VerPlanck Historic Preservation Consulting provides a full range of architectural history and preservation consulting services from our offices in the historic Mechanics' Institute Building, in downtown San Francisco.

A significant part of the firm's business includes providing CEQA planning documents required by the San Francisco Planning Department, including Historic Resource Evaluations (HRE), Supplemental Information Forms, and other research and analysis geared toward determining whether a property is eligible for listing in the California Register, as well as assessing impacts to potential historical resources.

The firm also provides a wide array of other preservation consulting services, including Historic Context Statements, Historic Resource Inventories, Historic Property Survey Reports for Section 106 review, Historic Structure Reports, Federal Rehabilitation Tax Credit applications, and Mills Act applications. We perform most of these reports in-house, but if specialized services are required, we call upon a number of well-qualified specialists in a range of allied disciplines, including architecture, landscape architecture, structural and mechanical engineering, archaeology, conservation, and cost estimating. VerPlanck Historic Preservation Consulting is certified by the City and County of San Francisco as a San Francisco Local Business Enterprise (LBE), and also as a Micro Local Business Enterprise.

VerPlanck Historic Preservation Consulting is experienced in serving as the primary consultant on any of the services that we customarily provide, but we are equally happy to team with like-minded firms or as subconsultants on larger projects.

“The advantage of working with VerPlanck Historic Preservation Consulting is that you deal exclusively with me, the owner, Chris VerPlanck. Leveraging my years of personal experience, you will get the highest-quality report at the best price because this is a small firm and I not only book the job, I complete the majority of the research, analysis, and writing. I have long enjoyed a reputation for objectivity and fairness in my evaluations. Others might promise you a particular finding at the outset. I won't do that, though I will give you my professional opinion before we start and I will keep you apprised of my progress throughout the process. At the end of it all you will get an evaluation that is both accurate and can be relied on by you, your design team, and outside reviewers. I stand behind my work and if there is anything that I missed, I will fix it, and not on your dime.”
— Chris VerPlanck

BIO

Christopher VerPlanck

VerPlanck Historic Preservation Consulting is founder/owner Chris VerPlanck's first solo venture. Between 2007 until 2011, he was a partner in the San Francisco-based architecture and consulting firms of Kelley & VerPlanck Historical Resources Consulting and Knapp & VerPlanck Preservation Architects. Prior to that, from 1999 until 2007, Mr. VerPlanck founded and led the Cultural Resources Studio at the San Francisco-based preservation architecture firm, Page & Turnbull. From 1997 until 1999, he was the preservation coordinator/architectural historian at San Francisco Architectural Heritage, a local non-profit.

Chris VerPlanck earned his MArch (with a specialization in Architectural History) and a Certificate in Historic Preservation from University of Virginia's Graduate School of Architecture in 1997. While at UVA, he interned as a conservation assistant at Monticello, where he restored four sets of mahogany sash windows and learned historic masonry techniques. After graduating from UVA, he earned the prestigious Sally Kress Tompkins Fellowship with the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER). Mr. VerPlanck meets the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for History and Architectural History.

Mr. VerPlanck's primary areas of interest include San Francisco's nineteenth-century industrial architecture and associated workers' housing; rural western cultural landscapes; postwar suburban development in California, including tract housing, "Googie"-style coffee shops and bowling alleys, and Polynesian Pop (aka Tiki) lounges and hotels; and civic architecture of any era. He has lectured widely on these topics and many others at conferences, including the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), the California Preservation Foundation (CPF), and the Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement (DoCoMoMo).

VerPlanck is a board member of the Northern California chapter of DoCoMoMo. He is published in professional journals and he co-authored an essay in Ray McDevitt's Courthouses of California. Chris VerPlanck has won several awards for his work, including the 2002 Robert C. Friese Award for Neighborhood Conservation from San Francisco Beautiful, a 2003 California Preservation Foundation Design Award for a Historic Structure Report on Sonoma's Blue Wing Inn, and a 2005 California Preservation Foundation President's Award for the Dogpatch Neighborhood Survey.

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