Paula Mohr is a nationally recognized architectural historian and preservationist based in Iowa, where she founded and operates Bentonsport Preservation, LLC. While at the State Historic Preservation Office, she administered one of the nation’s largest certified local government programs for 14 years and reviewed historic tax credit applications and National Register nominations.

Paula previously held positions at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the White House/Old Executive Office Building, and the National Park Service, where she was curator of the White House Storage Facility. From 1994 to 2000, Paula was curator of the U.S. Treasury in Washington, where she was responsible for the preservation and interpretation of this National Historic Landmark and its collections.

Paula meets the Secretary of the Interior’s Professional Qualifications for Architectural Historian and Historian. She is a Field Services advisor for the Iowa State Historic Preservation Office.

Paula earned an M.A. in Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program in Museum Studies (SUNY-Oneonta). Her Ph.D. in architectural history is from the University of Virginia, where she wrote her dissertation on architecture and sculpture in New York’s Central Park. She has written about the sacred qualities of Central Park’s landscape and buildings in American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred Spaces (Indiana University Press, 2006). She also contributed several chapters on landscape design for Campus Beautiful: Shaping the Aesthetic Identity of Iowa State University. Her current research projects include the history and rehabilitation of newspaper buildings.

She has taught architectural history at the University of Virginia, Drake University and through an NEH-funded workshop on Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School in the Midwest. She currently is on the faculty of the graduate program in historic preservation at Goucher College.

Paula recently completed a two-year term as chair of the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions and remains on the board. She also is on the boards of the Vernacular Architecture Forum and other preservation organizations.

Paula works and lives with her husband Tom and three cats in the Vernon School, which her parents, antiques dealer Betty Mohr and artist Wendell Mohr, converted to a family home in the 1960s.