Polly Allen

Mrs. Allen engages in a wide range of historical research, architectural survey, and report development work at JRP.  Since joining the firm in 2008, Mrs. Allen has conducted extensive primary and secondary research at public and private repositories in California as well as intensive architectural surveys across the state.  She has contributed to an array of cultural resource management projects, evaluating resources ranging from Cold War military installations to nineteenth century irrigation canals.  Mrs. Allen qualifies as an architectural historian under the United States Secretary of the Interior’s Professional Qualification Standards.

Mrs. Allen received her MS in Historic Preservation from Columbia University and her BA in History from University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She has also completed coursework and seminars in Rural and Regional Planning at CSU Chico.  Engaging in cultural resource management in a variety of urban and rural contexts, Mrs. Allen’s professional experience encompasses a wide range of locales and resources across the United States.  In New York City she was employed by preservation advocacy organizations Landmark West! and the Municipal Art Society where she undertook intensive architectural survey work and resource evaluation in the nineteenth century brownstone neighborhood of Prospect Park, Brooklyn and the architecturally eclectic Upper West Side of Manhattan.  Her Masters Thesis evaluated cultural resource management issues surrounding historic resources on working farmsteads in Vermont, New York, Wisconsin, and California.  She has also participated in historic barn surveying projects in Wisconsin and Washington and has presented research at a variety of professional conferences.