Lunenburg, N.S. is home to the historic St. John's Anglican Church, one of many sites that made the 2004 World Monuements Watch list of 100 Most Endangered Sites. ( History Lands)

Amajor landmark in Lunenburg, N.S., has made it to the 2004 World Monuments Watch list of 100 Most Endangered Sites.

The historic St. John's Anglican Church, which exemplifies a rare type of local architecture known as carpenter-gothic, suffered major damage in a fire two years ago. Now, thanks to its appearance on the biennial Watch list, it will be eligible for grants to help rebuild.

"Often churches use catastrophes of this kind to completely change the interior of a building under the pretext ... that they want to modernize," says WMF president Bonnie Burnham.

"We were particularly satisfied that the church wanted to use historic standards as they went about repairing it."

The Watch list is a major program of the New York-based World Monuments Fund (WMF), a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the historic, artistic and architectural heritage of humankind. Threats to endangered sites range from inappropriate development, and deterioration caused by age, to natural disasters (floods, earthquakes) and governmental policies.

Close to 300 sites were nominated for the 2004 list.

"We have three explicit criteria for the listing, which are the significance of the building, the urgency of the situation and the demonstration that the nominator has the capacity to address the problem," says Burnham.

This year, for the first time, the list encompasses all seven continents. The regional breakdown is: Europe, 33 sites; the Americas, 31; Africa and the Middle East, 18; Asia, 16; Australia, 1; and Antarctica, 1.

The site types range from religious buildings and archaeological sites to towns, dwellings and industrial sites.

Los Angeles’ Ennis Brown House. (World Monuments Fund)

Some of the best known landmarks are the Great Wall of China Cultural Landscape (a re-list from 2002), the Panama Canal Area and Mexico's Quetzalcoatl Temple at Teotihuacan, which is deteriorating.

Other endangered sites include the Nimrud and Nineveh Palaces in Iraq, the 16th-century Guaira Historic City in Venezuela and Strawberry Hill in London, England.

One of the most important buildings of the early Gothic revival, Strawberry Hill was the home of Sir Horace Walpole, an 18th century commentator and historian.

But the estate -- especially the interior -- is in need of major repair. Negotiations are in progress to transfer the property to the Strawberry Hill Preservation Trust.

Sites range in age from Dampier Rock Art Complex in Australia, which dates to around 8000 B.C., to examples of 20th-century architecture such as the Ennis Brown House (1924) in Los Angeles, the largest of four textile block houses designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Materials used for its construction, such as decomposed granite, have contributed to its deterioration, a problem compounded by an earthquake in 1994.

Strawberry Hill in London. (World Monuments Fund)

The 2004 list also includes:

Shackleton's Hut, Antarctica -- The hut, built in 1908, is one of only six intact wooden buildings that remain from the age of Antarctic exploration and the only building in Antarctica built by the legendary explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.

The building itself is well preserved but the kennels and artifacts are in poor condition. Threats include environmental degradation, blizzards, snow, and looting.

Dampier Rock Art Complex, Australia -- The Pilbara region of northwestern Australia is home to the world's largest concentration of petroglyphs.

A range of motifs cover the entire worldview of the Yaburara tribe, of which only six known survivors remain. Twenty percent of the rock art, considered the greatest non-European cultural heritage site in the country, has been destroyed by development.

Quetzalcoatl temple at Teotihuacan, Mexico. (World Monuments Fund)

Tamansari Water Castle, Kraton, Indonesia -- An elaborate pleasure park and palace, built in 1758 for a Sultan of the Kingdom of Yogyakarta, the complex includes a mosque, meditation chambers, bathing pools, water gardens and pavilions.

The complex fell into disuse following an earthquake in 1867, which destroyed several buildings.

Since the inception of the Watch program in 1995, many sites on previous lists have been rescued or are on their way to being rescued.

Historic Lower Manhattan (comprising 65 landmarks) was placed on the 2002 Watch List. Since that time a consortium of prominent preservation organizations came together to establish the Lower Manhattan Emergency Preservation Fund.

For more information, visit www.wmf.org.