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National Register Criteria for Evaluation

The following criteria are designed to guide states, federal agencies, and the Secretary of the Interior in evaluating entries for the National Register.

The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archeology, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that possess integrity of location, design, setting, material, workmanship, feeling, and association, and:

  1. that are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or
  2. that are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or
  3. that embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction; or
  4. that have yielded or may be likely to yield information important to prehistory or history.

Ordinarily, cemeteries, birthplaces, or graves of historical figures, properties owned by religious institutions or used for religious purposes, structures that have been moved from their original locations, reconstructed historic buildings, properties primarily commemorative in nature, and properties that have achieved significance within the last 50 years shall not be considered for the National Register. Such properties will qualify if they are integral parts of districts that meet the criteria or if they fall within the following categories:

  1. a religious property deriving primary significance from architectural or artistic distinction or historical importance; or
  2. a building or structure removed from its original location but which is significant primarily for architectural value, or which is the surviving structure most importantly associated with a historic person or event; or
  3. a birthplace or grave of a historical figure of outstanding importance if there is no other appropriate site or building directly associated with his productive life; or
  4. a cemetery that derives its primary significance from graves of persons of transcendent importance, from age, from distinctive design features, or from association with historic events; or
  5. a reconstructed building when accurately executed in a suitable environment and presented in a dignified manner as a part of a restoration master plan, and when no other building or structure with the same association has survived; or
  6. a property primarily commemorative in intent if design, age, tradition, or symbolic value has invested it with its own historical significance; or
  7. a property achieving significance within the past 50 years if it is of exceptional importance.