John Stubbs

Christovich Senior Professor of Practice - Historic Preservation

From 1990 until 2011, John H. Stubbs served as Vice President for Field Projects at the World Monuments Fund in New York where he directed scores of the organization’s projects across the world.

A native of Louisiana, John Stubbs’s field experiences began in the 1970’s working as a surveyor on archeological excavations in Italy and Egypt.

For the World Monuments Fund, his key field projects included management of the organization’s conservation initiatives at Pompeii, Angkor in Cambodia, the Royal Monastery of Guadalupe in Extremadura Spain, the Tower of Belem in Lisbon, the Liechtenstein Estates of Valtice and Lednice in the Czech Republic, the Temple Synagogue in Krakow, Poland, the Brancusi Endless Column Ensemble in Romania, and St. Ann and the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn, NY. He conducted over two dozen international planning symposia and charettes and was instrumental in the establishment, and early management, of WMF’s renowned Watch List of endangered sites program.

Beginning in 1989, John Stubbs served for twenty years as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Historic Preservation in Columbia University’s Graduate Program in Architecture, Planning & Preservation. He taught the theory and practice of architectural preservation, and the history, principles and use of classical architecture. He has also taught preservation documentation and design studios at both Columbia and the School of Architectureat Louisiana State University (LSU). He holds a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Columbia University, a Bachelor of Science in Construction Technology with a minor in Architectural History from LSU, and attained post-graduate training as a UNESCO Fellow at the International Centre for the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) in Rome. In 1978, John Stubbs worked as a Historical Architect for the Technical Preservation Services Division of the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. administering federal tax incentives for rehabilitating historic buildings. He later went on to serve as Assistant Director of Historic Preservation Projects at Beyer Blinder Belle in New York for ten years and as a Trustee of the Archeological Institute of America. He is a founding board member of the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation for which he was its chairman from 2008 until 2012. He served as a Trustee of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, chairing its Preservation Committee, from 2013-2016.

Mr. Stubbs has lectured widely throughout his career and published Time Honored; A Global View of Architectural Conservation; Parameters, Theory and Evolution of an Ethos in 2009. It was followed in 2011 by a sequel (co-authored by Emily G. Makas) entitled Architectural Conservation in Europe and the Americas; National Experiences and Practice. A third volume Architectural Conservation in Asia; National Experiences and Practice (co-authored by Robert G. Thomson) was published in 2016. A native of Louisiana, John Stubbs’s field experiences began in the 1970’s working as a surveyor on archeological excavations in Italy and Egypt.