Kentucky: Heritage Council

Under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the Kentucky Heritage Council is authorized to identify and recommend eligible properties for listing in the National Register. To facilitate the nomination process, the Heritage Council maintains an extensive inventory of Kentucky's historic resources and periodically conducts surveys in communities throughout the state.

The Heritage Council's survey program has been actively recording Kentucky's historic places since 1971, when the first comprehensive statewide survey was published identifying 1,951 historic sites throughout the Commonwealth. Completed just five years after the Heritage Council was established by the Kentucky Legislature, this early survey included what might be expected to have been identified as most important at that time - primarily grand houses built by wealthy residents or places associated with prominent figures in Kentucky history.

Contrast this early number with the Kentucky Historic Resources Inventory of today, which currently consists of 75,000+ surveyed sites and grows in scope every year.

Initial survey activities were carried out by local volunteers with an avocational interest in historic preservation. In the 1971 survey, the council began a comprehensive statewide architectural survey conducted by professional architectural historians. Unlike past surveys, though, the focus was on all cultural and historic resources that make Kentucky a unique place. So, barns, downtown commercial buildings, and more modest houses were documented. This new approach allowed for a more complete view of the state's rich past and is an approach that continues to evolve today.

Since 1980, most historic building surveys have been funded jointly by communities and the Heritage Council using Federal Survey and Planning Grants. For the most part, these survey projects have been undertaken by architectural historians and other preservation professionals.

The focus of survey activities was again broadened in the late 1980s/early 1990s to include historic and cultural resources associated with various ethnic and cultural minorities. In 1994, the Kentucky African American Heritage Commission was established to partially address this issue. An advisory board for the agencies of the Kentucky Commerce Cabinet, the commission was created to identify and promote awareness of the significant African American influences upon the history and culture of Kentucky and to support and encourage the preservation of African American heritage in Kentucky.

Today, survey projects undertaken through the Kentucky Historic Resources Inventory program can be regional or countywide in scope, can focus on a neighborhood or city, or can explore various themes in Kentucky history such as the Civil War or buildings of "the automobile age." We now understand that survey work is an ongoing necessity, because every year new buildings turn 50 years old, and every year our definition of what is considered "important" or worthy of preservation continues to expand and broaden.