To celebrate our community’s extraordinary architecture and cultural history, the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative—LESPI—presents an exhibition highlighting two historic districts and twelve buildings worthy of official NYC landmarking. Such designation would protect against future demolition, as widespread development threatens the character of this iconic neighborhood.

These sites include streetscapes that conjure up the past while teeming with vitality today, and buildings well over 100 years old that were designed as health facilities, settlement houses, financial and religious institutions, firehouses, and schools to serve the immigrant communities that filled the neighborhood. Their richly ornamented architecture speaks eloquently of the area’s storied past.