Help for Historic Properties on Long Island

The owners of historic buildings on Long Island have a new source of support thanks to a partnership between the Preservation League of New York State and the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation based in Hampton Bays.

Sylvester Manor Educational Farm, Shelter Island, received $9,000 in Preserve NY funding in 2016 to support the cost of building condition reports for each of the farm outbuildings.

The foundation has made a grant of $50,000 to the Preservation League to provide technical guidance and grants to nonprofit cultural institutions who own historic buildings in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. This new program is a special fund of the Preserve New York Program, a signature grant program of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the Preservation League of New York State, made possible with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Representatives from historic sites, museums, cultural sites, and historical societies are being encouraged to attend a workshop on Tuesday, February 7 from 9:00 am – 3:30 pm at the Ward Melville Heritage Organization’s Educational & Cultural Center in Stony Brook, to learn more.

A recent study of Preserve New York found that between 2005-2012, $746,000 in grants leveraged $11.3 million in funding from other sources and added 12,600 historic properties to the National Register, making many of them eligible for rehabilitation tax credits. Preserve New York grants can be used for the creation of historic structure reports, building condition reports, cultural landscape reports, and cultural resource surveys. These reports are often the first step in a larger preservation and fundraising campaign.