The LPC's power was greatly strengthened after the Landmarks Law was passed in April 1965, one and a half years after the destruction of Pennsylvania Station.

By 1990, the LPC was cited by David Dinkins as having preserved New York City's municipal identity and enhanced the market perception of a number of neighborhoods.

[2] The LPC is responsible for overseeing a range of designated landmarks in all five boroughs ranging from the Fonthill Castle in the North Bronx, built in 1852 for the actor Edwin Forrest, to the 1670s Conference House in Staten Island, where Benjamin Franklin and John Adams attended a conference aimed at ending the Revolutionary War.

The selected properties will then be discussed at public hearings where support or opposition to a proposed landmark designation are recorded.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission consists of 11 commissioners, who are unpaid and serve three-year terms on a part-time basis.

[11][5] The commission also employs a full-time, paid workforce of 80, composed of administrators, legal advisors, architects, historians, restoration experts, and researchers.

[24] Advocates also led efforts to preserve cultural sites such as Carnegie Hall, which in the late 1950s was slated for replacement with an office tower.

[32] The demolition of Pennsylvania Station between 1963 and 1966, in spite of widespread outcry,[33][34] is cited as a catalyst for the architectural preservation movement in the United States, particularly in New York City.

[40] That July, Wagner issued an executive order that compelled municipal agencies to notify the LPC of any "proposed public improvements".

The early version of the LPC initially held little power over enforcement,[11][42] and failed to avert Pennsylvania Station's demolition.

[43] As a result, in April 1964, LPC member Geoffrey Platt drafted a New York City Landmarks Law.

[44] Outcry over the proposed destruction of the Brokaw Mansion on Manhattan's Upper East Side, identified by the LPC as a possible landmark, inspired Wagner to send the legislation to the New York City Council in mid-1964.

The LPC's earliest landmarks were mainly selected based on their architecture, and were largely either government buildings, institutions, or structures whose preservation was unlikely to be controversial.

[65] By 1990, the LPC was cited by David Dinkins as having preserved New York City's municipal identity and enhanced the market perception of a number of neighborhoods.

[11] One of the most prominent decisions in which the LPC was involved was the preservation of the Grand Central Terminal with the assistance of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

[68] This success is often cited as significant due to the LPC's origins following the destruction of Pennsylvania Station, referred to by some as architectural vandalism.

[71] Cultural landmarks, such as Greenwich Village's Stonewall Inn, are recognized as well not for their architecture, but rather for their location in a designated historic district.

[72] In 2015, Stonewall became the first official New York City landmark to be designated specifically based on its LGBT cultural significance.

[73] In a heatedly discussed decision on August 3, 2010, the LPC unanimously declined to grant landmark status to a building on Park Place in Manhattan, and thus did not block the construction of Cordoba House.

[75] An advisory panel under mayor Koch voted to allow the LPC consider theaters not only on their historical significance but also on their architectural merits.

[76] In response to objections from some of the major theatrical operators, several dozen scenic and lighting designers offered to work on the LPC for creating guidelines for potential landmarks.

However, a real estate company, the Howard Hughes Corporation, possessed a lease for large parts of the Seaport area and desired to redevelop it, generating fears among locals that the New Market Building would be altered or destroyed.

[93] Community Board 1 supports protecting and repurposing the New Market Building,[93] and the Municipal Art Society argued in a report that "[it] has both architectural and cultural significance as the last functioning site of the important commercial and shipping hub at South Street Seaport.

In 2003, Svehlak wrote a manifesto arguing for the landmark designation of "a trilogy"[101] of three contiguous buildings on Washington Street, the thoroughfare that was most closely associated with "Little Syria".

These consisted of the Downtown Community House – which hosted the Bowling Green Association to serve the neighborhood's immigrants – 109 Washington Street (an 1885 tenement), and the terra-cotta St. George's Syrian Catholic Church.

[102] However, under Chairman Robert Tierney, the LPC had declined to hold hearings on the Downtown Community House or 109 Washington Street.

Community and preservation groups — including the "Friends of the Lower West Side" and the "Save Washington Street" group led by St. Francis College student Carl "Antoun" Houck[103] — have continued, especially, to advocate for a hearing on the Downtown Community House, arguing that its history demonstrates the multi-ethnic heritage of the neighborhood, and that its Colonial Revival architecture intentionally links the immigrants to the foundations of the country,[104] and that preserving the three buildings together would tell a coherent story of an overlooked, but important ethnic neighborhood.

According to the Wall Street Journal, however, the LPC argues that "the buildings lack the necessary architectural and historical significance and that better examples of the settlement house movement and tenements exist in other parts of the city.