Creating a photographic and written record of historic places helps to recognize, value and preserve local heritage. Survey projects compile information about community history and architectural data from many different sources. The information is made available to the community and offers local residents and the broader public a new understanding of the whole and its parts.

“The statewide architectural survey enhances our creative economy by identifying those resources that give our state its distinctive beauty and character,” says Dr. David Brook, director of the Division of Historical Resources. “It helps us carry our heritage into the future for the benefit of generations to come.”

The HPO will conduct an architectural survey of Carteret County by comprehensively recording county properties that are 50 years old or older and largely intact. The exceptions are the Beaufort National Register Historic District, which has been thoroughly surveyed twice in the last 35 years, and the area in Morehead City that was surveyed in 2000-2001.

For four decades, the State Historic Preservation Office has conducted North Carolina's statewide architectural survey program. The data gathered in these projects serve many purposes, including the evaluation of properties for National Register of Historic Places eligibility, which in turn makes them potentially eligible for state and federal preservation tax credits. Since the 1970s, these credits for the rehabilitation of historic property have leveraged more than a billion dollars of private investment across North Carolina and have been instrumental in the revitalization of numerous communities.

The HPO has sponsored and co-sponsored scores of local and regional architectural surveys throughout the state -- all part of the statewide program whose mission is to identify, record and encourage the preservation of North Carolina's rich and varied historic and architectural heritage. For more information on the Carteret County survey call John Wood at (252) 830-6580.

The State Historic Preservation Office is part of the Division of Historical Resources within the Office of Archives and History, in the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, the state agency with the mission to enrich lives and communities and the vision to harness the state’s cultural resources to build North Carolina’s social, cultural and economic future. Information on Cultural Resources is available at www.ncculture.com.