Caroline Swope, Decatur, AL

Historic Preservation Specialist, City of Decatur, Alabama

Caroline Swope serves as the historic preservation specialist for Decatur, Alabama. She has been working with the city’s Historic Preservation Commission on broad-based community outreach for sites and histories that have been traditionally overlooked, and on updating historic design review standards for the Architectural Review Board. Decatur won a NAPC Best Practices Award in 2022 for a project centered on community education and engagement. Caroline is currently coordinating with several municipal agencies on streamlining responses for severe storm damage in the historic overlay neighborhoods. Prior to working for the City of Decatur, she served as a founding board member for the Historic Tacoma non-profit and as an independent consultant working with municipal governments, park systems, and school districts, while teaching public history, art history, and architectural history at the University of Washington and the Seattle Community College system for almost a decade. Caroline has worked extensively with the Society of Architectural Historians on producing Archipedia articles for buildings in both Washington State and Alabama and continues architectural research in her spare time. She holds a masters in Historic Preservation from Ball State University, and a doctorate in Architectural History from the University of Washington.