Fifty-Five Years of LPC

Welcome to Fifty-Five Years of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, with a decade-by-decade history of the Commission, highlighting designations, Commission-approved new design, legal milestones, and a timeline of NYC history. 

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was established 55 years ago when Mayor Robert F. Wagner signed the Landmarks Law on April 19, 1965. In the decades since, LPC has designated more than 37,000 buildings and sites and issued hundreds of thousands of permits approving work on historic buildings and new buildings in historic districts. The Commission’s mission to protect the buildings and places that represent New York City's cultural, social, economic, political, and architectural history benefits the city through stabilizing and improving property values, enhancing the city’s attraction to tourists, and fostering civic pride.  

When LPC was founded, the city was in the beginning of an economic downturn, and by the early 1970s New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy and had a dramatically declining population. In recent years, the city’s economy has been booming and the population continuing to grow. In between these points in time, New York City’s economy grew and retracted, and the city faced incredible challenges, including the 9/11 terrorist attack and Superstorm Sandy. New York’s people, economy and culture proved resilient to those challenges, as did the communities and historic buildings under LPC’s jurisdiction. In recent years, several historic districts have reached 50-year milestone since designation and are today thriving, including the Brooklyn Heights,  Greenwich Village  and Mott Haven Historic Districts.  

Today, New York City is in the midst of an unprecedented crisis, with a global pandemic changing the way people live, work, and experience the city. As New Yorkers are doing their part and staying home, the LPC launched an initiative to provide engaging online content about historic buildings and neighborhoods that make New York a vibrant, beautiful, and resilient city. We hope this story map, showing the places that New Yorkers cherish and the exciting new designs that have been built in the city’s historic context, will engage New Yorkers in a joyful discourse about the City’s history and culture and strengthen our connections to the places we love.  

The 1960s was an era of social consciousness and a growing national awareness about preservation. This decade saw the National Historic Preservation Act and the Archaeological Historic Preservation Act signed into law, the Columbia University Protests, and the Stonewall Inn riots.  

The Commission acted quickly in its first five years, designating 5,594 buildings and sites throughout the City. New York’s first individual landmark was also its oldest building – the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Brooklyn – and the first historic district was Brooklyn Heights, containing 1,375 mostly residential buildings.  Many of the City’s oldest buildings were designated during this time, as well as major monuments like City Hall, the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Grand Central Terminal. Significant religious buildings were also designated – the first being the Friends Meeting House in Manhattan.  

The Commission also started to award Certificates of Appropriateness for additions to landmarks and new buildings in historic districts, such as the Watchtower Building (1967), a refined, almost Brutalist design approved in the Brooklyn Heights Historic District.  

In the 1970s, as the City faced a major fiscal crisis, the Landmarks Law was tested in the nation’s highest court, when the Supreme Court upheld the law and recognized historic preservation as a legitimate public purpose. In addition, Local Law No. 71 expanded the Commission’s mandate to include the designation of interior landmarks and scenic landmarks. 

The Commission designated landmarks and historic districts throughout the five boroughs in the 1970s, totaling 7,356 buildings and sites. Designations embraced an increasing variety of building types, historical periods, and styles, as well as recognizing sites with cultural significance.  In 1974, Central Park became the City’s first scenic landmark, and interiors of the New York Public Library became the first interior landmark. The Commission designated its first public school (Boys’ High School in Brooklyn) and public housing complex (First Houses) in 1975, and its first Modern landmark (the William Lescaze House) in 1976. Important African-American history was recognized in such landmarks as the Weeksville Houses in Brooklyn and the Dunbar Apartments in Harlem, a pioneering example of cooperative housing for middle class African Americans. LPC expanded historic district designations to include the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District, the first commercial and manufacturing district, and Prospect Park South Historic District, the first district primarily consisting of suburban homes.  

The Commission approved the master plan for the expansion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, designed by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates in 1971, the first of many occasions when LPC has worked with leading cultural institutions to guide the preservation and growth of their physical complexes. LPC also approved the design for a new house at 18 West 11th Street (1971), the site of the Weathermen town house explosion in the Greenwich Village Historic District. 

The decade of the 1980s opened with the passage of the New York Historic Preservation Act of 1980, which created the New York State Register of Historic Places and declared historic preservation as the public policy of the state. It also strengthened the environmental review process for work impacting historic properties.  

The Commission expanded designation of landmarks and historic districts throughout the City in the 1980s, designating 4,524 buildings and sites in the decade, including iconic skyscrapers like the Woolworth Building, Empire State Building, and Seagram Building, representing a wide range of architectural styles and periods, as well as interesting landmark types including Coney Island rides and the historic street plan of New Amsterdam in Lower Manhattan. In this decade, Lever House became the first Post-WWII International Style landmark, the beautiful row of houses forming “Astor Row” in Harlem were designated as individual landmarks, and large historic districts, including Ladies’ Mile and the Upper East Side, were designated. 

