Historic House Trust
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Historic House Trust of New York City was formed in 1989 as a public-private partnership with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation to preserve the historic houses located within New York City parks, although most of the houses were not originally city-owned. The Trust works with the individual houses to restore and promote the houses as a means of educating residents and visitors about the social, economic and political history of New York City and cast urban history in a new light. The Trust includes 23 historic sites, with 18 operating as museums and attracting 729,000 annual visitors.
Properties
The Historic House Trust includes properties in each of New York City's five boroughs, and there is a house for every period in the City's history, depending on one's scheme of dividing history. A number of the properties have live-in caretakers to help prevent vandalism and other problems.
History
In 1988, the City Parks department established a Historic House Office to preserve the 23 City-owned historic house-museums located in City parks. This office gave way to the Historic House Trust of New York City in 1989, funded by private donations, as well as grants, with the goal of each house becoming a professionally accredited museum. In an effort to increase awareness of the program during its first year of operation, the Trust developed a so-called passport program wherein visitors would receive stamps each time they visited one of the houses. If a visitor went to all 23 properties, they would receive an audience with the Mayor. HHT's passport program was brought back in 2008 as a method of commemorating the Trust's 20th anniversary.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Historic House Trust” is open-knowledge reference entry. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Historic, House and Trust, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “open-knowledge reference entry” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5773518. VIAF identifies the subject as 131794296. The Library of Congress control number is nr92022264. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1988 and 2008.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Historic House Trust”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Historic House Trust primary sources, Historic House Trust archive and Historic research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Historic House Trust”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Historic House Trust” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.