Alum in Action: Amanda Davis preserves cultural heritage with the NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project
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Amanda Davis (BArH '04)
Executive Director, NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project
For a decade, architectural historian Amanda Davis (BArH ’04) has preserved cultural heritage through the NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project. WIth a goal of "making an invisible history visible," the initiative documents historic places connected to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in New York City, from the 17th century to the year 2000, and tells the often untold story of their influence on American history and culture.
We asked Davis to tell us more about this groundbreaking work, its impact, and where it is heading as it enters its next decade.
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You have been with the NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project since it was founded in 2015. Tell us about the project's main aims and goals.
The Project is an award-winning and groundbreaking cultural heritage initiative that documents extant historic sites connected to the LGBTQ community throughout the five boroughs of New York City. Mapped places highlight, for example, where LGBTQ New Yorkers fought for their rights, created community, and shaped American culture. Our work is most visible on our website, which features a digital heritage map of over 500 places (and counting) and over 30 thematic collections, such as the Harlem Renaissance, the AIDS epidemic, the Progressive Era, and LGBTQ activism before the famed 1969 Stonewall Uprising. Many people find us through our Instagram account.
The Project’s goal is to inspire LGBTQ people, who are usually not taught their own history, and to engage allies in better understanding a core part of New York City’s and America’s collective heritage.
In championing LGBTQ historic sites in NYC, we anchor countless individuals – young and old – to a shared past, instilling a sense of recognition, belonging, and understanding. Based on engaging with people these past ten-plus years, I can’t stress that last part enough. It truly speaks to the power of place.
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To help raise awareness of this history, we host public programs (in-person and virtual) and give seasonal walking tours. We have also collaborated with the likes of the NYC Department of Transportation to create Pride-themed bike routes and LinkNYC to display a selection of sites on its kiosks around the city.
The Project is part of a broader movement within the field of historic preservation to look beyond architectural significance alone when deciding which sites merit being documented, recognized, and preserved.
Many sites we document are important for cultural or social reasons. We encourage our colleagues to record LGBTQ history they may come across in their work, and we’re always thrilled to hear that our project has inspired people to do this in their communities.
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Over the last decade, describe a few achievements you are especially proud of — what have these accomplishments meant to you as an architectural historian, and how would you describe their larger public impact?
Honestly, the thing I am most proud of is hearing from LGBTQ people about how our Project has positively impacted their lives. Their responses are at the heart of what motivates me to keep going during challenging times. Our work is thought-provoking in many ways.
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Big achievements include our documentation initiatives connected to National Park Service grants, which allowed us to expand the number of LGBTQ historic sites on the National Register of Historic Places (still vastly underrepresented with only about 36 listings nationally for LGBTQ significance, 13 of which are in New York City). I authored the National Register nomination for the Caffe Cino, where we later had a bronze plaque installed, and did extensive work on a number of others, including the former residence of writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin.
If you walked past these buildings, you would likely not stop and admire them for their architecture. But the stories they tell resonate with people, even those who typically don’t have an interest in history or architecture.
A huge milestone was the Project celebrating ten years in 2025. This started as a two-year contract position, with our survey findings going to the New York State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). Over the past decade, we have expanded in ways we never imagined and reached so many people. By making the LGBTQ past visible and talking about it unapologetically as fact, we are simultaneously telling people that they matter and that they belong.
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What excites you the most about 2026 – both near future goals for the NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project and your career/life overall?
I’m thrilled to share that we are working with UVA Press on a printed guidebook featuring 101 LGBTQ historic sites. It is slated for publication in spring 2027.
The hardest part was deciding which sites to include, but our goal was to provide a range of stories that speak to the community’s long-standing place in NYC and American history.
We are also continuing to develop public programs for 2026. As part of our commitment to intergenerational partnerships, we are working with graduate students at Pratt Institute on a workshop about the AIDS epidemic, which is open to the public and will take place in February at Pratt’s campus in Brooklyn. In April, we will be commemorating the 60th anniversary of a public action for LGBTQ rights at the place where it happened: Julius’, a historic gay bar in Greenwich Village. This also marks the 10th anniversary of our National Register of Historic Places nomination for Julius’, and we are coordinating with the New York SHPO to celebrate this milestone.
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In January, I joined the Board of Directors of Latinos in Heritage Conservation (LHC), the leading non-profit organization dedicated to preserving Latinx places, stories, and cultural heritage in the United States. This August, LHC will hold its biennial Congreso in Chicago, with this year’s theme being Estamos Aquí (We Are Here). My big life goal this year is to continue improving my Spanish language skills so that I can further connect with my Colombian heritage and so I can feel comfortable using it professionally one day.
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What do you bring from your time at the A-School to this project and your career?
I didn’t plan on majoring in architectural history when I began my undergraduate studies at UVA, but I’m so grateful that I found it by accident the second semester of my first year (exactly 25 years ago, as I type this). History had never been my favorite subject as a kid, so I never imagined a career in it. But the architectural history program at UVA showed me that there was so much more to it.
In class, I felt like I was traveling the world and traveling through time all at once, getting to know my own history and culture as well as those of many others. As a visual learner, I really loved learning history as it connected to place.
In a historic preservation field methods class I took with Louis Nelson, my group documented Cismont School, a since-demolished vernacular building in Albemarle County. My natural inclination was to want to understand the connection between people and place – what it meant to the generations of teachers and students who spent time there, what its role was in the life of the community a century ago and how that changed over time, what it told us about that moment in history, and why telling the story of a non-architecturally significant site still mattered. I’ve taken that thought process with me through my career.
