Research and Preservation Associate
Sarah Eccles, our new Research and Preservation Associate, is a historic preservationist with a keen interest in the relationship between communities, people, and the built environment. She is a recent graduate of the Pratt Institute Historic Preservation program. Much of her research dealt with the representation of people in historic preservation, including minorities, immigrants, and laborers. In her new role as Research and Preservation Associate, Sarah will continue her efforts to connect communities and people to the built environment through Village Preservation’s advocacy, preservation, and documentation work in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. Sarah was born in the Bronx and spent her childhood in the North-West of Ireland; as a teenager, she returned to the Bronx, where she attended Fordham University for her Undergraduate Degree. There Sarah majored in History, and developed a profound interest in research, writing, and the story of New York City. For her Master’s thesis, Sarah wrote about the documentation of laborers in the records of building projects. She detailed the importance of these often-overlooked laborers, their work, and their story, as well as the lack of documentation which often accompanies it in historic buildings records, and how historic preservation as a field can work to include this crucial history. Sarah is especially excited to combine traditional building history documentation with the often more complicated and overlooked history of the people connected to these buildings.
