By Sarah Carroll, Chair, NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
August 18, 2020 marks the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the constitutional right to vote. This significant achievement was the culmination of decades of organizing, campaigning, marching, and protest by women and men who believed in equity and justice. Given the recent protests and calls for action to address institutional racism across all government and society and the fact that this is an election year, I can’t help but think about how much the history for women’s suffrage resonates today and how much we can learn from their stories.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission released an interactive story map — NYC Landmarks and the Vote at 100 — that looks back at the winning of women’s suffrage in our state through the lens of New York City’s designated landmarks — places where suffragists lived, worked, met, rallied, and created institutions that have had a lasting impact on our city. It introduces New Yorkers to suffragists whose advocacy for women’s rights changed the city, state, and country forever, and adds another layer of richness to the history of our landmarks and historic districts. The map includes sites from across the city, including Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island.
New York City was crucial to the attainment of women’s suffrage in New York State in 1917 and nationally three years later. The home of several major organizations, the city’s suffrage movement brought together women and men from a variety of backgrounds, including labor activists, female professionals, African Americans, LGBT people, socialists, aristocrats, and clergy.
The story map features the homes of early suffragists like Abby Hopper Gibbons (19 Lamartine Place in the Lamartine Place Historic District), whose advocacy highlights the central role of Quakers in the women’s rights movement and the strong connections between women’s suffrage, abolitionism, and other social reform movements and prolific lecturer and author George William Curtis’s home at 234 Bard Avenue on Staten Island was designated an individual landmark in 2016 for its suffrage and abolitionist associations.
It also includes the locations of suffrage organizations such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) with headquarters at the American Tract Society Building and headed by Susan B. Anthony and later, Carrie Chapman Catt, who lived at the Osborne Apartments and 2 West 86th Street in the Upper West Side / Central Park West Historic District before moving to 404 Riverside Drive in the Morningside Heights Historic District. Catt’s “winning plan,” unveiled in 1916, was instrumental in securing the 19th Amendment.
The map highlights several institutional individual landmarks that have important associations with suffrage, including Cooper Union, which hosted dozens of suffrage events, like the 1860 National Woman’s Rights Convention, the 1873 meeting of the American Woman Suffrage Association, and an 1894 mass suffrage meeting attended by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other movement leaders. Although primarily known as a music venue, Carnegie Hall also hosted numerous political events, including suffrage meetings, in its early years, and the Colony Club (564 Park Avenue) included many ardent suffragists among its members.
The map also features prominent African American suffragists who formed their own suffrage organizations hoping the vote could also address racial injustice. Among them was Sarah Smith Garnet, New York’s first female African American public-school principal, who lived at 175 MacDougal Street in the Greenwich Village Historic District and later 205 DeKalb Avenue in the Fort Greene Historic District in Brooklyn. Garnet founded the Equal Suffrage League of Brooklyn by the late 1880s, and also helped establish the Women’s Loyal League of New York and Brooklyn, which fought for African American women’s rights, including suffrage. The story map also recognizes that African American Suffragists fought for racial equality within a movement that often put the goals of racial justice and integration secondary to that of gaining the vote.
As far as we have come as a nation, the fight for equity is far from over. Now more than ever, it is vitally important that we honor and further the legacy of these great suffragists and take part in our government. Voting was once a privilege reserved for a few. Today, it is a right that we must all exercise in order to make a difference.
About the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC)
The Landmarks Preservation Commission is the mayoral agency responsible for protecting and preserving New York City’s architecturally, historically and culturally significant buildings and sites. Since its creation in 1965, LPC has granted landmark status to more than 37,000 buildings and sites, including 1,437 individual landmarks, 120 interior landmarks, 11 scenic landmarks, and 150 historic districts and extensions in all five boroughs. For more information, visit www.nyc.gov/landmarks and connect with us via www.facebook.com/NYCLandmarks and www.twitter.com/nyclandmarks.
