Investigates the reasons for certain unique practices of preservation in the United States and searches for their philosophical or pragmatic basis through a comparative analysis of the Charter of Venice and the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for Rehabilitation, the US government's official regulations for architectural preservation. After giving a brief overview of the origins and development of the preservation movement in the United States, both the parallel concepts that appear in the Charter and the Standards, as well as theories and recommended practices that stand in mutual conflict or contradiction are identified and discussed. The roots of those principles indigenously American that appear in the Standards are traced to early 20th-century attitudes that have survived to this day. Contends that those sections of the Standards have had an overall detrimental effect on the authenticity in conservation of monuments and sites in the United States. The continued use of the Standards in conjunction with the current popularity of traditional and historic buildings and districts augur a considerable increase in the alteration, disfigurement, and destruction of the country's cultural patrimony.