Getting to Know Our Landmarks60 Timeline Map

On April 19th, 1965 the New York City Landmarks Law was passed. This law was created to protect the City’s invaluable stock of historic sites, allowing for buildings, neighborhoods and other historic locations to be preserved through Landmark Designation. Since the law’s passage, more than 38,000 sites around the city have been landmarked, including a number of them within our neighborhoods. To celebrate the law’s 60th Anniversary, Village Preservation created an interactive Landmarks Timeline Map, which shows the history of designated sites within our neighborhoods and how we have been able to help preserve them. Click HERE to explore this map. 

The map includes three types of landmarks: historic districts (yellow), individual landmarks (red) and interior landmarks (blue).

Using the timeline

Press play on the timeline to get started. As it plays, sites are chronologically added to the map. 

Alternatively, you can manually drag the timeline, so the designations appear more quickly on the map. 

The timeline can be dragged from both the front and the back, allowing the user to see all of the designations that occurred during a specific time period. For example, the user can adjust the timeline to show all designations between 1980 and 2000, as pictured below. 

The set time period can also be dragged along the timeline, allowing the user to easily view which buildings were designated during another time period. 

If you would like to see all of the sites on the map without waiting for the timeline to complete, the small “i” on the bottom left of the map allows for time filtering to be turned off, and all of the designated sites within our neighborhoods to be viewed. 

Learning about the Sites

As the sites are added to the timeline, you can click on them to see photo and learn more about their history, and how they became landmarks. 

Designations by Decade

Another way to use the map is through the designations by decade layers. By toggling on this layer, the timeline layer turns off, and instead you can view all of the designations during a particular decade. For example, you can select to see only designations from 2010s, as seen on the example below. 

Check out this map HERE and explore our many other maps HERE.