Amanda Loughlin
National Register and Survey Coordinator
Amanda’s passion for historic places was cemented in childhood. Saturdays were often spent exploring Kansas City’s historic parks and public buildings, but one memorable event foreshadowed her career. While walking around downtown St. Louis in fourth grade, she filled an entire roll of film with photos of vacant historic buildings. This interest in historic structures led Amanda to pursue a Bachelor of Interior Architecture from Kansas State University and, after a few years in the architecture world, to pursue a Master of Historic Preservation from the University of Kentucky. At K-State she began to understand that the best way to save a building is to continue using it and that adaptive use creatively blends old and new. Her time in Kentucky provided a framework within which to study historic places and the tools necessary to save them.
Amanda’s experience in the preservation field is focused on documentation and research. Following graduation from K-State, she spent the summer helping measure and draw Richard Neutra’s 1962 Cyclorama Building at Gettysburg with the Historic American Building Survey (HABS). After completing grad school, Amanda accepted an ICOMOS internship with the Transylvania Trust Foundation where she spent three months assessing risks to historic resources in and around Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In the fall of 2010, Amanda joined the Kansas State Historic Preservation Office as the survey coordinator and moved into the role of National Register coordinator in 2015 before joining Rosin Preservation in 2018.
Favorite historic building
One of the most inspirational places in Kansas City for me is the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. In this place the art, architecture, and landscape are celebrated individually but are also entwined to create the museum itself. The timelessness of the 1933 “temple on the hill” is balanced by the sculptural 2007 addition; both are integrally tied to the landscape.
I am a preservationist because…
I believe that historic places are important as they ground us in past and present and reassure us for the future by their familiarity.