Features
The 25 – Christina Butler
Historian, historic preservationist, architectural historian, and educator Christina Butler is the owner of Butler Preservation, which specializes in historic property research, National Register nominations, and preservation plans.
Butler, who has more than 20 years of experience in new construction, restoration, and renovation work, is the dean and chair of general education at American College of Building Arts, where she teaches architectural history and historic preservation to the artisans who will be building the next generation of high-quality structures and will be doing the physical preservation work for irreplaceable historic buildings.
As a preservation consultant, Butler has helped guide restoration work in South Carolina, recently co-authoring a master plan for the City of Darlington and writing a report documenting life in British-occupied Charleston during the American Revolution.
She is the author of “Lowcountry At High Tide: The History of Flooding, Land Reclamation and Drainage in Charleston, South Carolina;” “Ansonborough: From Birth the Rebirth” for the Historic Charleston Foundation; and “Italians in Lowcountry” and “Charleston Horse Power: Equine Culture in the Palmetto City,” both published by the University of South Carolina Press.
She’s been interested in the preservation field since childhood—she got hooked after watching a single episode of TV’s “This Old House” —and went to trade school for two years before earning a bachelor’s degree in historic preservation and planning and a master’s in history.
Butler and her husband live in an 18th-century-style house he designed in Charleston’s historic district; her company did the finish work and much of the exterior, including 16 sets of raised-panel shutters that she built using a combination of power and hand tools.
Noting that she sees support for historic preservation growing, she says that “I hope that the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution will inspire us to reconnect with the nation’s complex history and architecture like the Bicentennial did 50 years ago.”u
