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Historic Preservation

Introduction

The D.C. Preservation Law protects all landmarks or structures that contribute to a historic district listed in the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites. Under the law, permit applications involving a listed property, a building contributing to a historic district or its site must be reviewed for historic compatibility prior to issuance.

The Mayor's Agent acts on behalf of the Mayor of the District of Columbia in reviewing the applications. The recommendations of the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board are considered, and the decision is made as to whether or not the application meets the requirements of the law. When the HPRB recommends against granting a permit for demolition, additions, alterations, or new construction, the property owner can request a hearing before the Mayor's Agent. After the hearing, the Mayor's Agent issues a written decision that is effective 15 days later. There is no provision for administrative appeal of a decision by the Mayor's Agent. Appeals may be pursued through the judicial process.

The DC Historic Preservation Law Project

The historic preservation decisions issued by the Mayor's Agent of the District of Columbia have not been published until now. Georgetown Law Professor Peter Byrne has been assembling a collection of these decisions by working with the Mayor's Agent and the D.C. Historic Preservation Office. Efforts are being made to locate additional decisions to create as complete a collection as possible, and the Law Library is publishing the collection on the World Wide Web as a public benefit.

Valuable guidance has been provided by Tersh Boasberg, Adjunct Professor at Georgetown and Chair of the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board. Professors Byrne and Boasberg teach the Historic Preservation Law Seminar at the Law Center.

The first decisions to be put up were those made during the tenure of Senior Administrative Judge Rohulamin Quander, the current Mayor's Agent.   He is appointed to this position by the Director of the Office of Planning under delegation from the Mayor. Mr. Quander is transmitting these decisions in Word format to the Law Library, where they are being converted to HTML format and to PDF format, and then put on a server connected to the Web.

Earlier decisions from the collection of Professor Byrne have been scanned and made available in PDF format. Indexes to the entire body of opinions are being created by library staff and added to the web site. It is hoped that the project will enhance the efforts of those working to protect and preserve the historic resources of the nation's capital.

Past and present library project staff include Janice Anderson, Chanda Cook, Susan Hooker, Karen Rocabado and Hilary Seo.  M. Thomas Chance, Law Center student and research assistant in 2002/03, provided case summaries for 1999-2002 decisions.  Jeff Johnson, student and research assistant in 2003/05, wrote additional summaries.

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