Mary Ruffin Hanbury

About Mary Ruffin

With a broad preservation background, Ms. Hanbury is involved in architectural survey, preservation planning, heritage tourism, and strategic planning projects and is particularly adept at creating publications and solutions that meet sophisticated needs while remaining accessible to a diverse audience. Ms Hanbury meets the qualifications for architectural historian under 36 CFR 61. Since she began subconsulting to W&MCAR in 2010, Ms. Hanbury has conducted numerous architectural surveys at both the reconnaissance and intensive level and has contributed to five National Register nominations for both individual properties and historic districts. Prior to forming Hanbury Preservation Consulting, Ms. Hanbury was the primary point of contact between the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) and local government preservation programs. She reviewed and provided comments on all local designation reports and preservation plans, guidelines, and ordinances. She also wrote the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Plan and provided technical assistance and training to over 95 local historic preservation commissions. Prior to her work in North Carolina, she was a program officer for the Southern Office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where she provided advisory and field services throughout 15 states in the southern region, developing and implementing strategies for key intervention and advocacy issues. While serving as the architectural historian at Virginia Department of Historic Resources' Tidewater Regional Preservation Office, she developed, implemented, and monitored a comprehensive regional program for the identification, permanent recording, evaluation, registration, and sensitive treatment of historic buildings, structures, districts, objects, and cultural landscapes in the thirty counties and cities of eastern Virginia. She reviewed, edited, and wrote nominations to the National Register of Historic Places and designed and conducted architectural resource surveys and evaluations. She has served on the boards of numerous arts and preservation organizations, including most recently the Raleigh Historic Districts Commission and Preservation Action, a national preservation education and advocacy organization.