Excellence Award Spotlight: Julie Nucci
After her historic Owego home flooded in 2011, Julie Nucci embarked on a years-long project to elevate her house. It is the first National Register-listed home in NYS elevated for flood mitigation and is included in the Secretary’s Guidelines on Flood Adaptation for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings. Since then, she has worked tirelessly to advocate for people and communities impacted by climate change by promoting resiliency and disaster preparedness. She recently formed J. Nucci Consulting, LLC and is working with the National Hazard Mitigation Association and FEMA on engagement and resilience strategies for under-served communities. Many historic communities are located along waterways, from coastal cities to canalside towns. And many of those places, across the state and country, are under-served – just like her Village of Owego, NY. As one of our 2023 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award winners, we wanted to find out more about how she thinks about preservation and why it matters.
Read More
Excellence Award Spotlight: Olean's First National Bank Restoration
The First National Bank of Olean and the adjacent former Siegel’s Shoes building have been revitalized to provide much-needed high-quality housing, office, and commercial space in downtown Olean. Vacant for more than two decades, the city’s Urban Renewal Agency worked hard to find a path forward, which included historic district designation to allow for the use of Historic Tax Credits. The rehabilitation of these historic spaces was led by preservation architect Elise Johnson-Schmidt and developer Savarino Companies. Elise was gracious enough to answer a few questions about her work on this Award-winning project.
Read More
Excellence Award Spotlight: Claudette Brady
Claudette Brady has been a staunch advocate for her Brooklyn community for decades. Spearheading the campaign for historic district designation of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Claudette rallied her neighbors and made historic preservation meaningful for the people of the neighborhood. In the years since that successful campaign, Claudette has continued advocating for historic preservation, uplifting the history of traditionally underrepresented people, and centering them in the conversation about what we preserve and for whom.
Read More
Announcing the 2023 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award Winners
“The 2023 Excellence Award winners span the state, from Olean to Brooklyn,” said Preservation League President Jay DiLorenzo. “They represent how historic preservation addresses critical issues, from climate action to affordable housing, from spurring economic development to uplifting underrepresented histories. We are honored to recognize the incredible work each Award winner has done for their communities and beyond”
Read More
Meet Our New Director of Preservation
Caitlin Meives most recently served as the Director of Preservation at The Landmark Society of Western New York, a regional historic preservation nonprofit based in Rochester that serves a nine-county area.
Read More
Our 2022-2023 Annual Report: A Letter from our Board Chair & President
Covering July 2022-June 2023, our recently released annual report features highlights of our work over the past year, our donor list, and financial statements. Providing an opening for the report is a letter from League Board Chair Frank Sanchis and League President Jay DiLorenzo:
Read More
Public Art for Preservation Around Penn Station
In the early morning hours of Friday, September 22, plant-like humanoid creatures appeared in the vicinity of Penn Station, drawing attention to proposed demolitions haunting the neighborhood. The Keepers, part of a performance art intervention created by Ed Woodham, have shown up in various gentrifying locations over the past decade. The Keepers appear when life is out of balance with nature. Their presence is a response to the gentrification and rapid mass development of urban areas where the importance of mixed-use districts, the area’s history, and the natural environment has been ignored.
Read More
Brooks Park Pair
Part of the League’s 2023 Seven to Save artist commissions, this pair of carvings by Fitzhugh Karol was inspired by the roofline of James Brooks’ studio. Together, these two carved cedars, cut from the forest in Springs, are representative of the collaborative creative life of James Brooks and Charlotte Park.
Read More
Breaking News: The Keepers Loom at Penn Station
he Keepers’ presence here brings attention to the blatant demolition of the Penn Station neighborhood’s historic buildings, the environmental impact of that demolition, and the human cost of displacing longtime residents and business owners.