Commission approvals in the 1980s included notable additions and new buildings spanning a wide spectrum of styles and approaches. Kevin Roche’s expansion of the Felix Warburg Mansion for the Jewish Museum extended the historic architectural design into the addition so carefully that the line between new and old is difficult to differentiate, and Voorsanger Architects’ swooping metal and glass addition to the Morgan Library creates a bold juxtaposition of form, style, and materials. Landmark sites incorporated new skyscrapers added to the City’s skyline during this decade, including the 50-story Palace Hotel behind McKim, Mead & White’s Villard Houses on Madison Avenue.   

In the 1990s, New York City elected its first African-American mayor, David Dinkins, and enacted Local Law No 71, giving the City Council authority to review landmark designations, and Local Law No. 77, which allowed the Commission to exercise certain powers of the Art Commission (now Design Commission) in review of city-owned designated properties.  

The Commission designated 5, 432 buildings and sites in the 1990s, including significant Modern buildings such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Crimson Beech House on Staten Island and the Guggenheim Museum and interior on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and Eero Saarinen’s TWA Terminal and interior at the John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens. The Commission designated its first archaeological landmark, the African Burial Ground and Commons Historic District, its first World’s Fair structure, the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows, Queens, and the Governors Island Historic District, recognizing its 19th and early-20th century architecture and its role in the City’s military history.  

In terms of new buildings, the Commission continued to favor diverse approaches, including both modernist and contextual additions. The American Museum of Natural History continued to grow with the addition of the Rose Center for Earth and Space, an iconic sphere within a glass cube. Simultaneously, new buildings in historic districts continued to blend in stylistically with their surroundings, as at 362 Pacific Street and 124 Hudson Street.  

The first decade of the twenty-first century brought with it the unspeakable tragedy of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, as well as in Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. The City came together in grief and support, and to rebuild, planning for the site as well as more broadly, and addressing sustainability and resiliency. The City’s parks and public spaces grew with the restoration and creation of the High Line in Chelsea, and Christo and Jean Claude’s The Gates project brought uplifting public art to Central Park. In the 2000s, the Commission designated 4,594 buildings and sites throughout the city. Designations recognized more architecture of the 20th century, expanded our historic district designations in all boroughs, recognized a number of WPA-era recreation centers, and recognized places with important cultural significance.  

In this decade, the Commission approved notable modern additions to historic buildings, including Hearst Tower by Lord Norman Foster, the first skyscraper built in New York after the September 11th attacks. The Commission also reviewed and approved other works by a range of international architects, including Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano. There were significant additions at number of institutions, including at the Harvard Club, Brooklyn Museum, and Pratt Institute.  

The Commission also considered the challenges of sustainability and resiliency. For instance, the Commission approved the adaptive reuse of the former Lion House on Astor Court at the Bronx Zoo in 2002. Now occupied by the popular primates exhibit Madagascar, this was first time that the restoration of a landmarked building received Gold LEED certification. 

In the 2010s, in fulfillment of goals to increase focus on diversity, equity, and transparency in all of our work, the Commission continued to broaden landmark designations to include culturally significant sites and districts associated with African-American history, LGBT history, immigration history and immigrant communities, labor history, and women’s history, as well as recognizing significant architectural achievements of the late-Modern and Postmodern styles for the first time.  

Commission approvals in the 2010s have focused on adapting historic buildings to the demands of an evolving city, as with the Domino Sugar Refinery and the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank. Building technologies are constantly evolving, and new innovations have been incorporated into historic structures to increase their resilience and energy efficiency in the face of a changing climate. Buildings across historic districts now use passive house technology, and buildings on the waterfront like the Tobacco Warehouse are designed to be floodable. The Commission has also approved projects that incorporate modifications for barrier-free access, as with the restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, to make sure buildings are accessible to all New Yorkers.  

New York City is the greatest city for many reasons, including its strength, resiliency and creativity. Evidence of these traits can be found in all of our NYC Landmarks. Though our circumstances are changing, we remain committed to protecting and preserving New York City’s architecturally, historically, and culturally significant buildings and sites, promoting these places so we may learn and be inspired by the past, while collectively working through these difficult times today. 

Visit LPC’s web map  here , with maps of landmarks and districts and access to designation reports.

Explore LPC’s other story maps  here .

See all of LPC’s  #LoveNYCLandmarks  initiative  here .