Glossary

You will encounter the following terms as you browse our inventories and GIS data and/or correspond with HPO staff.

Community Assistance

Design guidelines: Standards and guidelines for historically appropriate and compatible alterations and new construction.
SAGE: System for Administering Grants Electronically. This is a statewide system customized for each department, including DEP.

Heritage tourism

Heritage tourism: Traveling to experience the places and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past for educational and entertainment purposes.

Project Review

General regulatory review terms

Adverse effect or adverse impact: An effect that does not meet the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for the Treatment of Historic Properties.
Encroachment: A project has an adverse impact on a property.
Native American Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO): Similar to a State Historic Preservation Office (like HPO) but designated by a Native American tribe.
Public undertaking: In New Jersey Register Review, this is a project involving state, county or local government agencies; or lessees or agents of those agencies.
Undertaking: Any project, activity or program with federal agency involvement.

Maintenance

Routine maintenance: Minor repairs such as in-kind replacement of a broken window-pane or in-kind patching a few roof shingles. This would not require review under the New Jersey Register of Historic Places Act.
Cyclic maintenance: A type of maintenance that is performed less frequently than annually and involves replacement of major mending of the fabric of a historic property, an example of which would be a complete re-roofing of a building. this would require New Jersey Register review.

Registration

Evaluation terms

Integrity: The ability of a building, site, structure, district or object to convey its historic significance.

Local recognition

Local Certified Historic District

Historic districts that are not necessarily listed in the Registers, but recognized by the National Park Service as

meeting the criteria for registration, and
governed by a state or local statute or ordinance that protects the historic resources of the district.

Certification letters

Certification of Eligibility (COE): Statement of eligibility that satisfies a prerequisite to apply for funds from the New Jersey Historic Trust, as well as several county preservation funding programs. Issued by the New Jersey State Historic Preservation Officer.
Determination of Eligibility (DOE): Formal certification that a property is eligible for registration. Unlike a COE, this is issued by the Keeper of the National Register, National Park Service, Department of Interior.
SHPO Opinion: Opinion of eligibility issued by the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO). It is in response to a federally funded activity that will have an effect on historic properties not listed on the National Register.

State and national registration

Multiple Property Documentation Form (MPDF): The core of a Multiple Property Submission, the format currently used to register groups of properties that are related by historical association or theme but are not contiguous and need not be nominated all at the same time. A Multiple Property Documentation Form is the cover document that contains historic contexts as well as the background historical, geographical, and architectural information about the group of properties being nominated. This MPDF form is accompanied by one or more Registration Forms that describe specific properties. The MPDF also establishes the associated property types with a historic context and the registration requirements for each property type. Together, the MPDF and its associated Registration Forms comprise a Multiple Property Submission.
Multiple Property Submission (MPS): The name given to the current format for nominating groups of properties related by historical association or theme, but which are not contiguous and need not be nominated all at the same time. A MPS consists of a Multiple Property Documentation Form and its associated Registration Forms. The MPS format replaced the previously used Thematic and Multiple Resource Area (TRA/MRA) formats in 1986.
Multiple Resource Area (MRA): Discontinued format used to register groups of properties related by historical association or theme. This format was replaced by the MPS in 1986.
National Historic Landmark (NHL) Program: Designation by the National Park Service that a property has national significance. Properties designated NHLs are automatically listed in the National Register.
National Register of Historic Places (“National Register” or NR): The official list of the nation’s historic resources worthy of preservation. Resources can include districts, sites, structures, buildings and objects. These can be of local, state or national significance. This registry was established in 1966 through the National Historic Preservation Act (80 Stat. 915, as amended).
National Register (NR) Reference Number: Number provided for properties that are in the National Register Information System (NRIS) database maintained by the National Park Service.
New Jersey Register of Historic Places: The New Jersey Register is closely modeled after the National Register program. This registry was established through the Register of Historic Places Act of 1970 (N.J.S.A. 13:1B-15.128 et seq.). The nomination process for the National Register requires state-level listing first.
State Register (SR): An alternate way of referencing the New Jersey Register of Historic Places.
Thematic Nomination (TRA): Discontinued multi-property format for groups of properties that are related under a common theme or a single property type. Replaced by the MPS in 1986.

Historic contexts

Historic context: Those patterns or trends in history by which a specific occurrence, property, or site is understood and its meaning (and ultimately its significance) … is made clear.

How to Complete the National Register Multiple Property Documentation Form (formerly NRB 16B; 1991/1999)
Statewide context: Statewide frameworks based on periods of New Jersey’s development.
Thematic context: Frameworks focusing on a specific type of historic resource. They can be based around a particular property type, theme, geographic area or timeframe.

Other registration terms

Structure Inventory and Appraisal (SI&A) Number: Inventory number for bridges that are part of the Federal Bridge Inspection Program. May be referenced using “SI&A” in SHPO Opinions and other documents.

Survey and Inventory

Shared survey terms

Area of Potential Effect (APE): The area where the project has the potential to affect historic properties. For archaeological surveys, this normally involves proposed earthmoving.

Archaeological survey terms

Archaeological sensitivity: The potential for archaeological resources to exist within the Area of Potential Effects.
Archaeological data recovery work plan: A plan that guides all aspects of Phase III archaeological survey work. This includes not just the field work, but preparation of report product(s) and plans to make the results of the survey available to the public.
Important information: Data that an archaeological study has yielded or is likely to yield.
Important research questions: Questions tailored to the site type and setting that are used to direct survey work and improve our understanding of the site.
Level of effort: In archaeological data recovery, this is the point where excavation has diminishing returns for the information held within the site.

Architectural survey terms

Architectural survey: The process of identifying and gathering information about historic architectural resources.
Historic district: A significant concentration, linkage, or continuity of buildings, sites, structures, or objects united historically or aesthetically by plan or physical development.
Historic property: Resources — buildings, structures, objects, or sites — evaluated individually or that form the individual components of an historic district.

Mitigation documentation surveys

Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS): Documentation of historic buildings. This is the first, and still ongoing, federal documentation program for historic properties.
Historic American Engineering Record (HAER): Documentation of engineering and industrial resources. This program has a greater emphasis on structures and objects but follows a similar format to HABS.
Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS): Documentation of historic landscapes. This is the newest of the Heritage Documentation Programs and follows different methodologies from the earlier programs.