The former Fair Oaks and Phillips middle school buildings have been added to the National Register of Historic Places.

“The national registry encourages preservation and identifying sources to preserve,” Carissa Harvey, Fort Dodge senior city planner, said. “They’re looking at, is it unique to the community? Is it unique to history?”

The sites are, indeed, unique to both.

“One of them was designed by a famous architect,” Harvey said. “North High School (Phillips) was designed by architects William B. Itner and E.O. Damon of Fort Dodge.”

Itner also designed West High School in Waterloo and Prescott Elementary in Dubuque, Harvey said.

Joining the National Register is an intensive process. For the former middle schools, it began in May when the Iowa Arts Council submitted a request to the city’s historic preservation commission.

“The Historic Preservation Commission gave their feedback and said, yes, we’d like to see these listed on the national register,” Harvey said.

A request then goes to the State Historic Preservation Office, a division within the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs.

“They look at the property’s age, the significance of the property,” Harvey said. “They review it, and it goes to the National Park Service for their review.”

The state review was completed in June, and the national review completed in October.

Both buildings are owned by Foutch Bros. LLC of Kansas City, Missouri, which is in the process of turning the buildings into apartments.

In addition to celebrating their history, being on the national registry qualifies both buildings for historic tax credits, Harvey said.

“When they do this whole review process, they’re looking at what’s original to the building, what’s been changed. And then when you’re applying for your historic tax credits, they can gauge that,” Harvey said.

There are standards, set by the U.S. Department of the Interior, for preserving the buildings that must be followed.

“It can be either rehabilitating an existing feature, or replicating a feature,” Harvey said. “They’d be comparing how you are proposing to change the building with those standards, making sure you’re preserving the features that are unique to the building.”

The city of Fort Dodge is proud to have such properties on the National Register, Harvey said.

“Just having that nomination educates people on what’s out there and what we have,” she said. “It’s similar to the reasoning behind our downtown historic district. That shows we can and that we’re looking to preserve our history in Fort Dodge.”