Amy Freitag

Biographical Information
"Amy Freitag comes to New York Restoration Project (NYRP) with a professional background that includes serving in the Bloomberg Administration as Deputy Commissioner for Capital Projects in the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation for six years and Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. While at the NYC Parks Department, she administered a $3 billion capital program – during what is considered the largest period of investment in the City’s parks and open spaces since the 1930s, including the Parks Department’s first LEED certified projects and award winning historic preservation, architecture and landscape design projects.

"Notable capital projects include the Highline, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Freshkills Park, Union Square, Washington Square and a $200 million environmental mitigation in Bronx parks. During her Parks tenure, Amy managed a staff of 350 architects, landscape architects, engineers and construction managers.

"Amy most recently served as U.S. Program Director for the World Monuments Fund, where she developed a demonstration conservation project for Taos Pueblo, a World Heritage Site; conservation plans for Frank Lloyd Wright textile block structures at Florida Southern College and the New School Studio School, NYC; site protection and digital laser documentation of Tutuveni, a Hopi petroglyph site on Navajo Land near Tuba City, AZ; preservation and strategic planning for Shaker Villages in New York and Massachusetts; and program support for preservation education in high schools in Brooklyn and Newburgh, NY. She currently serves on the boards of the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation and the New York Preservation Archive Project.  Amy lectures nationally on the history of women in conservation and is researching a book on the founding of the Garden Club of America.

"At Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, Amy coordinated and directed fundraising for cultural and natural resources activities, raising more than $5 million from federal, state, and private sources and supervised various historic preservation projects, including the restoration of the Fairmount Waterworks, the Sedgeley Porter’s House, Ridgeland and Belmont Mansions. She managed daily operations at park administered house museums and supervised park staff.  At the Fairmount Park Historic Preservation Trust, she established an earned income revenue stream by providing affordable conservation services to non-profit partners, significantly improving the quality of care given to historic structures in public parks.

"Amy holds an A.B. from Smith College and master’s degrees in Landscape Architecture and Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania, where she received the Elizabeth Wiley Green Award for Outstanding Promise. She currently lives in Montclair, NJ where she passionately tends to her garden and three children with partner Cindy Smith."

Affiliations

 * Executive Director, New York Restoration Project