Celebrating #Landmarks60

The New York City Landmarks Law was signed into law on April 19, 1965 by Mayor Robert Wagner. Since then, about 38,000 NYC properties have been protected under the law.

Many of the landmarks designated in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo were highlighted as part of our celebration of Landmarks50, the 50th anniversary of the law in 2015, and in 2019, as we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the landmark designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District.

Much has changed in the past ten years since we celebrated Landmarks50. Since April 2015 through April 1, 2025, twenty-five individual landmarks and one historic district have been designated in our neighborhoods, nearly all of which Village Preservation proposed for landmark designation and fought to protect. Today, we explore some of our most recent designated landmarks (in chronological order):

Stonewall Inn

Designated on June 23, 2015, the Stonewall Inn was the first site designated a landmark by NYC based on its LGBTQ+ history.

Prior to 2015, the Stonewall Inn did have some level of local landmark protection as it was located within the Greenwich Village Historic District. But that landmark designation took place two months before the 1969 uprising so it made no mention of the three nights of riots that changed history. The prior designation report merely treated the building as a non-descript two-story edifice of no particular significance.

Village Preservation proposed Stonewall for individual landmark designation in 2014 to ensure its LGBTQ+ history was recognized and the features related to the historic events that took place there were preserved.

Click here to read more about Stonewall’s long road to designation.

57 Sullivan Street

57 Sullivan Street was designated a landmark on April 12, 2016, more than 50 years after it was first considered for designation.

It was first proposed in 1970 but languished for decades on the LPC docket. In 2002, Village Preservation and the New York Landmarks Conservancy began a push to reconsider 57 Sullivan Street for landmark designation. In 2009 the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission heard 57 Sullivan Street again, but did not vote. In 2013, VP successfully nominated 57 Sullivan Street for the State and National Registers of Historic Places as part of the South Village Historic District. 

In 2014, the LPC proposed a “Backlog Initiative” to issue landmark decisions on 95 sites that were under consideration for landmark designation for more than five years. We and other preservation organizations strongly objected to the LPC’s original proposal to unceremoniously de-calendar all 95 sites en masse without any consideration of the merits of each site. Our advocacy work and pushback resulted in public hearings on each site to consider each one for designation.

It has been a special part of our mission to advocate for the preservation of federal-style houses in Lower Manhattan. Since 1997, we have successfully advocated for landmark designation of more than 113 federal houses. Click here to read our report on saving Federal-Era Rowhouses.

Sullivan-Thompson Historic District

The landmark designation of the Sullivan-Thompson Historic District on December 13, 2016, was the culmination of a 15-year Village Preservation effort to protect this neighborhood. This work resulted in the creation of three new historic districts including the Greenwich Village Historic Extension II and the South Village Historic District. These three districts include landmark protections for over 650 buildings, more than half of the 1,300 we have helped landmark since 2003.

This district is different from many of the others we have helped protect as it is one of the first historic districts in New York City designated almost exclusively based upon its immigrant history and working-class architecture. Much of the area is defined by tenements and immigrants, particularly Italian-Americans; by speakeasies, jazz clubs, beatnik coffeehouses, and folk music clubs from the area’s counter-cultural heyday of the 1920’s through the 1960’s; by crooked streets and tiny houses which may have been altered but which still retain their charm and architectural distinction. The Sullivan Thompson Historic District was also the last historic district designated in what the City calls “the Manhattan Core” (south of 110th Street on the West Side, and 96th Street on the East Side) where there has been an unspoken moratorium on new historic districts for nearly the last ten years.

Click here to read more about the Sullivan-Thompson Historic District.

Twenty-four new individual landmarks and one historic district might seem like a lot, but landmarking has slowed considerably in recent years. Click here to read our report on Analyzing New York City Landmark Designations, and click here to urge the City to once again vigorously take up landmark designations and here to learn about all of our advocacy campaign work.