About
Kerri Culhane, Ph.D.
Kerri’s experience spans twenty years of professional Public History, historic preservation & planning practice.
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Her award-winning work had been recognized by the New York State Historic Preservation Office, which honored her with the New York State Preservation Award in 2010, 2021 and 2022; and the New York Landmarks Conservancy’s Lucy G. Moses Award (2021, 2022). She is qualified as an architectural historian consistent with the Secretary of the Interior’s Professional Qualification Standards (36CFR61).
In her work as a public architectural and cultural landscape historian, Kerri uses applied interdisciplinary research to inform a community-based approach to neighborhood preservation and placekeeping, more critical than ever at this time of accelerating physical, social, cultural and economic change. Focused on the historic immigrant neighborhoods of the Lower East Side, including the Bowery, Two Bridges, Chinatown and Little Italy, Kerri uses the past as a lens to gain perspective on critical issues confronting communities today, through curation, writing and public presentations.
As an independent consultant, Kerri regularly collaborates with architects and owners/developers on Standards-based projects that bring new or expanded uses to historic sites; she is frequently called upon to represent clients and projects before local, state and federal planning and preservation agencies. In addition, Kerri teams with archaeologists, architects, landscape architects, historic preservationists, planners & engineers to evaluate significance; develop environmental impact statements; produce cultural resources management plans; conduct conditions assessments; and craft masterplans to guide building and landscape restoration and rehabilitation.
Kerri’s planning work is focused on increasing climate resiliency and promoting adaptation strategies for under-resourced communities. Her exploration of nature-based solutions and green infrastructure in the Two Bridges neighborhood anticipated the many conversations and climate planning work that would come in the wake of Superstorm Sandy (October 2012). She was a community advisor to the BIG U, the winner of the Federal Rebuild by Design competition, which proposed redesigning public park land to protect affordable housing on the Lower East Side. She is a co-founder, with Paul Garrin, of Beyond the Grid, an effort to develop a community microgrid on the Lower East Side. In 2015, the project won Stage 1 funding from NYSERDA to conduct a full feasibility study. Proof of concept applications have been deployed in the East Village.
Kerri completed her Ph.D. at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. She received the Overseas Research Scholarship and the Graduate Research Scholarship to support her exploration of the role of Chinese American architect Poy Gum Lee in the architectural identity of New York’s original Chinatown. Kerri was a Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Institute, 2016-17.
A member of the Society of Architectural Historians, Kerri serves on the boards of the Historic Districts Council and Think!Chinatown, and is an advisor to the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative. She currently serves as a panelist for the New York State Council on the Arts Architecture + Design program (2022-). She has been a guest lecturer and critic at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation; Cornell University’s Graduate Program in Architecture, Art & Planning; The Conway School; Pratt Institute; and The New School.
Education
Ph.D., Architectural & Urban History and Theory, The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
M.A.L.D, Ecological Design & Planning, The Conway School
M.A., Architectural History, Virginia Commonwealth University
B.A., Humanities, Purchase College, SUNY