In this post we take a look at one of the League’s major early victories. The campaign to save Great Camp Sagamore began in 1975 — just a year after the League was founded — with advocacy that saved the main camp complex, and continued in the early 1980s with a complicated legislative process that further protected the 11 historic outbuildings on the Sagamore campus.
Read MoreWritten and narrated by Brendan Gill, this short film from 1980 was produced by the Preservation League of NYS to showcase the remarkably varied architecture found throughout the Empire State. We've brought it out of the archive and digitized the original film in honor of our 50th Anniversary in 2024.
Read MoreOn Wednesday, March 27, alongside our colleagues at Historic Albany Foundation (who are also celebrating their 50th Anniversary!) the League received a proclamation from Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan. In addition to the Mayor, we were honored that both Congressman Paul D. Tonko and NYS Assemblymember John T. McDonald were on hand to show their support. Relationships with elected officials like Rep. Tonko and AM McDonald are essential to our statewide work and we are grateful for their continued support of historic preservation in NYS.
Read MoreOn Thursday, March 14, we hosted a festive evening in New York’s iconic Rainbow Room for our 50th anniversary Pillar of New York Awards. In addition to our wonderful honorees and their guests, the room was filled with League Trustees and members of the Trustees Council, historic preservation students and recent grads, and great friends and supporters of preservation.
Read MoreSince we first began drawing attention to at-risk places with a Seven to Save designation, some places have been lost, some are still endangered, and others have gone on to be remarkable success stories. There are lessons to be learned in all three cases. For our anniversary year, we wanted to look at the program with a thematic retrospective – highlighting seven themes we’ve seen pop up in our listings over the past 25 years. Over the course of the year, we’ll be digging into our STS archive to highlight places across the state that help tell a broader story of preservation in New York. In this post we are teasing the themes we’re going to be looking at more deeply later in the year. We hope you’ll follow along!
Read MoreA lot has happened over the League’s 50-year history and we wanted to share some of the highlights that have led our organization to where it is today. This timeline gives you a broad overview of the League’s first 50 years, from our founding in 1974 to today. We’ll be digging into at least of few of these stories in more detail over the coming months as we continue to mark our 50th Anniversary. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this infographic look at the League’s half century of preservation work in NYS!
Read MoreThe Preservation League of New York State is thrilled to be starting its 50th Anniversary year with a brand-new grant opportunity for New York nonprofits. Organizations with an ownership interest in, or a long-term lease of, a historic property requiring preservation, restoration, or rehabilitation, are invited to apply for the inaugural year of funding for the League’s new capital grant program.
Read MoreIn thinking about all the ways we might mark our 50th Anniversary this year, we knew we wanted to work with a local artist to create something for the occasion. Albany-based illustrator Cara Hanley came immediately to mind. But how can you distill 50 years of work into a single graphic, especially covering an area as large as New York State? You can’t! But we wanted to take inspiration from some of the incredible places we’ve been lucky enough to work with over the years, representing iconic building types — an Adirondack Great Camp, rowhouses, a church, a barn — to get a feel for the kind of historic places that make up the fabric of NYS. We had no shortage of ideas to pull from, but here’s a breakdown of the real places Cara was inspired by in her final illustration.
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