The Controversy Over Raising Historic Buildings

Posted: August 7, 2018

Until fairly recently, Charleston’s preservation community was adamantly opposed to elevating historic buildings simply because of flood risk.  Massive damage from Hurricane Hugo in 1989 demonstrated the dangers for historic buildings within the low-lying areas of the city.  However, this hurricane was viewed as a fairly isolated event, and for many years both the city and the preservation community focused their efforts upon how to keep historic buildings from having to be raised or seriously altered.

Today, we believe that flooding impacts constitute an existential threat to our historic district and our position on elevating historic buildings has evolved.  We believe that elevating historic buildings can be successfully accomplished in many cases but there is no “one size fits all” solution.  Why has this been controversial?  What’s the big deal when it comes to elevating a historic building?

Charleston is undeniably proud of its historic architecture. The city has one of the most, if not THE most, important collections of residential and civic architecture in the United States. Charleston pioneered the field of historic preservation by enacting, in 1931, an ordinance establishing a local historic district on the Lower Peninsula that was to be overseen by a Board of Architectural Review.  In 1960, Charleston was designated as a National Historic Landmark District.  Both the local and the nationally recognized district have been greatly expanded over the years and for both designations, retaining the historic character of individual buildings is key to the preservation of the whole.

The visual character of a historic building is closely linked to its overall design, its height, massing, proportion and the overall scale of its architectural features. Civic buildings and most residential buildings have historically been designed with these key elements in mind.  So, when the height of a structure is suddenly changed, it alters the overall proportions of the historic building and affects its integrity. Raising one historic building on a block can also throw into question that building’s relationship to its neighbors and to the historic district as a whole. Have you ever seen a new Charleston single house, built to new codes and flood zones, inserted into a historic streetscape downtown?  The overly tall ground floor, typically built to accommodate parking under the house, creates a-typical proportions and can create a jarring note within a street of smaller scaled single houses. Without some serious mitigation strategies, it can look as if a beach house has landed in the historic district.

Charleston’s preservation community has always sought to minimize any negative impacts to individual buildings, historic neighborhoods and the city as a whole, but we are now confronted with the new reality of rising waters.  Significant flooding now stems not only from hurricanes and storms, but also from sea level rise and climate change.  Today, we know that we must accommodate the elevation of historic buildings where warranted and where possible in order to create resiliency for our buildings and historic districts and to ensure their very survival.

How can this be accomplished?  In short, we must find the “sweet spot” between reducing damage to our historic buildings from flooding events while preserving their physical integrity and historic architectural proportion and character.

For more information:

The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties has long been the publication to which historic property owners, design professionals, and preservationists turn for advice and recommendations pertaining to the preservation of historic buildings.  In recognition of the myriad challenges facing historic structures around the country, the Standards now include a section addressing “Resilience to Natural Hazards.”