Save the Queen City works to improve the lives and economic well-being of Plainfield residents through the promotion of historic preservation. We watch the landmarks. We show up at the hearings. We keep the record.
Plainfield is the Queen City — a place of Victorian mansions, Colonial Revival streetscapes, and civic buildings that tell the story of a New Jersey city at its height. Much of it is still standing. Not all of it is safe.
We are volunteers, neighbors, and homeowners. We monitor endangered landmarks, attend Planning Board and City Council hearings, retain planners and counsel when the record demands it, and make the case that preservation and prosperity are the same argument.
About the organizationRegistered Plainfield historic sites and districts under active threat — from demolition, from neglect, or from redevelopment designations that strip away historic review.
A landmark church whose future turns on finding a stewardship plan before deferred maintenance becomes irreversible.
savegracechurch.orgA civic anchor on Watchung Avenue, vacant and vulnerable. Its reuse is the test case for downtown preservation.
Read the fileYears of neglect and litigation. New ownership raises the question again: restoration, or another loss?
Read the filePreservation is won and lost in public meetings. Here is where to be, and what we are doing.
Agendas, schedules, and what to watch for. We post a plain-English read on the items that touch historic property.
Meeting scheduleEight homes in the historic districts, open for one afternoon. Our largest fundraiser and our best argument.
TicketsGuided walks through the Van Wyck Brooks, Putnam-Watchung, and Civic districts. Free and open to all.
ScheduleBehind a single shared password, members reach the material that makes the advocacy possible: the shared calendar of hearings, meeting minutes, planner and counsel reports, the property watchlist with its research files, testimony templates, and the photo archive.
Our attorney cross-examined the city’s planner; our own licensed planner testified that the statutory standards were not met. The Planning Board granted a continuance.
A city-owned house inside a designated historic district, headed to redevelopment without Historic Preservation Commission review.
Three steps — a rule change, a redevelopment designation, an exemption — and a protected building is no longer protected.
A 501(c)(3) NJ nonprofit corporation
EIN 92-0371449
savethequeencity@gmail.com