National Preservation Awards 2025: Top U.S. Preservation Projects of the Year

On September 16, 2025, the National Trust for Historic Preservation celebrated their annual National Preservation Awards. The ceremony took place at their PastForward 2025 conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Below, you'll find the winning projects, individuals, and organizations of the National Preservation Awards 2025. These winners showed excellence in the field of American preservation, and reflected how preservation can create more thriving public spaces and communities.

Founder of the Florida African American Heritage Preservation Network (FAAHPN) and the John Gilmore Riley Museum, Althemese Pemberton Barnes has empowered dozens of institutions in Florida. Her work over the last several decades has helped to preserve and spotlight African American cultural heritage in Florida and beyond.

Barnes was awarded the Louise du Pont Crowninshield Award, the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s most prestigious recognition. It was named for one of their founding trustees and honors outstanding achievement in the architectural or historical preservation space.

Three winners were awarded the 2025 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation National Preservation Awards, one of the country's highest honors in preservation. Each project demonstrates a positive impact on their respective community.

This project at once preserving a Beaux-Arts industrial landmark in Philadelphia and created a vibrant new adaptive reuse project. The former Philadelphia Electric Company’s Delaware Station, now features apartments, offices, event spaces, and a hotel, and is known as the Battery.

Once the Chicago YMCA, the Lawson House is an iconic 24-story 1931 Art Deco skyscraper. At almost 100 years old, the building needed millions of dollars of deferred maintenance. Holsten Real Estate Development Corp. rose to the challenge, putting in $128M to restore and renovate the space that houses some of Chicago's most vulnerable, proving a housing project can be amenity-rich, centrally located, and still affordable.

Built in the 1930s and formerly the city's first Black high school, the Historic Melrose School sat vacant for 40 years. But thanks to the advocacy of community members, it's now being developed into a library, genealogy center, and senior housing facility, preserving the building and honoring its legacy in the history of Memphis.

In 2023, the Zoar Village Levee Project was completed after almost two decades. In the 1930s, a levee was constructed to protect historic Zoar, Ohio—but by the 1990s, it was reaching the end of its life. So the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers partnered with organizations like the Ohio State Historic Preservation Office, the Zoar Community Association, and the Ohio Archeological Council on a $14M project to fix the levee and protect Zoar Village.

The National Trust/Advisory Council on Historic Preservation Award for Federal Partnerships in Historic Preservation is awarded to a project in which a federal agency partners with one or more non-federal partners to preserve an important historic resource.

Winning this year's Trustees' Award for Organizational Excellence, which honors a nonprofit, was the Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation. Located in Baton Rouge, the organization has helped preserve historic landmarks across Louisiana for 46 years by empowering local community leaders and fostering disaster resiliency.

This building is the historic adobe home of retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. It was relocated brick by brick in Tempe, Arizona so it wouldn't be demolished. Today, it's a center for civic engagement, and it won this year's Trustees Emeritus Award, recognizing innovation in management or programming at historic sites.

Under the leadership of Marsh Davis, Indiana Landmarks has grown into the country's largest statewide preservation organization. Davis has served as the organization's CEO and president for two decades, and he's also contributed to national preservation conversations. He is a trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and an advisor to several national grant programs. He's won this year's John H. Chafee Trustees’ Award which celebrates an individual who's contributed significantly to preservation advocacy.