne, McKean, Montgomery, Northampton, Pike, Schuylkill, Venango, Warren, Washington, Wayne, and Westmoreland. If you have an older place that you would like to submit, click here to submit it online or email submissions to ra-bhpmail@pa.gov. Survey teams will be in these counties beginning in April to capture basic information about the location and appearance of places visible from the public right-of-way.

Submissions can include:

Local places: These are older and historic places important to your community. It can include buildings, neighborhoods or commercial areas, archaeological sites, structures, objects, or public spaces. Identify where the site is located and describe why this place is significant to you or your community.
African American churches or cemeteries

Underrepresented communities
Historic resources currently underrepresented in the inventory, including: recreational properties, urban redevelopment projects, fraternal buildings, mid-century resources (built between 1945-1970), industrial resources, and local vernacular architecture.

Click here to learn more about this effort