A volunteer nonprofit working to preserve, protect, and promote the historic architecture of Plainfield, New Jersey — the Queen City.
Save the Queen City works to improve the lives and economic well-being of Plainfield residents through the promotion of historic preservation. Plainfield is 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 who believe a city's history is worth defending — in the hearing room, in the record, and on the street.
We track threatened historic sites across Plainfield's districts.
Planning Board and City Council — with a plain-English read on the items that touch historic property.
Professional expertise brought in when the record demands it.
Studies, filings, minutes, and testimony — preserved and shared.
The economic argument for keeping what makes Plainfield the Queen City.
Save the Queen City has been in the room for every major preservation fight in Plainfield since 2022. A few milestones:
Neighbors organized against proposed ordinance changes that would have weakened Plainfield's historic-preservation review.
A court denied the city's motion to dismiss STQC's challenge to the City Hall redevelopment study, allowing the matter to move forward.
STQC submitted a formal letter of objection to Resolution R380-24.
STQC opposed a proposal to designate the entire Urban Enterprise Zone an “area in need of redevelopment.”
The YMCA's proposed reuse advances through New Jersey Historic Preservation Office review.
Save the Queen City is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation (EIN 92-0371449). Donations are tax-deductible and go directly to the planners, counsel, filings, and outreach that make preservation possible. Volunteers are just as welcome as dollars.