---
title: NYC's landmark designation photographs
description: We built a fast gallery over the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission's designation photo collection, searchable by address, BIN, BBL or LP number.
image: https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1771989556000-8b12a8128bb8?fm=jpg&q=80&w=1600&auto=format&fit=crop
---

[Skip to content](https://blog.yourcity.solutions/nyc-s-landmark-designation-photographs#main-content)

![YourCity logo on a light background](https://yourcity.solutions/logo/yourcity-logo-on-light-bg.svg?v=20260919)Homepage

[Contact Us](https://yourcity.solutions/#book)

[Contact Us](https://yourcity.solutions/#book)

![](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1771989556000-8b12a8128bb8?fm=jpg&q=80&w=1600&auto=format&fit=crop)

# NYC's landmark designation photographs

![Rahul Mathur](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/18d83194f06d20cd11990f04c49936b9)

 Rahul Mathur

September 26, 2026

![Historic New York building facade detail](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1771989556000-8b12a8128bb8?fm=jpg&q=80&w=1600&auto=format&fit=crop)

The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission keeps a collection of designation photographs: the images taken when a building, interior or historic district is designated. They are public, and they are useful to owners, architects, researchers and anyone curious about a block. They are also hard to find. The collection sits in an image server whose search form is behind a CAPTCHA, and most people don't know a building's LP number.

We built a gallery that puts the same records behind a fast lookup: [discover-landmarks.yourcity.solutions/city/new-york/photos](https://discover-landmarks.yourcity.solutions/city/new-york/photos).

## Search the way people actually look for a building

You can look a building up in any of five ways:

- **Street address**, such as "195 Broadway"
- **BIN**, the Building Identification Number
- **BBL**, the borough-block-lot number from the tax map
- **LP number**, the Commission's designation number, for a landmark or a whole historic district
- **Landmark name**

Each lookup has its own URL, such as `/bin/1001227` or `/lp/LP-02194`, so a result can be bookmarked, shared or linked from another system. Every record card names the landmark and shows the catalog details that come with the photograph.

## Opens from the map

In [Discover Landmarks](https://discover-landmarks.yourcity.solutions), our public landmark map, you can open a landmark's popup and go straight to that building's designation photographs. The map shows you what's protected and where, and the gallery shows you what the building looked like when it was designated.

## The 1940s tax photo, one click away

Every lot also links to the NYC Municipal Archives' search for its 1940s tax photograph, so you can compare the building at designation with how it looked eighty years ago. These are links only: the Archives require permission to reproduce those images, and we respect that.

## Light on the source

The gallery reads the Commission's collection directly and doesn't keep a copy of it. Each request is cached at the edge for a day, so a popular building doesn't send repeated traffic to the Commission's server. Every image carries the collection's credit: "Image courtesy of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission."

## Why this matters for agencies

Many preservation agencies hold photograph collections like this one: public, valuable, and difficult to search. People look up buildings by address and parcel, but these collections are catalogued by accession and designation number. Connecting the two doesn't require moving the collection. It needs a thin, fast layer that respects the source's terms and links photographs to the parcels and designations they document.

That link between photograph and record is what our heritage platform is built around. If your agency has a collection people can't find their way into, [book a call](https://yourcity.solutions/#book) and we'll show you what the same approach looks like for your city.

## Share this post

## Keep reading

### [![](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1754299343336-4240f3109a06?fm=jpg&q=80&w=1600&auto=format&fit=crop) Why Data Organization Matters for Map-Based Building Search](https://blog.yourcity.solutions/why-data-organization-matters-for-map-based-building-search)

### [![](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1767945976688-bc8e119f3796?fm=jpg&q=80&w=1600&auto=format&fit=crop) Discover Landmarks: Making Local Places Easier to Find, Understand, and Explore](https://blog.yourcity.solutions/discover-landmarks-making-local-places-easier-to-find-understand-and-explore)

---

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "Rahul Mathur",
    "url" : "https://blog.yourcity.solutions/author/rahul-mathur"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2026-09-26T06:20:44.467Z",
  "datePublished" : "2026-09-26T06:14:08.000Z",
  "headline" : "NYC's landmark designation photographs",
  "image" : [ "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1771989556000-8b12a8128bb8?fm=jpg&q=80&w=1600&auto=format&fit=crop" ],
  "mainEntityOfPage" : {
    "@id" : "https://blog.yourcity.solutions/nyc-s-landmark-designation-photographs",
    "@type" : "WebPage"
  },
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "url" : "https://yourcity.solutions/logo/yourcity-logo-on-light-bg.svg?v=20260919"
    }
  }
}
```