Vin Cipolla was named one of Northshore magazine’s top 25 influencers this year. Visit the full list to learn more about the dynamic people shaping our region.
From breaking new ground in analog publishing to founding a digital media enterprise at the dawn of the internet age, from serving as a president and CEO at Fidelity Capital to taking leading roles in culture as executive director of David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center and CEO of The Municipal Art Society of New York, Vin Cipolla’s career has taken at least a few twists and turns. During that winding journey, however, historic preservation has become something of a through line.
“The value of [preservation] work and the benefits that it brings have been proven to me time and again,” he says. “I’ve been a lifelong advocate across a number of different preservation causes, and if we’re not in touch with our history and what has made our communities develop and grow—if we don’t seek to really understand and appreciate it—we’re losing an awful lot.”
Since 2020, Cipolla has been president and CEO of Historic New England—“the largest independent, comprehensive historic preservation organization in the country,” he says, which, among other things, owns 38 museum and historic house properties and maintains a collection of more than 125,000 objects chronicling 400-plus years of history. He’s also a galvanizing force for one of the most ambitious projects in the organization’s 114-year existence.
Historic New England is in the midst of transforming the historic Lang and Burgess Buildings in Haverhill—totaling some 150,000 square feet of industrial workspace on Essex Street that was one of the largest shoe manufacturers on the continent, before its diminishment at the hands of urban renewal and economic globalization—into the Haverhill Center for Preservation and Collections, a cultural center-slash-newheadquarters at 151 Essex Street. Along with making publicly available parts of its voluminous archives, the organization has acquired a series of vacant lots radiating out from those two concrete anchors for a mixed-use development opportunity with restaurants, retail, artists spaces, and more, aiming to bring an infusion of fresh energy into the Queen Slipper City.
“It’s a culture-as-catalyst project,” Cipolla says, “to celebrate urban preservation, to celebrate culture, to work collaboratively with other nonprofits, the city, the state, and beyond, and to help bring green space and contribute to the vibrancy of downtown Haverhill.”