The National Register criteria are the federal framework used to evaluate whether a district, site, building, structure, or object is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The familiar Criteria A-D address why a property may be significant, but they are only part of the evaluation. Historic context and historic integrity matter too.
That distinction is important in practice. A building can be old and intact without being National Register eligible. A property can have an important history but lack enough integrity to convey that significance. And a resource that falls into a category that is ordinarily excluded may still qualify if it satisfies the applicable Criteria Consideration.
What are the National Register Criteria for Evaluation?
The National Register Criteria for Evaluation are codified at 36 CFR 60.4. They are used in National Register nominations and in evaluations of National Register eligibility. To qualify, a property must be significant within an appropriate historic context, meet at least one of Criteria A-D, and retain the historic integrity needed to convey that significance.
Properties are evaluated as one of five National Register property types: district, site, building, structure, or object. A traditional cultural property or traditional cultural place must fit one of those recognized types rather than functioning as a sixth type. A single property can meet more than one criterion, and historic districts commonly contain a mix of contributing and noncontributing resources.
Criterion A: association with important events or broad patterns
Criterion A applies when a property is meaningfully associated with events or patterns that made a significant contribution to history. The relevant history can be local, state, or national, depending on the historic context being evaluated.
The criterion is broader than a single famous event. It can apply to places that illustrate long-term patterns such as community development, transportation, commerce, education, civil rights, agriculture, industry, or social history. The key is a demonstrated association between the property and the important history, not simply that something happened there.
Criterion B: association with a significant person
Criterion B applies to properties associated with the lives of people significant in the past. The association should relate to the period when the person made the contributions for which they are important.
A brief association can qualify when it was consequential, but incidental contact or a famous person's mere presence generally does not establish Criterion B significance. National Park Service guidance also calls for comparison with other properties associated with the same person so the nomination can explain why the property being evaluated is an important representation of that person's productive life or historical contribution.
Criterion C: design, construction, masterwork, artistic value, or a significant entity
Criterion C covers several related paths to significance. A property may qualify because it embodies distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction; represents the work of a master; possesses high artistic values; or forms part of a significant and distinguishable entity whose individual components may not all be individually distinctive.
This is the criterion most often associated with architecture, engineering, landscape design, craftsmanship, and historic districts. It does not mean that every attractive old building qualifies. The property still has to be important within a defensible context and retain the physical characteristics needed to express that significance.
Criterion D: important information potential
Criterion D applies when a property has yielded, or is likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history. It is most commonly used for archeological sites and districts, but National Park Service guidance also recognizes that buildings, structures, and objects can qualify when the property itself is, or was, the principal source of important information.
The important word is important. Nearly any historic place can provide some information. Criterion D requires a research question or information potential that matters within an appropriate historic or archeological context, together with evidence demonstrating that the property has yielded, or is likely to yield, data capable of addressing those questions.
Meeting a criterion is not enough: historic context matters
The National Register criteria are not applied in isolation. National Park Service guidance places the property within a historic context that defines the relevant theme, geographic area, and period. That context is what makes an association, design, person, or research question meaningful.
For example, a neighborhood school might be significant under Criterion A for its role in a community's educational development, or under Criterion C as an important local example of a particular school design. The analysis needs to explain why the property matters within that history, not simply attach a criterion letter to it.
Historic integrity is a separate part of the eligibility test
A significant history does not automatically make a property eligible. The property must also retain integrity, meaning the ability to convey the significance being claimed. The National Register recognizes seven aspects of integrity: location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association.
Not every property must retain every aspect to the same degree. Which aspects matter most depends on the reason the property is significant. A building nominated primarily for architecture may depend heavily on design, materials, and workmanship. For a property significant under Criteria A or B, location, setting, feeling, and association are often especially important, although the relevant mix of integrity aspects depends on the property's significance and essential physical features.
Integrity is also not the same as condition. A building can be physically deteriorated and still retain the features that convey its significance, while a well-maintained building can lose integrity through major alterations that remove or obscure those features.
What are the National Register Criteria Considerations?
Section 60.4 also identifies categories of properties that are ordinarily not eligible unless they meet specified exceptions. These are commonly called Criteria Considerations A-G. They address religious properties; moved buildings or structures; birthplaces and graves; cemeteries; reconstructed buildings; primarily commemorative properties; and properties that achieved significance within the past 50 years.
