2014 Theses Master's

In God We Trust? Preserving Historic Church Interiors

Lanier, Leah

Research reports from preservation professionals in North America, Europe and Australia suggest that providing current preservation tools with practical knowledge of traditions and beliefs associated with historic houses of worship can facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of, and preservation approaches for preserving the overall integrity of, such sites. Using redundant historic Christian churches as an example, the following study investigates this suggestion using a mixed methodology to evaluate the efficacy of multifamily residential adaptive-reuse conversions as a preservation approach. In order to create a conceptual model for this evaluation, this methodology combined a Comparative Religion and Religious Studies methods model with current historic preservation tools for assessing the significance and integrity of historic properties. The model was applied to a series of multi-family residential conversion case studies with the following goals: first, to interpret and identify the churches’ interior components, and second, to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of the adaptive-reuse approach.