Contributing property

Local laws often regulate the changes that can be made to contributing structures within designated historic districts.

The first local ordinances dealing with the alteration of buildings within historic districts was enacted in Charleston, South Carolina in 1931.

An amendment to the Louisiana Constitution led to the 1937 creation of the Vieux Carre Commission,[1] which was charged with protecting and preserving the French Quarter in the city of New Orleans.

[1] In 1939, the city of San Antonio, Texas, enacted an ordinance to protect the area of La Villita, the original Mexican village marketplace.

2d 129 (1941)), Louisiana state appellate courts ruled that the design and demolition controls were valid within defined historic districts.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, controls that once applied only to buildings within historic districts were extended to individual landmark structures.

[3] The United States Congress adopted legislation in 1950 that declared the Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, D.C. a historic district and protected.

Districts nominated to the National Register of Historic Places after 1980 usually list those structures considered non-contributing.

[12] For example, in the East Grove Street District in Bloomington, Illinois, contributing properties include the Queen Anne-style George H. Cox House (1886) and the Arts and Crafts-style H.W.