Lauren Schiszik will replace Eric Holcomb as executive director of Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP), the municipal division that oversees changes to locally-designated landmarks and historic districts and other matters involving historic buildings and monuments in the city.
She will also replace Holcomb as chief of the Historical and Architectural Preservation Division of the city’s planning department, overseeing its staff of preservation planners.
The 11-member preservation commission has been meeting for months to identify a successor to Holcomb, who disclosed last year that he intends to retire by the end of 2025. It is one of the few high-level jobs in the city government that is appointed by citizens on a public commission rather than the mayor. It’s also one of the few positions in Baltimore City government in which the job holder can’t be fired by the mayor.
Schiszik joined CHAP in 2011 and has been the Number Two-ranking employee in the department, a division of Baltimore’s planning department. Her most recent titles are Historic Preservation Planner Supervisor and preservation planner for Baltimore City landmarks and city-owned properties. She will be the fourth woman to lead CHAP since the commission was established in 1964, along with Romaine Somerville, Barbara Hoff and Kathleen Kotarba.
Before joining CHAP, Schiszik was a public archaeologist and cultural resources planner in Anne Arundel County. She is also an adjunct faculty member in the Historic Preservation graduate program at Goucher College and serves on the Governor’s Commission on Maryland Military Monuments. She previously taught in Stevenson University’s Public History undergraduate program.
Schiszik earned a Masters of Historic Preservation degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a degree in Sociology/Anthropology from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Outside of work, “you can find this city resident in her garden or kitchen, outdoors on a trail, or at an event in Baltimore’s rich arts scene,” states the City of Baltimore website.
Critical job
CHAP is often mispronounced ‘CHAPs,’ as if it’s an all-male cabal whose members all wear bowler hats and meet in a smoke-filled room, but that’s not the case. The executive director of CHAP is a critical job in city government because the office plays a key role in determining the fate of landmarks and historic districts that make up much of Baltimore’s urban landscape. The division provides staff support to a citizens panel that has legal authority to review and approve plans to alter the exteriors of thousands of buildings in 36 local historic districts and more than 200 local landmarks throughout the city, and it manages a local historic preservation tax credit program.
CHAP’s mission statement is: “to enhance and promote the culture and economy of Baltimore through the preservation of buildings, structures, sites and neighborhoods that have aesthetic, historic and architectural value.” Unlike Baltimore’s Urban Design and Architecture Advisory Panel, which serves in an advisory capacity to the planning department, CHAP has the final say in many situations.
The chief of the planning department’s Historical and Architectural Preservation Division is responsible for participating in budget preparation and personnel duties; meeting with City Council members; providing historic preservation expertise to department-wide projects and coordinating the management and stewardship of outdoor monuments and historical objects with other city agencies.
Baltimore has more public monuments per capita than any other city in the country and is home to some of the earliest National Register of Historic Places districts in the nation. More than 65,000 properties, or roughly one in three buildings in the city, are listed on the National Register, more than any other city in the country.
City tradition
Holcomb joined CHAP in 1994 and has been its executive director since 2014. Starting this week, he’s going on an extended leave to use up accrued vacation time.
Schiszik’s appointment is in line with a city tradition of hiring from within CHAP’s own ranks to replace its directors. Holcomb was in-house when he replaced Kotarba, and Kotarba was in-house when she replaced Hoff. CHAP is one of the oldest preservation commissions in the United States.
