Travis Fulk began his civil service career in July as an architectural historian with the Environmental Planning and Conservation Division at Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC) Headquarters after working in the private sector for many years.
Fulk earned his Master’s degree in Historic Preservation from the Savannah College of Art & Design in 2006.
In this Q&A, he explains what an architectural historian does and how he chose the career field. He also shares some of his favorite Navy and NAVFAC projects that he worked on as a contractor.
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What does an architectural historian do?
Architectural historians are primarily concerned with the historic built environment - buildings, bridges, even landscapes, or objects like ships.
Our role in supporting the Navy’s mission involves ensuring that projects progress smoothly, while complying with federal regulations such as the National Historic Preservation Act, designed to protect historic properties. (Historic properties are buildings, structures, sites, objects, and districts that are eligible for or listed in the National Register of Historic Places – our national inventory of resources important enough to our history that they’re worthy of preservation.) So, our job is to understand a project, assess potential impacts to cultural resources, and if necessary, assist with the mitigation of adverse effects to those resources – all while ensuring regulatory requirements are met and allowing projects to carry forward without unnecessary delays. It’s important we’re involved as early in the planning process as possible in order to be effective.
A critical aspect of our work is evaluating how projects might affect historic properties and develop strategies to mitigate potential adverse effects. For instance, if a historically significant building must be demolished, its designation doesn’t automatically mean we can’t touch it.
It just means that if there aren’t any alternatives, then we find a way to mitigate its loss. Sometimes that’s with high-level documentation, sometimes it’s with a public education component, but there are many options.
Currently, I’m the only architectural historian at NAVFAC Headquarters, but there are several others at the lower echelons, region and installation levels. A key part of our responsibilities at Headquarters is to provide support for critical, complex, or possible precedence setting projects, as needed.
What’s interesting about NAVFAC structures that you would look at?
When evaluating cultural resources, we’re primarily concerned with whether or not they’re eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. We use four criteria to understand how resources might be significant: association with important historical events; association with important people in our history; whether they’re an excellent representation of an architectural style or the work of a master architect; or, if they have potential to provide more information in the future.
If resources meet one or more of those criteria – and have integrity – then they’re eligible for inclusion in the National Register and therefore afforded certain protections under federal regulations.
Are you more likely to work with some categories over others?
As far as architectural history goes, we generally don’t use the last criterion (have potential to provide more information in the future), but the others often apply – and several may apply to the same resource. For example, a building may have been the location of an important historical event and is also an excellent representative of an architectural style.
When we consider resources to evaluate for historic significance, we typically use a threshold of at least 50 years in age. This time frame allows us to better understand how a resource fits into its historic context.
Right now, a lot of architectural history focus is on Cold War-era resources, as many are now at least 50 years old, or soon will be – so we have that context with which to look at the resources and understand their importance to history.
How did you become an architectural historian?
I had a roundabout path to my current position. I always loved old buildings. I grew up in an old farm house on the eastern shore of Virginia, surrounded by historic architecture, but I didn’t really understand what I wanted to do when entering college and ended up in business school. A few years later, I had some friends that worked in cultural resources management, which I didn’t even understand was a career option as an undergraduate.
I remember going to a lecture given by Alfredo Maul who was working with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation at the restoration of Montpelier (Maul is former associate director of architectural research at James Madison's Montpelier.) The lecture was about using nail hole evidence in order to understand the previous layouts of rooms so they could recreate the building to its period of significance, which in this case was the Madison era. They used laser scanning to assist with the investigation. It all sounded so intriguing – like solving a mystery.
I remember going up to him after the lecture and saying, “You can make a career out of this?” and he said yes. I was fortunate enough to be living in a city at the time with a school that had a good program in historic preservation. I got an internship with a local museum and got into graduate school. I had to take a few provisionary classes to get caught up with my peers, but finished the graduate program and ended up going to work for Colonial Williamsburg for a brief period and getting to work at Montpelier. So I came full circle from that lightbulb moment when I realized this was a potential career.
After Colonial Williamsburg, I worked for a contracting company for over 18 years. For probably about 12 years or so of my career there, I worked primarily on NAVFAC projects. That, in turn, sort of led me to where I am, because those were some of my favorite projects to work on. The history interested me, the resources were amazing, and I really liked all the NAVFAC folks with whom I got to work.
Do you have a favorite NAVFAC project that you worked on as a contractor?
World War II history in the Pacific is a particular interest of mine and I always enjoyed working on Guam and the Marianas. We completed the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) documentation of North Field at Andersen Air Force Base as part of a NAVFAC contract. I also did several National Historic Preservation Act Section 110 architectural surveys on Guam for NAVFAC – that’s basically an inventory survey of historic buildings.
According to the National Park Service, “HAER documents a wide array of sites, structures, and objects, including transportation systems and infrastructure, industrial buildings and machinery, public utilities, mines, bridges, watercraft, historic vehicles, and even space craft. Like much of our built environment, the nation's engineering legacy is subject to loss from many forces, particularly obsolescence through technological advances, developmental pressures, and changing regulations governing health, environmental concerns, and public safety.”
