About Historic Designation

Eclectic Preservation and The Historic Designation Certification process was conceived and developed by Risa Davis, a realtor based in Portland, Oregon. Risa became a Realtor in 2003. She began serving buyers and sellers in North Portland and the Inner Eastside, where character-driven homes abound. Much to her dismay, Risa witnessed irreplaceable architectural details and original fixtures being stripped from homes in the name of modernization, energy savings, or expansion. Concern over this led Risa to the Architectural Heritage Center, an organization dedicated to preserving Portland’s character-driven homes. As a board member she continues to serve the organization in outreach, education and fundraising. She and her husband Brent, an environmental biologist, are renovating their historic home and are in the process of listing it on the National Register.

Risa is both an avid naturalist and an environmentalist who reassures homeowners and contractors that ‘green’ doesn’t have to mean stripping a home of its architectural integrity. “The greenest thing you can do,” she says, “is to preserve what’s already there.”

Risa created the Historic Certification process for just that reason: to preserve what’s already there. She teaches others to become stewards of historic homes, appreciating historic properties as beauty in architectural form.