World Monuments Fund Reveals Irreplaceable America List
Preserving the Narrative: World Monuments Fund Debuts “Irreplaceable America” List of Threatened Cultural Landmarks
Just ahead of the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the cultural heritage preservation nonprofit World Monuments Fund (WMF) has revealed its first Irreplaceable America list. The new awareness-raising program recognizes 10 individual places across the United States whose preservation is essential to the richness and complexity of American history. Included are houses of worship, towering works of folk art, and an I.M. Pei–designed civic landmark from the late 1970s that has garnered recent headlines due to the looming threat of demolition.
While based in New York, WMF is best known for its global advocacy efforts through programs like the biennial Watch list and the World Monument Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize, which earlier this year was awarded to the restoration of the United Nations’ Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Since its inception in 1965, WMF has worked to protect more than 700 sites in 112 countries. It remains unclear if the Irreplaceable America List will continue beyond this year with some regularity or if it is a one-off initiative tied to the semiquincentennial celebration.
After decades of work, WMF has seen what communities gain when they can protect the places that matter and what is lost when they cannot. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, Irreplaceable America serves as a call to protect the places that reflect the richness of that history, and underscores the role heritage plays in education, community memory, and civic life.
WMF received 75 nominations for at-risk sites for potential inclusion on the Irreplaceable America list. These nominations were then reviewed by an independent panel of architecture critics, historians, museum directors, and academic professors. Each nomination was assessed based on cultural significance, urgency of conservation needs, and the potential community benefit of preservation. In addition to the 10 places spotlighted in the Irreplaceable America list, the panel has also recognized the National Park Service with a special designation for its role in shaping preservation standards and stewarding more than 430 sites across the United States.
Below is the full Irreplaceable America list, detailing their cultural significance and the distinct structural or environmental threats they currently face.
The 10 Most At-Risk Historical Sites in America
New York’s Smallpox Hospital Ruin | Roosevelt Island, New York
The first U.S. facility built to treat epidemic disease, this nineteenth-century smallpox hospital, designed by architect James Renwick Jr., remains a rare landmark in the history of medicine. After decades of neglect, the structure is dangerously unstable and at immediate risk of collapse without urgent stabilization.
Bartram’s Garden | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The oldest surviving botanical garden in the United States, Bartram’s Garden helped shape American natural history and global plant exchange. Today, climate pressures, encroaching development, and a projected tripling in visitation threaten this irreplaceable cultural landscape.
Mission Churches of Acoma and Laguna Pueblos | New Mexico
Built by Indigenous communities and still active today, these Pueblo-Franciscan mission churches remain vital centers of spiritual and cultural life. Funding shortfalls and the loss of traditional building knowledge now put them at risk.
Watts Towers | Los Angeles, California
Italian immigrant Simon Rodia spent more than three decades building these soaring sculptures by hand, producing one of the most singular works of folk art in American history. Environmental stress, seismic risk, and dwindling resources threaten their long-term stability.
Wright Brothers Sites | Dayton, Ohio
In the workshops and fields of Dayton, Wilbur and Orville Wright developed the technology that made powered flight possible. Years of deferred investment and limited resources threaten their long-term preservation and public interpretation.
Black Mountain College Studies Building | North Carolina
At the heart of Black Mountain College, this building represents one of the most influential experiments in American art and education. Severe deterioration, water infiltration, and climate-related damage now threaten its survival.
Boston African Meeting House | Boston, Massachusetts
The oldest surviving Black church in the United States, the Boston African Meeting House helped anchor the early abolitionist movement. Now, funding gaps put this irreplaceable civil rights landmark at risk when preservation is most urgent.
City of New Orleans Historic Neighborhoods | Louisiana
Shaped by Indigenous, African, European, and Caribbean influences, the historic neighborhoods of New Orleans form one of America’s most distinctive cultural landscapes. Rising seas, land loss, and mass population relocation now threaten that heritage.
Colonial Homes of Newport | Rhode Island
Newport’s extraordinary concentration of colonial-era architecture survives as a living neighborhood, not a museum. Now, rising seas and accelerating climate threats put a significant share of this historic fabric at risk, demanding urgent action to protect it.
Dallas City Hall | Dallas, Texas
Designed by I. M. Pei, Dallas City Hall is one of the most significant works of civic architecture and modernism in America. Pressure from private developers and inflated rehabilitation estimates create an immediate risk of abandonment or demolition.
