Announcing the 2021 Excellence Award Winners
We are thrilled to announce the winners of our 2021 Excellence in Historic Preservation Awards!
Since 1984, the Preservation League’s statewide awards program has highlighted projects, organizations, publications, and individuals that represent the best in our field. Through these Awards, the League recognizes the people who are using historic preservation to build stronger neighborhoods, create local jobs, provide affordable housing, open our eyes to overlooked history, and save the places that are special to all of us.
The 2021 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award winners are:
Clinton Avenue Historic Apartments, Albany, Albany County | Proctors Collaborative: Capital Repertory Theatre + Universal Preservation Hall, Albany, Albany County + Saratoga Springs, Saratoga County | SUNY Broome Culinary & Event Center, Binghamton, Broome County | Arbor Gerard Block and the Carroll Street Warehouse Rehabilitation Project, Elmira, Chemung County | Steven Engelhart, Keeseville, Clinton County | Preservation Buffalo Niagara, Buffalo, Erie County | Whitcomb's Garage Adaptive Reuse Project, Whallonsburg, Essex County | Green-Wood's Historic Chapel, Brooklyn, Kings County | Central Presbyterian Church Exterior Restoration, Manhattan, New York County | @syracusehistory (Instagram by David Haas), Syracuse, Onondaga County
Continue reading to learn more about each of these incredible examples of excellence in historic preservation. Click here to find all the posts highlighting this year’s Award winners.
Our shared cultural history grounds us and helps us better understand who we are as New Yorkers and as Americans. The 10 projects honored this year are strikingly different, but they all remind us that preservation is about people as much as it is about our built environment. The Excellence in Historic Preservation Awards program is integral and essential to the work of the League. This year’s award recipients represent the very best of what the League stands for and supports in historic preservation. It’s not every year that the Awards jury selects winners in each of our Award categories. But this year we celebrate projects, organizations, an individual, and a publication — all of which have profoundly impacted their local communities and are truly deserving of this statewide recognition.
2021 Awardees:
Clinton Avenue Historic Apartments | Albany, Albany County
The Clinton Avenue project involved the careful rehabilitation of 70 historic rowhouses spread across a one-mile span in Albany’s Clinton Avenue and Arbor Hill Historic Districts. The development includes 3 studios, 123 one-bedrooms, 68 two-bedrooms, and 16 three-bedrooms – a total of 210 apartments. Tenants include households who earn from 50%-90% of the area median income, providing much-needed affordable housing in the city of Albany. Supportive housing has also been included, with 40 units reserved in partnership with DePaul, who provides services under contract with the Office of Mental Health. The project includes six commercial spaces that will be utilized as the community’s leasing offices, a re-opened laundry facility, a barber shop, DePaul offices, and maintenance offices. When Home Leasing acquired the portfolio of properties in 2017, it was in foreclosure with eight buildings condemned and more than half the units vacant. It was a tremendous undertaking bringing these buildings back to life.
Proctors Collaborative: Capital Repertory Theatre + Universal Preservation Hall | Albany, Albany County + Saratoga Springs, Saratoga County
The 28,000-square-foot industrial building in Albany’s Arbor Hill neighborhood that is now home to Capital Repertory Theatre (theRep) and the formerly condemned church that is now Universal Preservation Hall (UPH) represent very different preservation projects. The fact that Proctors Collaborative had the vision and dedication to see them both through simultaneously, especially considering additional challenges presented by the pandemic, is quite extraordinary. Perhaps best known for their flagship theatre in Schenectady (which also won an Excellence Award from the League back in 2008), Proctors serves the wider Capital-Saratoga region through a wide variety of programs, with a focus on education, civic engagement, and economic development. The successful restorations of theRep and UPH will certainly help them meet that mission.
Pictured: top - The exterior of the newly restored Capital Repertory Theatre seen in daylight from the corner of N. Pearl Street & Livingston Avenue. (photo credit: PLNYS) bottom - An exterior view of UPH at night, looking east down Washington Street after restoration. (photo credit: Richard Lovrich)
The restored facade of Binghamton’s 1904 Carnegie Library, now SUNY Broome’s Culinary & Event Center. photo courtesy of SUNY Broome
SUNY Broome Culinary & Event Center | Binghamton, Broome County
The Beaux Arts-style Carnegie Library opened in downtown Binghamton in 1904 and was home to the city’s library for 96 years. The building remained vacant from 2000-2016, falling into a state of disrepair. Thanks to a meticulous restoration, this historic building is serving an educational purpose once again as SUNY Broome’s state-of-the-art Culinary & Event Center. In addition to technologically advanced culinary, hospitality, and event amenities, many historic details have been painstakingly restored, including elaborate plaster and ceiling ornamentation, swirling ironwork, and original tile floors.
The restored Lake Street Building seen at night. photo credit: Molly Cagwin
Arbor Gerard Block and the Carroll Street Warehouse Rehabilitation Project | Elmira, Chemung County
Arbor Development’s adaptive reuse of three historic industrial buildings into affordable housing is a boon to the Elmira community. The three-story buildings at 118-126 Lake Street and 414-418 Carroll Street went from being vacant to providing 28 residential units, 5 storefronts, 8 artist studios, and an art gallery. An ARTS survey conducted by Three Rivers Development and the Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and the Finger Lakes just prior to the project’s initiation underscored the need for housing and workspace for artists in the region, which the project was designed specifically to accommodate.
