For more than 20 years, the Historic Districts Council has honored a New Yorker who has significantly contributed to the celebration and preservation of our beloved New York City. This year, HDC is delighted to present Morris Adjmi, FAIA, with the 2025 Landmarks Lion Award at our fall gala. You are invited to help celebrate Morris by becoming a member of the Landmarks Lion Benefit Committee.
Morris Adjmi is well known for bringing a fresh approach to contextual architecture and adaptive reuse in the city’s historic neighborhoods. In 1997, he established his eponymous firm, Morris Adjmi Architects (MA), in New York City after a 13-year collaboration with Aldo Rossi and has spent the past three decades refining a design approach that bridges history with modernity and tradition with innovation. Drawing inspiration from the ideas and historical forces that gave form to the city around us, his work reflects a wide range of design interventions in historic districts. It underscores HDC’s conviction that good design keeps neighborhoods alive and vibrant, and that preservation plays a vital role in addressing the city’s housing crisis.
The firm has had a significant impact on New York City’s built fabric, having designed more than 60 buildings to date—over 40 of which were approved by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission—underscoring Adjmi’s ability to create architecture that honors evolving historic contexts. Notable projects include the Scholastic Building in the SoHo Cast-Iron Historic District (in collaboration with Aldo Rossi); the Theory Building, the first new structure approved in the Gansevoort Market Historic District; the adaptive reuse of a historic warehouse as the iconic Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn; and the recently approved 277 Canal Street, featured in HDC’s 2025 housing report; to name a few.
Adjmi is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and holds a Master of Architecture from Tulane University, which honored him in 2023 with the Angela O’Byrne Alumni Award. He has taught at Columbia University and the University of Houston, and lectures widely on historic and contemporary architecture, including his own work and that of his mentor and collaborator, Aldo Rossi. He is the author and editor of several books on Rossi, as well as his firm’s monograph, A Grid and A Conversation: Morris Adjmi Architects.
Your support in joining the Benefit Committee will truly celebrate Morris’s remarkable contributions to New York City and beyond. Joining the committee will also ensure that the Historic Districts Council is able to continue its valuable work with more than 500 communities and neighborhoods to preserve, protect, and celebrate New York’s historic places.
It will be a great pleasure to see you at the 2025 Landmarks Lion gala this fall. All of us at HDC thank you for your support.
Historic Districts Council
