HONOREE
JOSHUA DAVID
CO-FOUNDER, FRIENDS OF THE HIGH LINE
Joshua David, co-founder of Friends of the High Line, teamed up with Robert Hammond in 1999 to save an historic 1.45-
mile elevated railway — formerly a spur of the New York Central Railroad — on Manhattan’s West Side.
Together, Josh and Robert successfully advocated for the preservation and reuse of the High Line as a public park,
transformed and opened the High Line structure to the public in three phases, turned Friends of the High Line into a licensed
partner of the City of New York, and raised signifi cant private and public funds for the park’s construction, endowment, and
annual operations.
The High Line runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meat Market district north to West 34th Street west of 11th Avenue. The
fi nal portion of the park was opened in 2019.
In 2015, Josh became president and CEO of World Monuments Fund, a global non-profi t dedicated to protecting and
conserving cultural heritage sites, where he shifted the organizational focus from a site-based, bricks-and-mortar conservation
approach to a community-based, social impact-driven model. Since its founding in 1965, the non-profi t has orchestrated
more than 600 projects in 90 countries, and there are affi liated organizations in fi ve nations around the world.
Josh currently provides programmatic, communications, and funding counsel to mission-driven non-profi t organizations.
He serves on the Advisory Council of Transportation Alternatives, which seeks to reclaim New York City from the automobile
and advocate for better bicycling, walking, and public transit opportunities for all New Yorkers, and he is a founding board
member of Friends of + POOL, which is working to build the world’s fi rst fl oating, self-fi ltering swimming pool, to be sited
in Manhattan’s East River.
In 2017, as a board member of the Greenacre Foundation, Josh joined the effort to ensure that the Midtown East rezoning
plan would protect Greenacre Park, a public-access vest pocket private space on East 51st Street — which boasts a 25-foot
waterfall and an average of 700 visitors each day — from the construction of tall buildings nearby that would throw the
space into shadows for most of the day.
In 2010, Josh and Robert received the Rockefeller Foundation’s Jane Jacobs Medal for New Ideas and Activism, and in
2013, they received the National Building Museum’s Vincent Scully Prize, which recognizes exemplary practice, scholarship,
or criticism in architecture, historic preservation, and urban design.
Josh is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and earned a master’s of Fine Arts from Sarah Lawrence College. He
lives in Chelsea with his partner, Stephen, and his Cairn Terrier, Desi.
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