Read More
Sleeping with the Ancestors: Author Talk with Joseph McGill, Jr. and Herb Frazier
In this Preservation Book Club webinar, we were joined by Joseph McGill Jr., founder of the Slave Dwelling Project, and his co-author Herb Frazier. They discussed their book Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery. This book is the personal account of one man's groundbreaking project to sleep overnight in the countless oft-overlooked former slave dwellings that still stand across the country, the fascinating history behind those sites, and how he has used the experiences to shed light on larger issues of race in America.
Read More
A Mural for Oneonta's Downtown Historic District
Historic preservation can serve as an economic life raft for upstate cities like Oneonta, but the public perception of preservation can be a challenge. As a way to celebrate the historic district, the League commissioned local artist Emily Falco to create a site-specific sidewalk mural strategically located in front of the Greater Oneonta Historical Society.
Read More
COMING SOON: THE KEEPERS
The Keepers is a performance art intervention created by longtime NYC cultural provocateur, Ed Woodham – scheduled for Friday, September 22 in three different locations around the Penn Station neighborhood (The Church of St. John the Baptist, Gimbel’s Skybridge, and the demolished Hotel Pennsylvania). The Keepers September activation has been commissioned by the Preservation League of NYS as part of a New York State Council on the Arts-funded project drawing attention to the League’s Seven to Save endangered historic sites across the state through artistic interventions. The Penn Station Neighborhood, which is threatened with needless and large-scale demolition, was identified as a Seven to Save in 2022. This project is organized in partnership with the Empire Station Coalition.
Read More
Remembering Joan Kaplan Davidson and Celebrating Her Far-Reaching Legacy
The League was saddened to hear of the passing of Joan Davidson this past weekend. Joan’s impact was felt far and wide, through her philanthropy at the J.M. Kaplan Fund and the Furthermore Foundation, her involvement in important advocacy in the Hudson Valley and New York City, and her annual Shad Party at Midwood, her home in the Hudson Valley. Joan had served on the League’s Trustees Council since 2011, but her importance to the Preservation League and our programs is much deeper than that. Over the years, Joan played a vital role in supporting some of the Preservation League’s most important programs and initiatives.
Read More
Are your estate planning documents in order?
There are several core estate planning and financial documents we should all have and keep up to date: a Durable Financial Power of Attorney, a Health Care Proxy, and a Living Will. A review is recommended at least every five years, or should your circumstances or finances change, or if there is a change in applicable laws. Read on for more…
Read More
Preserve New York Grants - 2023
The Preservation League of NYS and their program partners at the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) are thrilled to announce the 2023 Preserve New York grant recipients. At its 2023 meeting, an independent panel selected 19 applicants in 17 counties to receive support totaling $279,936.
Read More
America Redux: Author Talk with Ariel Aberg-Riger
In this Preservation Book Club presentation, author Ariel Aberg-Riger discussed her brand new book America Redux: Visual Stories From Our Dynamic History. Ariel did a reading from the book and detailed the behind-the-scenes process of how a chapter was put together. Following her presentation, she was joined in conversation by Katy Peace, Director of Communications for the Preservation League of NYS.
Read More
Pride Month Book Recs
Just a few Pride Month book recommendations for you. Some of these we’ve already read and others are still on our TBR. Which have you checked out?
Read More
We love books. Maybe you do, too?
…If what resonates with people is just the book recommendations, maybe there’s a better way to do that. So we’re going to spend the summer experimenting with a new format. Preservation Book Club, but make it Instagram.
Read More
Rethinking Preservation in Urban Settings
For this panel, we invited people working across the state, from Buffalo to Queens, who are thinking outside the preservation box to work with their communities. We wanted to look at how practitioners take a more holistic approach to preservation in urban centers — not just relying on tried and true preservation tools like landmark designation and historic tax credits. From cultural districts to building shell stabilization, there are so many ways preservationists can engage with the complicated realities of their city's built environment to better serve the people who call these places home.
Read More
American Chinatown
Bonnie Tsui’s book American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods shines a spotlight on Chinatowns across the country — from New York City to Honolulu, Hawai’i — interweaving the stories of the people she meets with her own personal narrative.
Read More