Steven Engelhart seen standing in front of the Adirondack Architectural Heritage offices in Keeseville, NY. photo courtesy of AARCH
Steven Engelhart | Keeseville, Clinton County
For 27 years, Steven has served as Executive Director of Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH), the nonprofit historic preservation organization for New York’s 6 million-acre Adirondack Park and surrounding region, which comprises 12 counties and 102 towns and villages. Since 1990, Steven has strengthened historic preservation efforts in the Adirondacks, bringing to light the role that its diverse and often underappreciated communities have played in shaping statewide heritage. With over 40 years of experience in the field of historic preservation, Steven has become a leading voice in preservation efforts throughout this underserved region and a readily identifiable leader in saving its treasured places. Upon his retirement at the end of 2021, Steven will no doubt remain an ally for saving the places that matter in the Adirondacks.
In 2019, Preservation Buffalo Niagara and the African Heritage Food Co-op announced that they are bringing 238 Carlton Street back to life as the permanent home of the African Heritage Food Co-Op. PBN Executive Director Jessie Fisher is pictured at center in a black dress and grey patterned blazer. photo courtesy of Preservation Buffalo Niagara
Preservation Buffalo Niagara | Buffalo, Erie County
The Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier and the Preservation Coalition of Erie County merged in 2009 to become Preservation Buffalo Niagara (PBN), building on their 30-year history to ensure that the Buffalo region would have a strong, effective, and professional preservation organization. A change in leadership in 2015 set the organization on a renewed trajectory, expanding the staff, quadrupling the annual organizational budget, nearly doubling membership, and adding in a wide range of programming designed to make preservation relevant to a much wider cross-section of people. PBN’s diligence, perseverance, and dedication to creating an anti-racist preservation movement is what makes them an exceptional and unparalleled model for preservation in the future.
The restored Whitcomb’s Garage seen at an angle, with the Whallonsburg Grange Hall visible across the road. photo credit: Andrew Buchanan
Whitcomb's Garage Adaptive Reuse Project | Whallonsburg, Essex County
The renovation and repurposing of this disused service station and garage has created space for new businesses in an economically challenged rural region. The conception, planning, and construction work was done by volunteers, both skilled and unskilled, who spent thousands of hours transforming the old garage into commercial workshops, a retail store, ceramics studio, and mixed-use space for classes, performances, and other community activities. This derelict garage has been transformed by volunteers into a vibrant center of economic revival and community engagement. The project is having positive impacts on the morale and confidence of the entire community.
Green-Wood’s historic chapel seen from the northwest after restoration. photo courtesy of Walter B. Melvin Architects
Green-Wood's Historic Chapel | Brooklyn, Kings County
The Historic Chapel, located just down the hill from the Cemetery’s main entrance, is an icon of Green-Wood’s landscape. Designed in 1911 by the architectural firm of Warren & Wetmore, the Neo-Gothic design features 41 carved window openings, filled with figurative stained glass. In 2018, a comprehensive restoration of the building interior, including the stained glass windows, was begun, with Walter B. Melvin Architects, LLC leading the building restoration and Julie L. Sloan leading the stained glass work. The restored building once again provides visitors to Green-Wood a most peaceful sanctuary to rest, contemplate and remember, and will help serve the chapel’s recent use at Green-Wood as a home for art and music programming.
The west facade of Central Presbyterian Church after its restoration. The bell tower can be seen on the right. photo courtesy of Walter B. Melvin Architects
Central Presbyterian Church Exterior Restoration | Manhattan, New York County
Located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Central Presbyterian Church was designed by architect Henry C. Pelton in association with Allen & Collens and constructed between 1920-1922. Despite the high quality of the original materials and craftmanship, natural weathering and material fatigue eventually took their toll on the church. As a result, the church had been shrouded in sidewalk bridging for years, littered with fragments of broken limestone. Almost 100 years after its construction, the congregation embarked on a restoration project. What began as a triage approach to repairs ultimately became a comprehensive restoration effort.
A screenshot of the @syracusehistory Instagram account run by David Haas. The bio reads: “Telling, not selling.” Personal Blog
I have always wanted a neighbor just like you / est. 2013.
syracusehistory.darkroom.tech
@syracusehistory (Instagram by David Haas) | Syracuse, Onondaga County
Since 2013, @syracusehistory, a social media blog dedicated to the preservation of neighborhoods and narratives by David Haas, has exposed tens of thousands of people to the history of the City of Syracuse and the Central New York region. @syracusehistory has reached tens of thousands of individuals, both local and not, sharing the values of historic preservation through imagery and storytelling. David Haas was also recently honored by the Preservation Association of Central New York with a Merit Award for Exceptional Achievement in Historic Preservation in 2019.
The 2021 Excellence in Historic Preservation Awards are sponsored by the Arthur F. & Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation.