The Department of the Army has, in concert with the ACHP, developed a Prototype Programmatic Agreement (PA) for the interiors of contributing buildings and individually eligible buildings pursuant to 36 CFR 800.14(e). The Army has more than 20,000 buildings considered eligible for the National Register in its inventory. There are many examples of interiors within the Army inventory that have been altered to the extent that they no longer contribute to the significance of the building or structure or were never considered contributing to the building’s or a historic district’s significance. Over the past year, a number of Army initiatives and Executive Orders have been implemented that require installations to improve the energy efficiency and environmental sustainability of their facilities. These initiatives have the potential to impact interiors of eligible buildings; therefore a programmatic approach was needed to assist in the protection of historic interiors while also assisting in the implementation of sustainability guidance.

The Army determined that a Prototype PA would provide Cultural Resource Managers at Army installations an additional tool to use in meeting their responsibilities under Section 106 for these federal facilities, and to streamline the consideration of these interiors. The Army proposed an approach that would relieve an installation from having to consider effects of undertakings on building interiors that have been deemed to be non-contributing or retain no character defining features. In order to facilitate the adequate assessment of the integrity of an interior or whether the interior is contributing to the significance of the building, an interiors survey format that is appropriate to this task has been developed as part of this Prototype PA. This survey streamlines the process of Section 106 review for undertakings that may affect non-contributing interiors. If the procedures in the Prototype PA are followed by the installation, no case-by-case review by the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) would be required for those aspects of undertakings that may affect interiors that have been deemed to be non-contributing.