Research You Can Use: The Magic of WISAARD
Access National Register of Historic Places Nominations, Washington Heritage Register Nominations, and Historic Property Inventory Forms On-line!
The Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (DAHP) has a GIS-based map tool called WISAARD (Washington Information System for Architectural and Archaeological Records Data) on its website that allows the user to search and locate historic sites listed on the state and national registers. There are also historic property inventory forms available for view. You can download pdfs of nominations and inventory forms for places throughout the state; view photos of listed historic sites; and obtain lists of sites by city or county. You can also search by the architect’s name and find out which properties throughout the state were designed by the same architect. This is an amazing research tool available to all.
Though WISAARD has been around for several years, the current version is a vast improvement over the previous version and provides extensive information to the public. So although this is not a new tool, it’s an incredibly useful one that not many people know about. It takes some messing around with the database to figure it out but once you do, it’s easy.