Pillar Spotlight: John G. Waite Associates
John G. Waite Associates, Architects PLLC is one of this year’s Pillar of New York honorees. Join us to celebrate Jack and the rest of the JGWA team at the Rainbow Room in NYC for the Pillar Awards on Tuesday, April 18.
The JGWA team pictured around a table. From left to right: Clay Palazzo, Nancy Rankin, John Waite, Douglas Bucher, and Chelle Jenkins.
If you want to know what a professional commitment to preservation looks like, look no further than to John Waite and the firm of John G. Waite Associates, Architects (JGWA). With offices in Albany and New York City, Jack—along with Clay Palazzo, Nancy Rankin, Douglas Bucher, Chelle Jenkins, and their team of talented architects and designers — provides expert leadership in the preservation and continued use of some of America’s most significant historic buildings. Founded in 1995, JGWA has restored hundreds of historic buildings across the United States and has received more than fifty historic preservation awards for its projects.
An illustrated rendering of the Fort Ticonderoga Pavilion created by JGWA.
The firm’s creative solutions for complex and technically challenging projects are based on detailed archival research, thorough investigation and analysis of historic building materials and technology, and a commitment to the most current and effective building-conservation practices. That approach has won the firm scores of national and regional design awards, including multiple AIA Institute Honor Awards for Architecture and Palladio Awards for Restoration and Renovation from Traditional Building.
Within New York State, the firm has restored Tweed Courthouse in Manhattan, Hamilton Grange in Harlem, Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, and the Capitol in Albany, as well as dozens of other courthouses, city halls, historic house museums, and churches, many of which have been supported or honored by the Preservation League. The firm was most recently recognized with a 2022 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award for their work on the Pavilion at Fort Ticonderoga.
Preservation and stewardship of historic structures is fundamentally tied to the tenets of sustainable design, and is critical to the protection of our environment. Reusing and adapting historic structures has wide-ranging benefits across all areas of society, realizing energy and material savings while preserving our cultural and architectural inheritance. JGWA’s LEED-accredited architects, historic interiors specialists, and building materials conservators look at each project as an opportunity to implement sustainable design within sound preservation approaches.
JGWA is committed to developing innovative solutions to protect the nation’s historic architectural resources for generations to come. The firm is truly deserving of the title “Pillar of New York.”