What’s next for New York’s historic preservation movement?

More than a quarter of lots in Manhattan are protected by the city's Landmarks Law. That’s both a triumph and a challenge.

It’s often said that the most important task for American cities is to build. Build housing. Build transit. Build safe streets. Build seawalls and levees. Build places where people can gather in person, places where we can stop looking at our phones.

But if building is the watchword of the day, then where does that leave preservation?

That is the question animating a new essay collection called Beyond Architecture: The New New York, a meditation on 60 years of the city’s Landmarks Law. In a review published in CityLab last month, I marveled at the authors’ willingness to candidly consider what’s working, and what’s not working, in a field that doesn’t always welcome introspection.

The overarching conclusion of the book, which I agree with, is that historic preservation is as important as it ever was, but the way it is practiced is ripe for change. Unfortunately, none of the writers in the collection offer particularly compelling ideas for reimagining historic preservation.

There’s widespread hesitancy to put forward substantive, specific proposals for reforming historic preservation policy in New York and across the country. The historic preservation movement has long seen itself as a righteous, David versus Goliath struggle. The main historic preservation advocacy groups, understandably, still view things this way, and tend to bristle at the slightest critique.

But it’s not 1965 anymore. The Landmarks Law is now a force to be reckoned with in New York City urbanism.

More than a quarter of lots in Manhattan are protected by the Landmarks Law, either as individually designated landmarks or as part of historic districts. These districts are overwhelmingly located in the wealthiest, most central neighborhoods, like the Upper East and West Sides and the West Village. It’s the same story in Brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, and Ft. Greene.

Map of historic districts, in yellow, and individually designated landmarks, in purple and blue. (Credit: New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission)

The fact that so many beautiful, unique buildings and neighborhoods are protected from demolition is a good thing. The public is enriched by these fine old architectural specimens. They are a medium of popular history and art for all to enjoy.

But it shouldn’t be taboo for architecture lovers — or anyone else — to speak frankly about the tradeoffs and side-effects of preservation. New York’s Landmarks Law makes development near-impossible in many of the city’s most desirable and expensive neighborhoods, including affordable housing development. It also means that enormous investments in transit, street redesigns and other infrastructure go under-utilized. Historic district populations tend to decline over time, as increasingly wealthy residents merge units and convert walkup apartments into single-family homes.

There has to be a way to add new buildings and new people in and around New York’s historic districts while still protecting the city’s architectural heritage. The 2021 SoHo rezoning and the recently passed City of Yes for Housing Opportunity offer two modest starting places.

The SoHo/NoHo rezoning is expected to yield three thousand new homes, with at least a quarter of them required to be offered at below market rates. Development will only go up in place of marginal buildings and parking lots: The neighborhood’s cast iron beauties remain under the protection of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Renderings of projected development from the SoHo/NoHo rezoning. (Credit: NYC Planning)

Likewise, City of Yes leaves historic districts intact. However, it will expand the radius of development rights transfers, as well as the types of historic properties that can take advantage of them. This will allow more and larger development around landmark properties.

Most historic preservation groups in New York opposed the SoHo rezoning and City of Yes. Some of their objections were related to these proposals undermining the character of historic districts, which…. that’s their opinion. But they also parrot false, anti-housing talking points.

In one of its comments on City of Yes, for instance, Village Preservation describes the policy as “premised on the ludicrous but increasingly widely held belief that building more unaffordable housing will make our city more affordable.” (To briefly rebut: New York’s affordability crisis is rooted in an across-the-board housing shortage. In addition, the most significant provisions of City of Yes will make it easier to build more below market-rate homes.)

These kinds of political stances are a big reason why preservation has increasingly become a synonym for NIMBYism in the popular discourse. That’s a tragedy for many reasons, not least of which because New York’s Landmarks Law represents a relatively small part of the city’s affordability problem. But preservationists don’t help their cause when they defend the NIMBY status quo and reject reasonable efforts at reform.

Was Jane Jacobs a YIMBY?

Many readers of Binyamin Appelbaum’s provocative 2023 essay, “I want a city, not a museum,” seemed to understand it as an indictment of New York’s Landmarks Law. (Groups like the New York Landmarks Conservancy certainly did.) While Appelbaum does criticize the scope of historic districts, his argument is mostly about a much larger apparatus of zoning, environmental, and building codes that make it exceedingly difficult to build housing in New York.

If preservationists continue to defend that apparatus, they’ll have fewer and fewer allies willing to fight for their core interest: saving historically significant architecture.

There are lots of creative ways for old and new buildings to live in harmony, as I learned in a recent conversation with a heterodox historic preservation professional who asked to remain anonymous.

The SoHo rezoning requires “contextual” architecture for new construction that mimics the massing of the neighborhood’s loft buildings. Contextual or form-based codes could be taken even further, requiring more specific material and design guidelines in particular areas. For instance, a future rezoning of Brownstone Brooklyn could require new buildings to have brick or masonry facades that blend with their neighbors.

The most unaffordable historic districts could be required to undergo something akin to California’s housing element, where planners and community members identify the sites in their neighborhood where new affordable housing makes the most sense. It’s not a question of whether to allow development, it’s a question of where. The SoHo rezoning essentially did this, by designating priority development areas around the neighborhood’s historic core.

Sites in SoHo where new development would not require the demolition of a historic building. (Credit: NYC Planning)

Another no-brainer idea: Projects replacing “non-contributing” structures within the boundaries of historic districts should be exempt from the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s discretionary review process. The fact that parking lots and one-story commercial buildings are protected by the Landmarks Law, simply by virtue of being situated in a historic district, undermines the entire premise of preservation.

Under a new preservation paradigm, historic buildings would be protected, full stop. But historic streetscapes and skylines would be allowed to evolve. New buildings should be permitted to rise in those marginal zones between precious landmarks. That would show the naysayers in the most vivid way possible that preservation and growth can coexist side-by-side.