Historic New England

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See also: Oldest buildings in America

Historic New England's brand and descriptor line. The organization was formerly known as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

Historic New England, previously known as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), is a charitable, non-profit, historic preservation organization headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. It is focused on New England and is the oldest and largest regional preservation organization in the United States. Historic New England maintains properties throughout all of the New England states except Vermont.

William Sumner Appleton, Jr. founded SPNEA in 1910 for "the purpose of preserving for posterity buildings, places and objects of historical and other interest." Accession records for 1910 list 19 items. Appleton considered everything from the mundane to the singular worth preserving, and so Historic New England's collection today ranges from everyday cakes of soap to extraordinary specimens of fine furniture.

Historic New England currently owns and operates 36 house museums and landscapes across New England, representing nearly 400 years of architecture, as well as a wide-ranging collection of more than 100,000 objects of historical and aesthetic significance (the largest assemblage of New England art and artifacts in the country). It also archives more than 1,000,000 items documenting New England architectural and cultural history, including photographs, prints and engravings, more than 20,000 architectural drawings and specifications, books, manuscripts, and ephemera.