Adding a Fence in a Columbus Historic District

Columbus has a number of designated local historic districts, and if a property sits inside one, the fence conversation gains a step that happens before construction rather than after.

What triggers review

The Board of Historic and Architectural Review handles exterior changes to designated historic properties. Its published guidance is direct about this: a Certificate of Appropriateness is required for any change in materials or appearance to the exterior of a designated historic property prior to beginning construction, and among the common alterations that must be approved it names the addition of fences, alongside the construction of decks, porches and ramps, and demolition of any structure in the historic districts.

Fences are not an edge case here. They are on the list by name.

The first question is whether you are in one

Historic district boundaries do not follow neighborhood names or the way people talk about parts of town, and a street can be inside a district on one side and outside on the other. The reliable way to find out is to ask the city’s historic preservation staff about the specific address rather than to infer it from the age of the house or the character of the street.

Ask before a design is settled, not after. The whole point of the process is that it happens before construction begins.

What the process costs

The board publishes a fee schedule with modest charges: a staff approval request and a board review each carry a small fixed fee, with a larger fee attached to a demolition permit submission. The money is not the issue. Time is.

Staff-level approval is faster than a full board hearing. A proposal that clearly suits the district and matches what is already there is more likely to be handled at staff level; a proposal that introduces something unusual is more likely to go to the board, which meets on a schedule rather than on demand. That is the real cost of a design that fights the district: weeks, not dollars.

Designing something that will be approved

Historic review is about whether a change is appropriate to the character of the district, so the practical strategy is to look at what is already there.

In practice, in older Columbus streets, that tends to mean:

• Open fences over solid ones on street-facing lines. Picket, whether wood or aluminum, generally suits an older streetscape in a way that a six foot solid panel does not.
• Height in proportion to the house and the street. A three or four foot front fence reads as belonging. Taller reads as an intervention.
• Materials with a period logic. Wood picket and painted or powder-coated metal read as historically plausible. Vinyl usually does not, whatever its other merits.
• Privacy where it is not seen. Solid panel on rear and interior side lines with an open fence on the frontage is a common arrangement and it satisfies both the homeowner and the streetscape.

None of that is a rule the board publishes. It is what generally happens when a design is developed by looking at the district first.

The order to do things in

1. Confirm with historic preservation staff whether the address is in a designated district.
2. If it is, sketch the fence before committing to it, and ask staff what would be handled at staff level.
3. Submit for the Certificate of Appropriateness and get it in hand.
4. Then deal with everything else: the Inspections and Code Department on permit questions, the survey, the Georgia 811 locate.
5. Then build.

Reversing steps three and five is the expensive version, because a fence built without a Certificate in a designated district is a fence that may have to come down.

Everything else still applies

Historic review sits on top of the ordinance rather than replacing it. The eight foot height allowance, the rule against obstructing easements and rights of way, and the twenty foot corner setback all still apply inside a district, and the board’s assessment applies on top of them.

The rules and permits guide covers the ordinance side, and a fence company that works these streets regularly will know what has been approved nearby, which is usually the most useful information available.