Twenty-Five Years of Preserving New York 1974-1999
As we spend this year celebrating the League’s 50th Anniversary, we thought it was only appropriate to look back at some of our earlier milestones. Back in 1999, the League marked its 25th Anniversary with a special commemorative publication. In it, there were highlights of 25 years of public policy work, technical services, grantmaking, awards, and a nod to all of the League’s past staff and trustees. Scroll to read a few features from the publication, or click here to find the full publication.
The League’s 25th Anniversary publication: The Preservation League of New York State: Twenty-Five Years of Preserving New York 1974-1999. On the cover: Saratoga Springs, New York, presented a Preservation League Award in 1994, is among the many historic downtowns that add to the state’s economic vitality. Photograph by Jon Crispin.
Chairman’s Letter: A Vision for the Future
“Small rural communities, because of very limited resources, especially benefit from the League’s outstanding staff. Please continue your good work and thank you not only for the technical and legal assistance, but most importantly for the moral support.” - Catherine S. Revelas, Mediana Area Chamber of Commerce
Anthony C. Wood, elected chairman of the Preservation League in 1999, speaking at the League’s 1986 annual conference in Albany.
This has been a year to celebrate the League’s history as well as to contemplate its future. Thanks to the good work of my predecessors, today the League is an established, well respected, and solid organization. Whether assisting a local preservation effort with a grant, technical help, or legal advice or by advocating successfully for pro-preservation policies in Albany, the League has proven its worth time and again. The last twenty-five years are full of accomplishments, but the future challenges the League to do even more.
Recognizing the changing and growing needs of preservation at the end of the century, in June 1999 the League completed a strategic-planning process to shape its future. Using the League’s existing strengths as a springboard, and ambitious plan has been adopted to take the organization into the next century. It commits the League to providing its present services to the field, but to do so more strategically; it expands the League’s commitment to public policy work in Albany; it increases the League’s ability to advance the message of preservation through enhanced communication and education efforts; and it calls on the League to intervene to save threatened properties through a new real estate program.
In other ways too, this is an exciting and challenging time for the League. The president who guided us through the strategic planning process, Darlene McCloud, now leaves the Empire State for the clarion call of her native Florida. Her leadership strengthened the Preservation League and positioned the League to do even greater things. We will miss her. Her successor, Scott Heyl, joins the League in January, 2000. He comes to us from New York City where he was the executive director of the Historic House Trust. Scott’s broad range of experience includes running his own architectural restoration firm, serving as president of a rural community development program, and directing a Main Street program. Scott’s experience and skills make him the perfect candidate to make the dreams outlined in our strategic plan a reality.
Preservation has made immense contributions to New York State, but one need only drive down our main streets, explore our rural roads, or walk through our urban neighborhoods to realize how much more preservation can do for the Empire State. The League is committed to meet the challenges the future holds I invite you to renew your commitment to the Preservation League of New York State.
-Anthony C. Wood, Chairman, Board of Trustees
The First 25 Years, by Roberta Brandes Gratz
“The Preservation League of New York State has successfully advanced the interest of our built environment for the past quarter century; its growing statewide membership is fully engaged in the issues of the day, and its board and staff address challenges with imagination and energy,” -George E. Pataki, Governor, New York State
Twenty-five years ago in New York State most communities had no historic preservation law, didn’t know they needed one, and didn’t know how to go about it if they wanted one. In most parts of the state, activists had no one to turn to for guidance in launching a preservation campaign, had no technical help in saving an historic structure, and certainly had no common voice in Albany to advocate on behalf of saving the state’s rich cultural heritage. The state building code discouraged preservation. The strict interpretation of the State’s Forever Wild clause of the State Constitution disallowed the repair of historic buildings in the Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserves. Localities that chose to give financial relief to owners of historic properties had no legislative authority to do so. And the enormous threat to religious properties that surfaced first in New York City’s battle to save St. Bartholomew’s Community House had no Albany-based advocate to bring the full force of a statewide voice to the Legislature, where broad geographic support was crucial.
The Preservation League, New York’s only statewide preservation organization, is headquartered in Albany. Drawing of window of former League headquarters by Douglas G. Bucher.
