Preservation Long Island Emergency Preparedness and Response Program

FAIN: PG-271629-20

Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724-1403)
Lauren Holly Brincat (Project Director: January 2020 to January 2023)

The hiring of a consultant from the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts to develop an Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan for the five properties that house Preservation Long Island’s humanities collections, as well as the purchase of emergency supplies for each site. The project would protect a collection of 3,000 objects made or used on Long Island from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, which range from an eighteenth-century silk gown and shoes to the original 1930s road signs for Robert Moses’s Northern State Parkway. The proposed plan would also safeguard the holdings of the archives: one hundred maps; thousands of twentieth-century images; tourism guidebooks, planning reports, and real estate brochures; and personal papers from prominent Long Island families.

Preservation Long Island seeks a Preservation Assistance Grant from the NEH to support the development of a comprehensive Emergency Preparedness and Response Program for PLI's three historic houses, collections storage facility, and headquarters and exhibition gallery that house and display its historic collections, consisting of over 3,000 objects and 185 cubic feet of archival materials that reveal four centuries of life on Long Island. Funding will be used to hire a consultant from the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts to visit PLI's properties and to work with PLI's curator to write and compile an Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan tailored to PLI's sites and needs, and to purchase emergency supplies for each property. Stewardship is a key element of PLI’s mission. The development of a new Emergency Preparedness and Response Program will allow PLI to safeguard its collections and strengthen its commitment to their care and preservation.