What’s involved in doing a survey of buildings?
Typically for Section 110 surveys, we were provided a roster of buildings to evaluate. Part of Section 110 of the National Historic Preservation Act says federal agencies are responsible for maintaining an inventory of their historic properties, which then serves as a planning and management tool.
As part of the survey we would go out into the field, photograph each building, and conduct background research to understand its historic functions. We would look at each building’s architecture, its role on the installation, and we would either develop or review previous historic contexts and then try to understand how or if the building fit into those historic contexts. We would consider if the building was important to a mission, if it was a particularly good example of an architectural style, or designed by a prominent architect. We would apply those criteria that I mentioned before and recommend “Here are buildings that don’t seem to meet the criteria, and here are those that do.” This information is important since the buildings that are eligible for the National Register need extra consideration with regards to overall installation planning.
Did you do any other work for the Navy?
As a consultant, I had the opportunity to work on projects at 25 Navy installations. Most of my NAVFAC work was for NAVFAC Mid-Atlantic and NAVFAC Southeast, but I did get the opportunity to do work at Pearl Harbor, Naval Base Guam, and at Yokosuka and Sasebo in Japan. One of my favorite recent projects, while not part of a Navy contract, was documenting the USS Texas, which is a New York-class battleship that was refit for World War II with torpedo blisters. The torpedo blisters were causing problems and leaking, and the ship was basically corroding from the inside-out.
(Torpedo blisters were armored compartments added onto the side of battleship hulls prior to World War II designed to detonate torpedoes, absorb their explosions, and contain flooding to damaged areas within the bulges.)
It's a National Historic Landmark, which is the highest tier of our cultural resources in importance in the nation. It was determined that they needed to put it in dry dock and take off the blisters to do the repairs. They wanted to maintain the ship’s profile above water, its World War II configuration, so they put new blisters back on. In the process of doing that, there’s always concern that something may happen that was unforeseen, like damage during the restoration. With those kinds of projects, it’s good practice to have documentation before the repairs are done – especially with a resource of that level of significance.
So we got to go out and contribute to the HAER, a high-level documentation which partly involves large-format photography. We also laser-scanned the hull of the ship. That not only provided a record of its condition before the repairs were begun, but also provided information to the folks that were actually doing the repairs. We provided data with a high level of detail to capture measurements and inform the restoration work. It was also neat because there was some previous damage on the port side torpedo blister, and that got captured by the photos and laser scanning prior to its removal. That’s part of the ship’s history. It was fascinating. We got to crawl all over the ship, and underneath it when it was in dry dock. When those types of documentations are completed, they’re submitted to the Library of Congress as a permanent record that will be available for future reference.
What kind of projects are you working on now?
Since I’m relatively new, I’m still getting up to speed on things. I’ve really just been playing a support role so far, sort of getting my legs under me. In the near future, I’ll be leading the revisions to the National Register nomination for the U.S. Naval Observatory, which was nominated under several of the criteria I mentioned before. It’s significant for its contributions to science, specifically astronomy and timekeeping, which is crucial for navigation, but it’s also the work of a prominent architect, Richard Morris Hunt, so it’s important for its architecture as well.
When resources reach that level of significance, that’s when we understand they require a little more protection. Or recognition – being listed in the National Register isn’t only about protecting a valuable resource, but also about recognizing it for its importance to our history. That also helps us understand and appreciate our national identity.
After working as a contractor for so many years, how does it feel to join the civil service with NAVFAC?
I’m very excited to join NAVFAC. One of the really attractive aspects of this role is that it seemed to offer a new challenge. Not just being in a new environment, and being new to civil service, but also, when reach-back support is requested, it’s usually because the project is complex or something has arisen that was unexpected. Or there’s something that requires just a little extra support. That’s what I look forward to now – the challenge is exciting for me.
However, the main reason I applied for this position was the idea of supporting something greater. I loved my work as a consultant, and got to travel and see amazing historic resources all over the United States and even abroad, but the idea of supporting the Navy’s mission is something that just makes you feel good about your work at the end of the day.
About the NAVFAC Environmental Program
NAVFAC Environmental delivers high quality products and services – including environmental compliance, environmental planning, natural and cultural resources management and compliance, and environmental restoration – to support Department of Defense mission readiness worldwide. The Environmental Planning and Conservation Division focuses on compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act and Executive Order 12114 Environmental effects abroad of major Federal actions. The Conservation Team focuses on natural and cultural resources management and compliance with laws such as the National Historic Preservation Act, Archaeological Resources Protection Act, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Endangered Species Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act along with many others.
Opportunities at NAVFAC Environmental
NAVFAC Environmental has over 1,950 subject matter experts across the enterprise. The Cultural resources program is made up of approximately 76 archaeologists, historians, architectural historians, and architects, of which 18 are historians. To learn more about NAVFAC opportunities, visit our LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/navfac/jobs/.