Above: The stained glass dome in the Old Capitol of Florida
The Florida Division of Historical Resources Historic Preservation Grant program is one of the most significant ways the state protects our irreplaceable historic places, strengthens communities and supports local economies.
Grants assist local, regional and statewide efforts to preserve significant historic and archaeological resources, support archeological excavations and develop and create museum exhibits sharing knowledge and appreciation of Florida history. The Florida Historical Commission reviews and ranks Historic Preservation Special Category Grant Projects to create the annual list, which is then approved by the Florida Secretary of State and sent to the Legislature to determine funding.
For the second year in a row, the Florida Legislature has bypassed this process and has not funded any of the Special Category grants. Grant ranking is an important, carefully thought-out process, done by experts of a variety of backgrounds from around the state. Circumventing this process in favor of direct funding of member projects will result in unfairly prioritizing preservation initiatives that have the time and resources to lobby legislators directly.
View the FY27 Special Category Grants Booklet HERE.
The Florida House and Senate have scheduled a Special Session on the Budget from Tuesday, May 12 through Friday, May 29, 2026. This may be our last opportunity to secure grant funding for the Special Category Grants in the FY2027 budget.
The Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources grant application cycle was set to open Wednesday, April 1, but has been postponed. These grants include the Small Matching, Special Category and Abandoned African American Cemeteries grants. Currently, no information about the delay is available.
You may check for updates at the Division of Historical Resources website: dos.fl.gov/historical/grants.
We know that historic preservation is a strong economic driver for communities, for Florida and for the Nation. The most recent economic impact of historic preservation numbers are powerful. $13.5 billion was invested in rehabilitation of existing residential and non-residential property each year between 2005 and 2008.
Historic preservation creates jobs in Florida. More than 123,000 jobs are generated in Florida from historic preservation activities during 2000. The major areas of job creation include the manufacturing sector, retail trade sector, services sector, and construction sector.
Historic preservation makes a substantial contribution to tax collections for Florida state and local governments. More than $657 million in state and local taxes were generated from spending on historic preservation activities during 2000.
Visitors to Florida spend billions of dollars while visiting historic sites. More than $3.7 billion was spent in Florida by tourists who visited historic sites. The tourists are lured by Florida′s historic sites, historic museums, state parks, and archeological sites. There are more than 1,400 Florida listings in the National Register of Historic Places and more than 135,000 historic structures and archeological sites in the Florida Master Site File of historic sites.
Public funds invested in historic preservation grants are matched many times over with private funds in local rehabilitation projects. Since 1983, state historic preservation grants have been awarded to projects in every Florida county, representing 2,751 projects and a state investment of $212.1 million, which the Secretary of State′s office estimates is more than doubled by leveraged public and private funds in these local communities.
Historic preservation helps to maintain property values in Florida. In an examination of the assessed values of mainly residential property in eighteen historic districts and twenty-five comparable non-historic districts throughout Florida, there was no case where historic district designation depressed the property values. In fact in at least fifteen cases, property in historic districts appreciated greater than comparable, targeted non-historic districts.
Source: Economic Impacts of Historic Preservation by the Center for Governmental Responsibility, University of Florida Levin College of Law, Center for Urban Policy Research and Rutgers University.
