ABOUT
About Manning Historic Property Services LLC
Manning historic property services is committed to helping historic property owners to restore, rehabilitate, and maintain their properties in a cost effective and historically appropriate manner while ensuring that the building continues to meet the owner’s needs and objectives. We do this by providing top quality preservation planning, historic restoration project management, and maintenance services.
Manning HPS believes that the best way to avoid costly major restoration is through development and implementation of effective historic property maintenance plans.
“Take proper care of your monuments and you will not need to restore them. A few sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead leaves and sticks swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from ruin.”
Ruskin 1849
We also recognize that major restoration efforts cannot always be avoided. As such we provide project management services to help our clients through the often challenging restoration process. We start by assisting clients with developing project goals that meet their needs, objectives, and financial constraints. We then shepherd the project through the design and construction phases through to close out.
“All objects are in the process of change… Organic materials such as wood, paint, and asphalt deteriorate, returning to the earth to nourish the currently growing crop of organic materials… other materials such as stone, which are already oxides, wear away…”
Chambers 1976
Manning HPS is also here to help our clients navigate the often complex regulatory and legal compliance requirements that may accompany a historic property project. We guide our clients through everything from design review under local preservation ordinances to compliance with federal regulations under the National Historic Preservation Act.
About the Owner, Derek Manning
In 2003 Derek decided realized that his passion lay in the protection of historic properties. That year he left his career in public history, during which he worked as a museum docent, visitor services manager, and park ranger at historic sites throughout Boston, and entered the field of historic preservation.
In 2005 Derek entered the Master of Arts in Historic Preservation program at Goucher College. This led him into a career as a historic preservation specialist for the US Army. Derek first worked as the Cultural Resources Manager for Fort Belvoir, in northern Virginia, where he managed hundreds of historic buildings and archeological sites. It was at Fort Belvoir that Derek gained extensive experience in the management of historic building restoration projects and compliance with federal preservation laws.
In 2011 Derek began working for the Army National Guard where he served as the agency’s historic building subject matter expert, providing support to historic property restoration projects on Army National Guard buildings across the country.
In 2015 Derek and his family returned to the Boston area, a place that they always considered home. 