Our Vision

Letter From The CHAIR

July 2025

Dear Friends.

On Sunday June 22 in the Richmond Town neighborhood of Staten Island, NYLPF with the community there, unveiled a plaque at Frederick Douglass Memorial Park.  The park is the only existing non-sectarian cemetery founded by — and specifically for — New York City’s Black community. The memorial park opened in 1935, offering a dignified cemetery for Black New Yorkers at a time when discrimination and segregation excluded them from other burial sites across the city and limited them to substandard facilities and services. The 14.88-acre cemetery memorializes Black heritage and honors the generations of Black Americans who are buried here. An impressive monument to the park’s namesake, abolitionist, and orator Frederick Douglass, was dedicated in 1961 and is located near the entrance. Frederick Douglass Memorial Park was designated a New York City Landmark in 2024.

Also in June, we unveiled District Markers in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn at the Willoughby-Hart Historic District, a two full block area that encompasses 141 predominantly Greg-style row houses that exemplifies a cohesive late 19th-century Brooklyn neighborhood.  A few examples of more eclectically combines styles such as Second Empire, neo-Greg, Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne can also be found along the tree lined street.  The architect Isaac D. Reynolds was responsible for the design of more than 50 of the homes, creating a visual uniformity along the street front.

Looking forward to fall 2025, our annual “Lunch at a Landmark” will be held on Thursday, October 9 at the Harvard Club, featuring Craig Dykers / Architect and Founder Snøhetta.   Theodore Roosevelt V will give an introduction.  Tickets available here Lunch 2025 .

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the New York City Landmarks Law.  In 1965, the New York City Landmarks Law was enacted to protect historic landmarks and neighborhoods from precipitate decisions to destroy or fundamentally alter their character. The law also established the creation of a permanent New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. The Commission is authorized to designate a building to be a “landmark” on a particular “landmark site,” or to designate an area as a “historic district.” The legal definition of a landmark stipulates that the building must be at least 30 years old, and have either historical or architectural merit, as determined by the Commission.

Thank you for your interest in the work of the Landmarks Preservation Foundation.

Tom Krizmanic, AIA

Board Chair, NYLPF