Learn About Main Street

The National Trust Main Street Center is a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Housed in the Trust's Department of Community Revitalization, the Center is the nation's leader in preservation-based revitalization, providing assistance, information, and leadership to grassroots-based organizations around the country. In the 1970s, the National Trust created its unique Main Street approach to commercial district revitalization, a methodology that combines historic preservation with economic development. Today, it advocates preservation-based commercial district revitalization as an ethic that all communities can use to revive their traditional commercial areas.