Woodstock festival site in New York nominated as historic landmark

NEW YORK — The site of the Woodstock music festival, a defining moment for rock ‘n’ roll and hippie culture in the late 1960s, was among more than two dozen locations in New York nominated on Tuesday for historic landmark status.

The state’s Board for Historic Preservation recommended 26 properties, resources and districts to be added to the State and National Registers of Historic Places, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

“New York’s history is this nation’s history, and we are leading the way to preserve the sites of significant events for future generations,” Cuomo said in a statement.

Formally known as the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, the festival attracted an estimated 400,000 people to a 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York for three days in August 1969.

Featuring performances by Jimi Hendrix, the Who and Janis Joplin, the festival was one of the most important social and music events of the 20th century.

The site is currently home to a monument and the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, which houses a museum dedicated to Woodstock.

If approved by the state’s historic preservation officer, it would be listed on the New York State Register of Historic Places and nominated to the National Register of Historic Places, making it eligible for various public preservation programs and services.

Other nominations included the Waterloo Downtown Historic District in Waterloo, New York built in 1803, the Offerman Building constructed in Brooklyn in 1890, and the South Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, New York opened in 1907.

The Niagara Power Project Historic District, a 2,589-acre hydroelectric power plant in western New York that is one of the biggest in the United States, also made the list of nominations.

Cuomo said the nomination of the sites will help ensure that the state’s rich heritage is recognized and that the sites remain viable destinations to attract visitors.