Dr. Kathleen M. Abplanalp, PhD joined PDP in 2015 and brings more than fifteen years of historic preservation experience to the firm. Kathleen is a research scholar trained in the fields of American social history and material culture. She combines her deep understanding of and passion for American history with her knowledge of building types and building chronology to document a wide variety of historic properties.

Prior to her employment at PDP, Kathleen was an independent historic preservation consultant. In this capacity, she provided preservation services to clients seeking assistance with the completion of historical and architectural surveys, the creation of Historic Structure Reports and National Register listings, and the establishment of local historic districts.

Kathleen's preservation experience also includes five years as a senior architectural historian at Richard Grubb & Associates in Cranbury, New Jersey. As a member of one of the mid-Atlantic's largest cultural resource management firms, Kathleen worked on compliance-related projects. These projects involved completing field surveys, writing intensive-level architectural reports, determining National Register eligibility for properties affected by Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, and drafting mitigation documents in accordance with various Memorandums of Agreement. Kathleen's depth of knowledge about historic resources has been honed by her work on myriad property types, including schools, factories, churches, dams, bridges, sewer lines, water treatment plants, historic plank roads, historic farmsteads, and railroad infrastructure. Kathleen exceeds the Secretary of the Interior's qualifications for Historian and Architectural Historian.

Kathleen is an adjunct faculty member in the College of Architecture and the Built Environment at Philadelphia University. She focuses her instruction on methods for researching, documenting, and analyzing historic properties.

key project experience

New Jersey Executive State House
Maymont Mansion
The Alamo Master Plan