Historic Preservation is the art, craft, history, science, engineering and expression of designing, planning, building, living in, using, altering, conserving, interpreting and reusing buildings, cities and other human made environments. By its nature Historic Preservation, and thereby the Preservation Arts are interdisciplinary and readily lend themselves to the academic curriculum of the New York City Public School System.

The Preservation Arts are the traditional artisan pursuits in stone, masonary, stained glass, metal working, carpentry, painting and plastering.

Designing A High School for the Preservation Arts

The concept for a High School for the Preservation Arts is the result of The World Monuments Fund's (WMF) 1993 symposium, Employment Strategies for the Restoration Arts: Craft Training in the Service of Historic Preservation. The symposium highlighted: the absence of nationwide standards for the craft skills used in historic preservation; the limited number of existing U.S. programs to train people in these highly specialized skills needed to maintain our rich architectural legacy; the fact that historic preservation revitalizes communities; the increasing success of the preservation movement leading to greater numbers of designated historic districts; and the resulting need for skilled preservation artisans.

The New York City Department of Education's Brooklyn High School of the Arts is the first school in the United States to use a Preservation Arts and Technology based interdisciplinary curriculum. The Preservation Arts and Technology program provides students with a quality education experience that is geared toward future training in preservation trades and related professions such as conservation, architecture, engineering, and city planning. For those students in the 11th and 12th grades who elect to pursue the preservation arts technology strand as their Career Technical Education study, the academic component of the program is further enhanced by its "hands-on" application. The Regents standard academic curriculum has been constructed by the New Jersey Institute of Technology/Center for Architecture and Building Science Research to allow students to view traditional subjects through the lens of historic preservation. This is done by focusing on a specific historic site, structure or artifact through which to study the elements of its creation, preservation, and interpretation. These sites, structures, and artifacts serve as the benchmark for the study of all aspects of a particular period and place. Using this model, teachers can work together using a common architectural theme as an expression of the period under study through which they can integrate their respective disciplines.