Context/Contrast: New Architecture in Historic Districts, 1967-2009 November 3, 2009

New York is often imagined as a perennially new city—a place that marks its history, as The New York Times once editorialized, “with gaping holes in the ground.” Yet in the four decades since the 1965 passage of the New York Landmarks Law—the legislative milestone inspiring those remarks—New York has become one of the most influential forces for historic preservation in the United States.

The Landmarks Law established the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as the agency responsible for identifying and preserving the city’s architectural, historical and cultural resources. As of the fall of 2009, the Commission has designated 1,235 individual buildings and structures, 110 interiors, 10 scenic sites and 96 historic districts as landmarks. The neighborhoods explored in this exhibition—Brooklyn Heights (Brooklyn), the Upper East Side, South Street Seaport and SoHo (Manhattan) and Douglaston (Queens)—illustrate the distinctly different building types and landscapes that can define districts as historic and compel us to consider how they should or should not change.

Context/Contrast asks how the Commission’s charge of ensuring “appropriate” new architecture in historic districts has allowed neighborhoods to evolve without endangering the essential character that contributes to their public value and makes them worth protecting.

Official Website: http://cfa.aiany.org/index.php?section=exhibitions&expid=89