All that has changed. It is difficult to realize how far the preservation movement in New York State has come in twenty-five years. But it is gratifying to recognize what a significant role the Preservation League has played in that major change. The League has been both the only statewide, not-for-profit player, and often, a significant state-based partner to support local efforts.
Ironically, the League’s most extraordinary victory was an early one, but it established the foundation for much that has happened since. The campaign to save William West Durant’s 1901 Camp Sagamore, one of the most important of the Adirondack’s Great Camps, began in 1975. Few people understood at first the significance of Camp Sagamore in the state and country’s architectural history. The League took title and protected the Camp with an easement before transferring it to a sympathetic owner. More significantly, perhaps, but less tangible, the Sagamore battle put the historic preservation ethic before the public the same year that the State Supreme Court reversed the landmark status of Grand Central Terminal, catapulting that battle front and center. However, it took a State Constitutional Amendment to keep intact the Camp and its integral outbuildings. In the early 1980s after getting the amendment passed unanimously by two consecutive legislatures, the League mobilized the public education campaign across the state that brought a 63 percent voter approval to the ballot issue. The victory was astonishing. No Constitutional Amendment before or since has garnered such a majority. The League was launched, its political clout established and its existence well publicized.
Through the years, the League has played a significant role in many battles. The State Historic Preservation Act was passed in 1980, proposed state legislation exempting religious properties from protection was defeated in 1984, and the Environmental Quality Bond Act passed in 1986 including significant funding for preservation projects that would surely not have been there without the League. Camp Santanoni, another Adirondack Great Camp, was rescued from demolition-by-neglect when the League persuaded the State Department of Environmental Conservation to allow its restoration even though it is in a forest preserve covered by the Forever Wild clause.
When the National Park Service was ready to approve a developer’s proposal to demolish a significant portion of Ellis Island, the League mobilized people from around the state for a nighttime public hearing at Ellis Island only days before Christmas. The proposal’s fate was sealed, and now, eight years later, chances are good the larger complex will be preserved.
Yes, indeed, so much has changed. But the League’s greatest impact is the least visible because it has made a big difference in so many corners of the state that no singular, tidy picture exists for display. It doesn’t solve everybody’s preservation problems, but it is hard to find an activist in any town who doesn’t know the League is the first place to call. An extraordinary network exists, “almost sub rosa like a Tom Paine pamphlet,” notes League Chairman Anthony Wood. All the basics are in place.
Today, more than 170 local landmark ordinances protect communities, and regular workshops instruct localities on how to draft them. Technical assistance and legal counsel are available for every hamlet and downtown. Preservation Network News gets the League into the homes of activists through out the state. Annual Awards spotlight achievements and achievers, celebrating local successes and inspiring new efforts. Modest grants are offered for preservation initiatives, often the first money to get a new project started.
The League helped broaden the view of preservation beyond the singular house and building to cultural landscapes, farmsteads, Main Streets, and whole towns and to the opportunity offered for affordable housing in historic buildings. A broad view of preservation is widely accepted today. Preservation and conservation are integrated. Road widening and highway building that threaten historic roads are a growing issue. Everyone is alert to the threat of sprawl, heralding the benefits that preservation brings to economic development and cultural tourism. Efforts are now underway to protect the state’s great corridors - the Hudson River Valley, the Erie Canal, the Cherry Valley Turnpike, the Taconic Parkway and the St. Lawrence River.
Indeed, how far we’ve come. A level of acceptance exists around the state only dreamed of twenty-five years ago. The understanding grows daily that historic preservation is not an exemption from life but good economic development policy.
But this is not enough The battle goes on and the battlefield grows bigger. The serious issues that the League initially addressed are more important than ever. The stakes are higher, the foes more formidable and the need for media attention enormous and difficult. Despite the great victories, public awareness and legislative action have much further to go. The need for the League remains great.
The best news is that the League is now well-positioned to take statewide preservation to the next level, to be more strategic and proactive. With a great track record and solid credibility, the League is launching a full-time public policy effort, exploring the feasibility of a real estate program and expanding its media outreach. A solid, two-year strategic planning process has brought us to a new frontier.
Are you with us? We need you.
Roberta Brandes Gratz, a longtime League Trustee, lectures and writes on urban development issues.