Sample Nominations

Introduction

The National Register has shared examples of successful nomination, on a variety of topics, for many years now. This expanded offering of examples is organized by topic.

Please note that this page is a work in progress. Text and images are being revised. Additional examples will be frequently uploaded.

Additional Documentation/Boundary Increase/Boundary Decrease

Additional documentation—for name changes, additional information, significance supplementation, etc.—or boundary changes are provided on a new registration form or continuation sheets for a property already listed in the National Register.
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Archeology Nominations

Properties may be eligible for the National Register if they have yielded, or may be likely to yield, important information. These are nominations for properties listed under Criterion D or with an area of significance of “archeology.”
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Areas of Significance

To qualify for the National Register, a property must be significant; that is, it must represent a significant part of the history, architecture, archeology, engineering, or culture of an area. These nominations present examples of different areas of significance, such as agriculture, education, and social history. Read the samples

Buildings

Approximately 70% of properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places are categorized as buildings (as opposed to structures, objects, sites, or districts). These listings provides examples of different building listings, from residential to commercial to industrial.
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Cemeteries

A greater appreciation has evolved in both scholarship and public perception for the important historical themes that graves, cemeteries, and other types of burial places and features can represent.
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Common Resources

National Register listings include common resources that may be abundant and, therefore, difficult to evaluate for significance. Common resources may be a group of property types characterized by common physical attributes, such as style, scale, proportions, architectural details, or methods of construction. Common resources are often addressed through the development of Multiple Property Documentation, a framework for nominating significant properties with shared themes, trends, or patterns of history; however, with a sufficiently developed context, a common resource may be documented in a single nomination.
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Comparative Analysis

In preparing a nomination, it may be helpful to compare properties of the same time and place to determine whether their character and associations are unique, representative, or pivotal in illustrating the history of a community, State, or the nation.
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Criterion A: Events

Properties may be listed in the National Register for their association with events or pattern of events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history. In National Register practice, "culture" is understood as “a pattern of events” and these samples demonstrate the wide reach of Criterion A, offering examples of properties listed for their historical cultural significance.
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Criterion B: Person

Properties may be eligible for the National Register if they are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past. These are examples of properties listed under Criterion B.
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Criterion G: Less than 50

Properties that have achieved significance within the past 50 years may be listed in the National Register of Historic Places, according to the National Register Criteria for Evaluation, only if they are of "exceptional importance," or if they are integral parts of districts that are eligible for listing in the National Register.
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Discontiguous District

A discontiguous district is a district that contains individual resources that are linked by association or function but separated geographically during the period of significance, such as discontiguous archeological sites or a canal system with manmade segments interconnected by natural bodies of water. A district may contain discontiguous elements only where the historic interrelationship of a group of resources does not depend on visual continuity and physical proximity.
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Federal Agency Nominations

These are examples of nominations submitted by Federal agencies.
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Integrity

Integrity is the ability of a property to convey its significance. There are seven aspects of integrity—setting, location, design, materials, workmanship, and feeling—but a property does not need to present all seven aspects. Determining which of these aspects are most important to a particular property requires knowing why, where, and when the property is significant. Remember, “integrity” is NOT “condition," and integrity is not assessed on a sliding scale: places either retain integrity—that is, convey their significance—or they do not.
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Multiple Property Documentation

The Multiple Property Documentation Form is a “cover” document and not a nomination in its own right. It serves as a basis for evaluating the National Register eligibility of related properties. It may be used to nominate and register topically-related historic properties simultaneously or to establish the listing requirements for properties that may be nominated in the future.
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National Level of Significance

Properties are evaluated in a national context when they represent an aspect of the history of the United States and its territories as a whole. A property with national significance helps us understand the history of the nation by illustrating the nationwide impact of events or persons associated with the property, its architectural type or style, or information potential. Read the samples

Native American Places

These nominations provide examples of Native American properties and were submitted to the National Register by Tribal Historic Preservation Offices.
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Property Descriptions

Section 7 “Narrative Description” of the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form is the place to describe the physical nature of the property and its associated resources, and to address the seven aspects of integrity.
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Removals

Requesting a removal of a property from the National Register generally indicates the property has ceased to meet the criteria for listing because the qualities which caused it to be originally listed have been lost or destroyed, or such qualities were lost subsequent to nomination and prior to listing
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Rural Historic Districts

A rural historic district is a geographical area that historically has been used by people, or shaped or modified by human activity, occupancy, or intervention, and that possesses a significant concentration, linkage, or continuity of areas of land use, vegetation, buildings and structures, roads and waterways, and natural features.
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Significance Statements

In recent years, discussions of significance in nominations have become longer and longer—often 25 pages or more—through the inclusion of information that, while interesting, is not always needed for readers to understand the property’s significance. These samples demonstrate that a Statement of Significance can be concise.
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State Level of Significance

A property significant at the state level reflects the history of the state (or territory) and the ways in which the property is one of the state's or territory's best representations of a particular theme, such as water works engineering. These properties do not necessarily have to be of a type found throughout the entire state/territory and may be located within only a portion of the state or territory.
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Traditional Cultural Places

A Traditional Cultural Place (TCP) is a building, structure, object, site, or district that may be eligible for inclusion in the National Register for its significance to a living community because of its association with cultural beliefs, customs, or practices that are rooted in the community’s history and that are important in maintaining the community’s cultural identity.
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