Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in New York City

While the Administrative Code lays out broad goals for historic preservation in the city, there has been little systematic work examining the city’s success in meeting them. To be sure, many of these objectives are difficult to quantify, such as civic pride. But on the 50th anniversary of the law, this report offers a descriptive account of historic preservation in New York City.
We begin with an analysis of the diffusion of historic districts and landmarks in New York City since 1965. We then compare the characteristics of historic districts to those of nearby neighborhoods. We consider building attributes, uses of land, housing stock, construction activity, composition of the population, employment, and commercial space. Our analysis reveals some important contrasts between historic districts and nearby areas, but our aim in this report is to describe these differences and not to determine their causes.

Ingrid Gould Ellen, Brian J. McCabe, and Eric Edward Stern

NYU Furman Center

March 2016

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