Tallahassee, FL Historic Preservation: Historic-Cultural Monuments (2026)

Land Development Code Section 10-318 creates the local register of historic places, kept by the Architectural Review Board, for individually significant sites, buildings, structures, and objects, as distinct from the historic-district register in Section 10-319. A nomination can come from the city commission, county commission, planning commission, or the property owner, and the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation or the architectural review board can start the process on an owner's written request. After a nomination form is filed with the historic preservation officer, the board must set a public hearing, with at least 15 days' notice published in a local newspaper and mailed to the owner, to owners within 500 feet, and to the Tallahassee Trust for Historic Preservation.

The board has 30 days after the hearing to recommend for or against listing, and the nomination then moves through the planning commission as a rezoning. To qualify, a property must meet at least one of four criteria: integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association; association with a historically significant event or person; distinctive construction characteristics or the work of a master; or the likelihood of yielding important historic or prehistoric information. Once listed, the owner receives an official certificate of historic significance, the property gets modified building-code enforcement, no demolition, alteration, relocation, or construction can occur except as the division allows, and privately owned properties can have permit, review, and rehabilitation fees waived and can apply for the city's historic property grant and loan program.