New Year’s are usually about personal resolutions and new beginnings. And we wish all good things for you this year.
Welcome also to the Landmarks Conservancy’s 50th Anniversary! We’re excited to have reached this milestone. So, we’re also going highlight what we’ve accomplished…and toot our own horn a bit.
Our kickoff event on January 18 will bring colleagues, supporters, funders, current and former board members and staffers, and friends to Cass Gilbert’s monumental former Customs House on Bowling Green. It’s the first building the Conservancy helped save. We’ve tried to emulate the pluck and determination that took ever since.
“50 for 50,” an online exhibition featuring highlights from the more than 1000 buildings our loans and grants have helped, will debut later this month. Curators Donald Albrecht and Tom Mellins, and SJI Associates, helped make it visually interesting and compelling.
Architectural Historian Anthony Robins has compiled a lively summary of our 50 years that will be online and in print. Brendan Gill’s outraged denunciations of earlier plans for Times Square will still make you cheer. Newspaper quotes about our projects are highlighted throughout. It’s quite amazing how much preservation used to make the news.
Perhaps you’ll be in one of our ”I Am Preservation” video interviews that we’ll feature throughout the year. We plan to showcase a wide range of New Yorkers to demonstrate preservation’s range and diversity. More information on this is to come.
We’re also planning to visit each Borough Hall focusing on our loans, grants, and projects in each Borough.
What we aren’t going to do is rest on our laurels. We’re going to continue helping people care for buildings throughout the City. We’ll continue to fight misguided policies like the State’s plan to demolish blocks of Midtown around Penn Station. And we’ll promote new landmark buildings and neighborhoods.
New York has the greatest collection of architecture of any city in the country. This is the most exciting, and, at times, most challenging place to be a preservationist. We are proud to be The New York Landmarks Conservancy and to fight for the City we love.
Sincerely,
Peg Breen, President
The New York Landmarks Conservancy