Barrett Planning Group is pleased to be working with the Town of Wenham Historic District Commission (WHDC) to update the WHDC’s local historic district design guidelines. Using the Massachusetts Historic Districts Act, GL c. 40C, Wenham Town Meeting established the town’s local historic district in 1972. It encompasses about 100 properties along Main Street running between the town’s borders with Beverly and Hamilton. The district is almost exclusively residential with a handful of religious, commercial, and municipal properties.
Enacted by the legislature in 1960, at the beginning of the modern preservation movement, Massachusetts’ Historic Districts Act provides limited guidance on how local historic district commissions are to review projects within the historic district. General Law C. 40C, §7, “Factors to be considered by the commission,” provides some basic guardrails: commissions should consider “the historic and architectural value and significance of the site, building or structure, the general design, arrangement, texture, material and color of the features involved, and the relation of such features to similar features of buildings and structures in the surrounding area.” The “Definitions” section provides some more information, such as what “altered” and “exterior architectural feature” mean in the context of the legislation. But the Historic Districts Act does not refer to more detailed guidelines, such as the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards, that have now become best preservation practices.
The WHDC adopted some basic design guidelines, outlining the application process and providing some further detail on how the WHDC reviews specific items. But here again, detail is lacking, and the guidelines are not illustrated with drawings or pictures depicting either good or bad preservation practices. This makes the review process difficult for both applicants and WHDC members. Applicants have a limited idea ahead of time of what might or might not be acceptable to the WHDC, and the WHDC must start anew with each application to determine if a proposed change is appropriate or not for the district. Additionally, the guidelines do not incorporate current concerns such as green technologies and alternative materials.
Barrett Planning Group Preservation Planner Jenn Doherty will be working closely with the WHDC over the next few months to prepare new design guidelines for the commission. The goal is to produce guidelines that are practical and usable for both applicants and the WHDC, incorporating current preservation best practices while providing the WHDC with an evaluation framework for the variety of projects and applications that might come before them.
