Commissioners

Commissioner Michael Devonshire

Michael Devonshire was appointed to the Commission in 2010. He is currently the Director of Conservation at Jan Hird Pokorny Associates, Inc., where he has worked as an architectural conservator since 1987. He has written numerous papers and publications about restoration technology and strategy, and is a member of the New York State Board for Historic Preservation and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He previously served on the boards of the U.S. National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America and the Snug Harbor Cultural Center. He is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture and Planning and Historic Preservation, and at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He lectures annually at the Preservation Institute: Nantucket.

Commissioner Devonshire received training in architecture, sculpture and historic preservation at Roger Williams University, the Rhode Island school of Design and the Aegean School of Art in Greece. His first restoration project in New York City was at the Schermerhorn Row at the South Street Seaport. More recent restoration projects include the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights, which served as General George Washington’s headquarters for a month during the Revolutionary War; the Church of the Incarnation in Manhattan, and the North China Daily News Building in Shanghai. He has lived in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn for 30 years.