50 Sites for 50 Years of NYC Landmarks

Photograph: Andrew Kaplan

Landmark West! Celebrates on Google Field Trip App

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the passing of New York City’s Landmark Preservation Law (1965-2015) and also Landmark West’s own 30th Anniversary (1985-2015).  Back then, our founders faced a new building boom of unprecedented scale (sound familiar?) and launched a campaign to increase the number of protected landmarks on the Upper West Side (between 59th and 110th Streets, Central Park to Riverside Park) from a mere 337 to over 3,000 today.

If these walls could talk…

Like Dr. Seuss’s Lorax, LW! is here to speak for the buildings, parks and streetscapes that can’t exactly speak for themselves.  And so, with the help of our terrific intern, Upper West Side native Silvia Callegari (who is off to study historic preservation at the University of Pennsylvania this fall) and Google’s Field Trip smartphone app (for Android and iPhone),* we have gathered and published “biographies” of 50 Upper West Side landmarks - free and at your fingertips!  

Thanks to the wonder of GPS, Google’s Field Trip app (available for download here) finds your location and displays a map with nearby sites of interest.  Click on a site (or search for a specific site, on Android, - such as The Dakota Apartments designated an official Landmark in 1969) for information such as original architect, date of construction, architectural style, then-and-now images and more. 

50 sites for 50 years is just the beginning of an ongoing project. LW! will continue to build this resource - UP NEXT:  landmark designation priorities for the future (our “Wish List”). 

TIP:  Field Trip posts include local restaurants, museums, shops, etc. to fuel your journey through the Upper West Side.  (You can also filter your trip by just choosing “Architecture.”)  Try turning on your notifications so that the app can alert you when something interesting is nearby. 

Most of all, have fun!

P.S. If there is a building or monument on the Upper West Side you would like to know about and see added to the App, please e-mail the address to landmarkwest@landmarkwest.org. 

*Click here to download Google’s Field Trip smartphone app.