The word ordinarily matters. These categories are not automatic disqualifications. A religious property, for example, may qualify when its primary significance is architectural, artistic, or historical. A moved building may qualify in circumstances defined by the regulation. A property that achieved significance within the past 50 years may qualify if it is of exceptional importance. Resources in these categories may also qualify as integral parts of districts that meet the criteria, as provided in the regulation.
The 50-year guideline is not a birthday rule
The National Park Service often describes 50 years as a general guide for the historical perspective needed to evaluate significance. That does not mean a property becomes eligible when it turns 50, and it does not mean every younger property is ineligible.
Criteria Consideration G applies to properties that achieved significance within the past 50 years. Those properties ordinarily need to demonstrate exceptional importance. Criteria Consideration G also contains specific provisions for resources that are integral parts of qualifying historic districts. A property older than 50 years still has to meet the normal tests of significance, context, and integrity.
National Register criteria are not the Secretary of the Interior's Standards
These two federal frameworks are often mentioned together, but they answer different questions. The National Register criteria evaluate whether a property is significant and eligible for listing. The Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties guide the treatment of historic properties in preservation, rehabilitation, restoration, and reconstruction contexts.
A project may involve both. For example, an eligibility evaluation may establish that a property is historic, while a later rehabilitation review may consider whether proposed work meets the applicable treatment standards. The criteria themselves do not prescribe a rehabilitation scope.
National Register criteria also matter outside a nomination
For preservation professionals, the criteria often appear in project records long before a National Register nomination is completed, and sometimes without a nomination ever being prepared.
Under Section 106, the federal agency applies the National Register criteria in consultation with the SHPO or THPO. A property can be considered eligible, and therefore treated as a historic property for Section 106 purposes, without being formally listed in the National Register.
For more on how that review can surface developing work, see Preserve Signal's guide to what Section 106 can signal about upcoming historic preservation work.
The criteria can also appear in survey reports, planning studies, environmental reviews, tax-credit documentation, grant files, preservation commission records, and consultant scopes. Preserve Signal's guide to historic preservation grants explains why funding applications and awards can be useful early signals without proving that construction is ready. In these records, a recommendation of eligibility can be meaningful because it helps define which resources matter and why.
For rehabilitation projects, eligibility can also intersect with the federal historic tax credit process. Preserve Signal explains that project trail in Historic tax credits as a signal of future design and construction work.
How to read an eligibility statement
When you encounter a National Register eligibility recommendation in a survey, environmental document, historic structure report, or consultant study, look for the logic behind the conclusion. A defensible evaluation should identify the historic context, the applicable criterion or criteria, the level and area of significance when relevant, the period of significance, and the aspects of integrity that allow the property to convey that significance.
Also watch the status language. "Potentially eligible," "recommended eligible," a Section 106 consensus determination, a formal determination of eligibility, and an actual National Register listing are not identical procedural statuses. The underlying criteria may be the same, but the decision-maker and legal or administrative context can differ.
Why the criteria matter for project intelligence
For firms pursuing historic preservation work, a National Register evaluation can clarify more than whether a place is historic. It can identify the features, associations, boundaries, and periods that later shape design decisions, consultation, grant eligibility, tax-credit planning, mitigation, or construction scope. For broader context on how those early signals combine across active work, see what current preservation projects reveal about the market.
The strongest signal comes from connecting the eligibility record with what happens next. A survey may identify a property. A federal review may establish a project connection. Funding may advance planning. An architect or consultant selection may define the scope. Procurement may eventually bring the work to market. That is why it helps to track a preservation project from funding through construction rather than treat the eligibility finding as the endpoint.
That broader sequencing is the focus of Preserve Signal's guide to finding historic preservation projects before formal procurement. Once work reaches the market, the guide to RFQ vs. RFP vs. invitation to bid explains what different solicitation types can reveal about project maturity.
The practical takeaway
National Register eligibility, even at the national level of significance, is distinct from National Historic Landmark designation. For the separate federal threshold, see historic significance and National Historic Landmark standards.
The National Register criteria are not a checklist for deciding whether a place simply feels historic. Criteria A-D identify the kinds of significance a property may possess. Historic context explains why that significance matters. Integrity determines whether the surviving property can still convey it. Criteria Considerations address categories that need additional justification.
Read together, those elements provide the framework for a defensible National Register eligibility decision and help explain why the same building may fail to demonstrate significance within one proposed historic context yet qualify within another, or may be significant under more than one criterion at the same time.