Fostering Sustainable Communities

For the 25th Anniversary of our flagship Seven to Save program, we wanted to look back 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.

By our count, almost 20 neighborhoods have been included as Seven to Saves over the years – not counting Main Streets! Two threats tend to loom largest over Seven to Save communities: development pressure and deterioration. Gentrification, rising housing costs, and overdevelopment can push longtime residents out of their homes. Systemic disinvestment and lack of resources can make it difficult for residents to take care of their historic homes. Tools like historic district designation, Homeowner historic tax credits, and a push for affordable housing in historic neighborhoods helps to build sustainable communities. Neighborhood groups, local preservation and community-based organizations, and neighborhood residents (whether they be homeowners or renters) are the driving forces in preserving these kinds of sustainable communities.

Susan B. Anthony Square Park. The bronze sculpture by local artist Pepsy Kettavong, “Let’s Have Tea,” depicts a fictional meeting of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony. Visible in the background are some of the neighborhood homes and industrial buildings. Photo courtesy Celebrate City Living.

An early Seven to Save listing, the Susan B. Anthony Neighborhood in Rochester, demonstrates how targeted investment, historic tax credits, dedicated neighborhood leaders, and a whole lot of patience and perseverance can foster a sustainable community that’s both a welcoming tourist destination and a livable neighborhood for locals. As its name suggests, the neighborhood was home to the renowned suffragist between 1866 and 1906. With a central park square surrounded by modest wood frame homes, intact historic alleys, a commercial strip, an industrial area, and the National Historic Landmark Susan B. Anthony Museum & House, the neighborhood is unique in Rochester. When we listed it in 2001, the neighborhood was in decline — residents were leaving, single family homes were vacant, and the commercial and industrial buildings were deteriorating.

Today, all of the vacant homes surrounding the public square have been rehabilitated, most by residents such as Cynthia Silver, who rehabbed a long-vacant and dilapidated home and its backyard cottage at 54 and 54.5 Madison St. in 2019. Early efforts to save homes from the wrecking balls also included creative homeowner mini-grants from our local colleagues at The Landmark Society of Western New York. Vacant lots have been infilled with modern homes that reflect the neighborhood character. Several of the large industrial buildings have been adapted to new use for affordable and supportive housing, including our 2024 Excellence Award recipient, Canal Commons. A combination of historic tax credits, low income housing tax credits, and a supportive neighborhood association helped make these transformational projects possible.

A drone photo showing the East End project area in Newburgh, with the Hudson River behind. The tall church in the center of the frame is the former United Methodist Church, which is now the community space Highpoint. Photo courtesy of RUPCO.

Another early listing, the East End Historic District in Newburgh, is on the road to a similar transformation. At the time of its Seven to Save listing in 1999, the neighborhood suffered from decades of disinvestment, leading to vacancy, vandalism, and deterioration of its modest 19th century housing stock. Two major, award-winning projects spearheaded by RUPCO have helped stem the tide of deterioration: East End I (completed in 2018 and recipient of our 2019 Excellence Award) and East End II (completed in 2023 and recipient of our 2024 Excellence Award). These projects included the rehabilitation of 25 historic buildings and construction of new infill on vacant lots, together creating more than 100 mixed-income housing units. Meanwhile, other community-based organizations have been plugging away at their own projects. Safe Harbors of the Hudson, a mixed-use, nonprofit housing and arts redevelopment project, transformed the Hotel Newburgh into a supportive housing and artist lofts residence in 2004 and is working to restore the Ritz Theater (supported by our NYSCA partnership Technical Assistance Grants in 2017 and 2022). The Fullerton Center seeks to revive Newburgh’s grandeur by collaborating on cultural programs and promoting research that celebrates Newburgh’s history and diverse culture. In 2023, the Fullerton received a NYSCA-funded Preserve New York grant to examine the potential for expanding the boundaries of the East End Historic District. As Fullerton President Naomi Hersson-Ringskog said, “This survey will lay the groundwork to address issues of justice, diversity, and inclusion within the community and preservation field, and potentially in the future, advance the preservation of neighborhoods that will qualify for Historic Tax Credits.”

The Mattress Factory in Hamlin Park. Adapted into offices and apartments using historic tax credits. Image courtesy Common Bond Real Estate.

In 2006, as the League advocated for passage of the NYS Historic Homeownership Rehabilitation Tax Credit, we included another urban neighborhood on our Seven to Save — Hamlin Park on Buffalo’s East Side. In 2013, the Hamlin Park Community and Taxpayers Association, Inc. (HPCTA) pursued a nearly 1600-property National Register historic district (supported, in part, by a Preserve NY grant) so that homeowners and other property owners could take advantage of the new state tax credit programs that were passed by the NYS Legislature in 2010. Our colleagues at Preservation Studios, a historic preservation consulting firm based in Buffalo, completed the National Register nomination and embarked on their own tax credit project, relocating their offices to a historic former mattress factory in the neighborhood and creating 34 apartments as part of the historic tax credit project. The longtime advocacy of the HPCTA has been key to the success of this diverse neighborhood. Speaking about construction of the Kensington Expressway through Hamlin Park in the late 1950s, Esterphine Greene, recording secretary of the HPCTA, said in a 2019 article in Buffalo Spree Magazine:

The old pictures of the parkway make one understand how the rage came about…Rage directed can give rise to movements. And that directed rage is what happened in Hamlin Park. The HPCTA has been a driving force in the neighborhood for 64 years, and it came out of a movement that was filled with anger, disgust, and determination that it would never happen again. We will always have a seat at the table. We missed it when they tore up Olmsted’s parkway…Now, we have diversity here. Not just African Americans. Not just old people. I would say that 80% of Hamlin Park a few years ago was an aging population. All of the kids were grown. Now, there are younger people coming into the neighborhood with children. Non-Black people coming in. Non-American-born people coming in. I see all these changes as for the better.

Opendore after years of extensive restoration.

Shifting gears to a rural community takes us to another 2006 Seven to Save, the Finger Lakes hamlet of Sherwood in Cayuga County. In the 19th century, this crossroads community was a hotbed of local, state, and national social reform movements including Abolitionism, Women’s Rights, and Temperance. Some two dozen houses, former stores, a one-room school, and a cemetery characterize this rural hamlet, located about one hour southwest of Syracuse. In 2006, several of the hamlet’s most important historic properties were vacant and in need of stabilization. A Preserve NY grant that same year helped fund the creation of the Sherwood Equal Rights Historic District. Fast forward to 2022: the Howland Stone Store Museum received an Excellence Award from the League for their restoration of Opendore, the historic home of William, Hannah, and Isabel Howland, national leaders in the women's suffrage movement. Once the center of activity in the hamlet, Opendore had been vacant and suffering major deterioration since the 1970s. The Museum stepped in to acquire the property in 2008 and, in 2011, began a multi-phase, largely volunteer-led effort to rehabilitate the house into a space that complements the museum down the street, providing archival storage, gallery, and event space. While the fate of Sherwood’s other buildings remains uncertain, Opendore’s transformation from a nearly unsalvageable ruin into a vibrant community gathering space will hopefully catalyze additional investment.