NYC Landmark and Historic District Buildings by Era and Style

The Landmarks Preservation Commission's building database has 38,105 records for buildings and structures that are individual landmarks or sit inside historic districts. 36,335 of them (95%) are in historic districts. Most were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s: the median construction year is 1892, and Renaissance Revival is the most common recorded style.

What the database covers

LPC built this database from its designation reports. Each row is a building or structure as described in the report that designated it: its construction date, architect or builder, original owner, style, materials and original use. LPC said in 2017 that the project turned 50 years of historic district designation reports, previously available only as scanned documents, into searchable data. The rows include more than houses and apartment buildings. Garages, carriage houses, outbuildings and even historic lampposts have their own records, so the count is a count of records, not of homes. The 38,105 rows cover 33,228 distinct tax lots.

LPC's own summary says the city has more than 38,000 landmark properties, 1,470 individual landmarks and 157 historic districts and historic district extensions. In the database, 1,770 records are tagged as individual landmarks outside districts, and 447 more are individual landmarks that also sit inside a district. LPC also counts 125 interior and 12 scenic landmarks; this database describes buildings and structures and has no separate category for them.

Brooklyn (17,047 records) and Manhattan (14,610) hold 83% of the total. Manhattan has the most districts (83) and by far the most individual landmark records (1,349). Queens records are the youngest, with a median construction year of 1924, and its largest districts in the data (Central Ridgewood, Douglaston, Addisleigh Park, Jackson Heights and Sunnyside Gardens) have median construction years from 1909 to 1930.

When they were built

Construction in the protected stock peaks in the 1890s. The three decades from 1880 to 1909 account for 17,908 dated records, 51% of all buildings with a date. 22,043 were built before 1900. Only 63 records date from before 1800, and only 956 from 1945 or later. The latest construction date in the data is 2016.

The oldest dated records are all outside Manhattan: the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House (c. 1652, Brooklyn), the Billiou-Stillwell-Perine House (c. 1660s, Staten Island), the Bowne House (1661, Queens) and the Cubberly-Britton Cottage (c. 1670, Staten Island). Many early dates are approximate: 10,138 records (27%) carry a "circa" date.

Architectural styles

Renaissance Revival leads with 5,156 buildings, 17% of records that have a style. It is followed by neo-Grec (2,837), Italianate (2,700) and Romanesque Revival (2,130). The styles line up with their eras in the data: Greek Revival buildings have a median construction year of 1843, Italianate 1866, neo-Grec 1883 and Colonial Revival 1909. The database records 805 distinct style labels, many of them combinations (such as "Renaissance Revival with alterations"), so the long tail is fragmented.

Materials

Brick is the primary material for 13,816 records, and brownstone for 7,341. Brick appears under several labels (red, buff, Roman and Flemish-bond brick are counted separately), so brick's real share is higher than the first bar shows. Other common materials include wood frame (2,262), limestone (1,851) and cast iron (411).

The largest historic districts

Greenwich Village Historic District is the largest district in the data, with 2,193 records and a median construction year of 1851. Brooklyn has 12 of the 20 largest. Extensions are listed separately in the data (for example, the Park Slope Historic District Extension), so a neighborhood with several designations may be larger than any single row in the table suggests.

What the data can and cannot tell you

Owning or renting in a landmarked building

LPC says owners of designated properties need an LPC permit before work that affects the exterior and, in some cases, the interior. Before you plan a renovation, read when you need a DOB permit and renovating a co-op or condo. If you are buying a row house, see buying a townhouse in NYC. To check a specific address, use Roofy's NYC building lookup.