Covington’s historic buildings, monuments, neighborhoods, public squares and landscapes help in defining our community. These landmarks in our community connect us to our shared heritage and geographically define our public places. They remind us of what previous generations of Covington residents have built and accomplished while inspiring us to continue the work of creating good places in our city for ourselves and future generations. Rehabilitating and restoring an old building or house is an exciting challenge. Covington is filled with these historic buildings scattered throughout its 16 National Register Historic Districts. Covington also has several individually-listed buildings on the National Register, along with 2 National Historic Landmarks; the Roebling Suspension Bridge, and the Daniel Carter Beard house. The City of Covington is second only to Louisville in the number of buildings and sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Kentucky.

If a property is currently listed on the National Register of Historic places, as an individual listing or part of a district, or a property is eligible to be listed on the Register, the property owner may be eligible to receive tax credits on qualified rehabilitation expenses. There are tax credit programs through both the State of Kentucky and through the Federal Government.

The City of Covington Historic Preservation Office can help guide you through the process and can provide resources that describe proper treatments of historic buildings and historic materials.

Resources: The following are links to useful websites to research topics on taking care of your historic buildings.

Old House Toolkit: From Architecture.About.com. An online starting point to exploring house restoration resources. Articles include: How to survive restoration, how to pick historic house colors, how to solve exterior paint problems on exterior woodwork and how to purchase architectural salvage.

Vinyl siding: What you need to know: From Architecture.About.com. An outline of the positive and negative aspects of vinyl siding from health issues to durability and maintenance issues. Craven writes that vinyl is today’s most popular siding material “But wait! What the ads don’t tell you can cost you dearly.”

Old House Restoration: This website gives new old homeowners an overview of the decisions and process of conducting a restoration. The series of essays range from restoration timeline to why not to worry about minor plaster cracking.

Old House Journal: Features nearly 100 articles from the magazine Old House Journal along with a reputable restoration services and products directory. This is another location to find Preservation Briefs from the National Parks Service.

Old House Web: A website for enthusiasts of historic structures, it features an extensive directory of suppliers and how-to advice for exterior and interior design. It also features articles on historic structures and interior, exterior and garden design.

This Old House: This is the companion website to the This Old House, PBS television program and magazine. Features “Homeowner Know-How” articles and a large library of video clips from the television program.

John Leeke’s Historic HomeWorks: Preservation consultant John Leeke shares his expertise on home restoration. Forums, seminars, library, reports.

Preservation Briefs: Preservation Briefs provide easy-to-read, in-depth guidance on both technology and theory of preserving, rehabilitating and reusing of historic structures. The National Parks Service Heritage Preservation Services Division has published 44 of these briefs covering issues from conserving energy in historic structures to repair of historic wood windows. These briefs, written by experts in the field, are the basis for national preservation guidelines.

Preservation Tech Notes: The Preservation Tech Notes provides practical information on traditional practices and innovative techniques for successfully maintaining and preserving culutral resources.

Yearly Inspection: Created by the City of Covington Historic Preservation Program this is a yearly home maintenance and inspection checklist that should be used to do a yearly or twice a year whole house inspection.

Monthly Inspection: Created by the City of Covington Historic Preservation Program, this is a month by month home maintenance and inspection checklist.