Getting listed

The 50-year rule, where it comes from, and the exceptions

John HarrisonUpdated October 2026

The National Register’s 50-year rule is not a ban on younger buildings. The federal criteria say a property that achieved significance within the past 50 years is not ordinarily eligible, but it qualifies if it is of exceptional importance (Criteria Consideration G) or is an integral part of a district that qualifies. The National Park Service, which keeps the Register, has listed office towers, churches and parks in their thirties on that basis.

This guide explains where the rule comes from, how the Park Service applies it, and shows listed examples from our database, as of October 2026.

Where the rule comes from

The National Register Criteria for Evaluation are a regulation, 36 CFR 60.4. After stating Criteria A through D, the regulation lists property types that are ordinarily not considered eligible: cemeteries, birthplaces and graves, religious properties, moved and reconstructed buildings, commemorative properties, and properties that have achieved significance within the past 50 years. Each has a lettered exception. The one for recent properties is Criteria Consideration G: a property achieving significance within the past 50 years is eligible if it is of exceptional importance.

Bulletin 15, the NPS handbook on applying the criteria, gives the reasoning: fifty years is a general estimate of the time needed to develop historical perspective and to evaluate significance, and the consideration guards against listing properties of passing contemporary interest. Bulletin 22, which deals only with this topic, is blunter. It calls the 50-year period an arbitrary span of time, designed as a filter, chosen as a reasonable and popularly understood span, and says it was not designed to be mechanically applied on a year by year basis.

The NPS’s current public guidance keeps the same framing. Its FAQ says properties eligible for listing are generally at least 50 years old, and that properties under 50 must be exceptionally important.

Fifty years from what date?

The count runs back from the nomination to the date the property achieved significance, which is not always its construction date. Bulletin 22 uses Andalusia, Flannery O’Connor’s farm in Milledgeville, Georgia: the buildings date from the early twentieth century, but the period of significance begins in 1951 when she moved there, so the property had to be judged under Consideration G when it was nominated. The reverse also holds. A building whose significance is architectural can be dated from construction.

Bulletin 15 spells out who must meet Consideration G: a property less than 50 years old; a property whose significance continues into the last 50 years; a property with more than one period of significance where one is recent; and a property over 50 years old whose only significance is recent. It also lists who does not: a building begun more than 50 years ago whose completion overlaps the line by a few years, and a district where a few resources are newer than 50 years but the majority and the main period of significance are older.

What exceptional importance means

Three points from the bulletins matter most.

First, exceptional does not mean national. Bulletin 15 says the phrase does not require national significance; it measures importance within the appropriate historic context, whether local, state or national. A building can be exceptionally important to one city.

Second, exceptional importance has to be arguable from scholarship, not enthusiasm. Bulletin 22 says a recent property can be evaluated only when sufficient historical perspective exists, usually supplied by scholarly research on the context, and that the more recently a property achieved significance, the harder the case. It gives Dulles Airport’s 1962 terminal, determined eligible in 1978, as an example that worked because the building’s design importance was already widely recognized.

Third, the justification must be explicit. Bulletin 22 says the nomination must contain deliberate, distinct justification for the exceptional importance of the resource, placed at the start of the statement of significance, and must compare the property with others in the same context. Bulletin 15 adds that an entire category of fragile resources can justify the exception (its example is traditional Micronesian sailing canoes, none of which survive past about twenty years), but that durable building types cannot use that argument.

Bulletin 15 names properties listed before they turned 50: the Cape Canaveral launch pad from which astronauts first left for the moon, Eugene O’Neill’s home, the Chrysler Building, and the General Laundry Building in New Orleans, listed at 40 years old as an exceptional Art Deco example.

Listed under 50: examples from the database

Among the roughly 31,000 nomination texts we hold for ten states, 661 use the language of Consideration G or exceptional importance. These listings show how the argument is made. Ages are counted from the end of the period of significance to the listing date.

• Heritage Park Plaza, Fort Worth, Texas. Built 1976 to 1980, listed May 2010, so about 30 years old. A half-acre water garden by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, nominated under Criterion C and argued as the only Halprin work in the city and the city’s only Bicentennial commission. The nomination states that it meets Consideration G.
• Martin Tower, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Completed 1972, period of significance 1969 to 1980, listed June 2010. Bethlehem Steel’s headquarters was nominated under Criterion A for its association with the company’s decline, and the nomination claims Consideration G for exceptional significance gained within the past 50 years.
• IBM Building, Chicago. Built 1969 to 1972, listed March 2010, at 38 years. Nominated under Criterion C as a Mies van der Rohe tower; the nomination says it meets Consideration G for exceptional importance in architecture as one of the city’s premier examples of his work.
• Westgate Tower, Austin. Built 1962 to 1966, listed October 2010, at 44 years. Nominated under A and C as Austin’s first residential high-rise and the only Edward Durell Stone building in the city; the nomination invokes Consideration G.
• Chapel and Cultural Center, Troy, New York. Built 1968, listed February 2011, at 43 years. The nomination acknowledges the building is under 50 and argues it satisfies Consideration G as an exceptionally significant piece of multi-purpose religious architecture.

Two listings show the other form of the rule, older buildings with recent significance:

• Worsham High School, Prince Edward County, Virginia. A 1927 school, but its period of significance is 1963 to 1964, when it housed the Free Schools for children locked out by the county’s closure of public schools rather than integrate. Listed in 2010, 46 years after that period, with an explicit Consideration G argument about the exceptional importance of the desegregation struggle.
• Frederick G. Kilgour House, Upper Arlington, Ohio. A 1958 ranch house listed in 2012 under Criterion B for the years 1967 to 1980, when Kilgour lived there while building OCLC’s shared library cataloging system. The house was 54 years old; the significance was 32 years old, so the nomination addresses Consideration G.

And one that illustrates the “not year by year” point: Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Austin was designed in 1961, finished in 1962 and listed in December 2011. The nomination states that, given those dates, the building did not need to meet Consideration G.

Districts and the recent past

Bulletin 22 says properties under 50 can be contributing resources in a district without any exceptional-importance showing when the district’s period of significance is a defined span, the character of its resources is clear, the newer buildings date from that span, and the majority of properties are over 50. Postwar subdivisions are the common case today: the Madonna Acres Historic District in Raleigh, built 1960 to 1965 and listed in 2010, claims Consideration G for the district as a whole, since the entire neighborhood was under 50, on the ground of its exceptional significance as the first postwar subdivision built by a Black developer for Black homeowners.

What this means if your building is young

As of October 2026, anything from 1976 or earlier has cleared the line on age alone. For a building from the late 1970s onward, or an older building whose claim to significance is recent, expect your SHPO to ask three things: what scholarly context exists for this type or event, which comparable properties exist and why this one stands out, and whether the case would be stronger in a few years. Bulletin 22 lists topics it considers ready for evaluation, including postwar suburbs, the civil rights movement, the space program and the Vietnam War, and NPS publishes sample Consideration G nominations.

If the answer is to wait, nothing is lost: a property that misses on age today can be nominated later. If the building faces a threat now, a determination of eligibility may be available faster than listing; our guide to why nominations fail explains that route, and how to nominate a property covers the process. To check whether a property is already listed, use the address lookup.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Researched from the sources above and drafted with AI assistance; published under the editor's name, corrections welcome. See the editorial policy.