23 Feb 2026 Partners in Preservation: Scott Winkler, Wessling Architects
Partners in Preservation is a new blog series in which Historic Boston Inc. welcomes our 2025 Corporate Partners to share why Historic Preservation is important to them. Here, Scott Winkler, Principal of Wessling Architects, an architectural firm that specializes in exterior enclosure and historic preservation consulting, shares why he’s partnered with HBI to help save Boston’s historic places and spaces.
1.) What does preservation mean to your organization and your commitment to Boston?
SW: Wessling Architects is an architecture firm with two main focuses of work. One is building enclosure consulting; that’s maintaining, restoring, and preventing failures to any type of building exterior. The other is historic preservation consulting and that’s where most of my work with the firm is focused. So, I’ve been doing historic preservation essentially my whole career and actually moved up to the northeast from Texas, where I went to college, specifically to work on more historic buildings.
The amount of historic buildings we have in Boston is really key to– in my opinion at least– the character of the city and what a lot of people enjoy about the city. The diversity of buildings, types of architecture, and the history that they represent. I really enjoy the opportunity to help preserve those buildings, to figure out what’s going on with them, why they might be failing, and ultimately come up with the most historically appropriate way to restore them.
I’ve been lucky to work on a lot of great churches, historic homes, and buildings in Boston. As an architect, I feel that these buildings are really where the stories of Boston’s history can be told. If you’ve ever taken a tour, guides are looking at spots on the ground where something happened and then they’re looking at the buildings around them. The work we do to preserve these buildings, maintain them, and help organizations–particularly a lot of the nonprofits we work with– find appropriate and cost-effective ways to approach preservation. That’s an important part of the work I do and I really enjoy the opportunity to do it. I always like to say that “if I do a good job, nobody knows I was there.”
2.) How does working with Historic Boston Inc. (HBI) further your own work?
SW: What I love about HBI is the organization’s not only an advocate for preservation, but is in a position to help make some of the most challenging projects possible. Most of the buildings you guys get involved with just aren’t going to happen. Nothing will happen or they’ll be lost. 50 Cedar’s a great example of a building that was destined for destruction, that HBI had to step up in a big way to save, keep from deteriorating further, and then ultimately find the right partner to make it happen. I think that’s key to the work of HBI. HBI has that ability to help fund and find professional resources to help these organizations, or just the buildings in many cases, when no one else can find a way.
It’s something that’s pretty unique because there aren’t a lot of groups that have the means to save the buildings that are most in danger. And I think one of the challenges with Boston is that there’s plenty of history but there’s also tremendous development pressure to either inappropriately expand or remove buildings to make something new happen that the community feels is critical, like housing.
It’s hard sometimes to convince somebody that the building deserves to be kept. Unlike some communities where the buildings are going to be there whether they’re in good shape or not because there isn’t as much development pressure, Boston’s a different picture. Here the time frames are condensed. There’s limited time to save buildings, the pressures are greater, and quite frankly, the costs are greater. It’s more expensive to do these types of projects in Boston than it might be in other parts of the region. That’s where I think it’s critical that an organization like Historic Boston exists, that can help and knows how to navigate this specific community and can be the bridge to make these projects happen.
It’s hard to convince people sometimes. You tell somebody they can work with a historic building and save it and make it part of the project, but without having successful rehabilitations like HBI’s to point to as an example, that can be a hard sell. That’s where HBI’s projects are important examples for the development community and organizations that are trying to decide how to approach redeveloping a historic building.
That’s what ultimately is most important to the work I do as a preservation architect and to the preservation movement in Boston; having some good examples of preservation that are well done, well thought out, not really cutting corners, but yet still making them financially viable. These projects are spread out around the community and there’s good examples in a number of different neighborhoods across the city. It’s not just the specific building projects, but the advocacy, the newsletter, and all the resources you provide. The work HBI does to promote preservation in Boston has a major impact on the physical makeup and future character of the city.