Most landmark buildings in NYC are in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The city is trying to diversify.

Nearly 38,000 sites and buildings in New York City have been landmarked by the city’s preservation commission.

More than 80% are in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

In part, that’s a simple reflection of history, as New York’s oldest developments are concentrated in those two boroughs.

But in early 2021, the Landmarks Preservation Commission launched an “equity framework” to tell “the stories of all New Yorkers” and broaden the scope of sites and stories designated for protection.

Since then, the LPC has aimed for more geographical diversity, landmarking the first historic districts in Cambria Heights, Queens, Hunts Point in the Bronx, and, this year, Bushwick, Brooklyn.

“It’s really been a deliberate focus to go into communities where there haven’t been historic districts or other designations before and also tell the full story of all New Yorkers through our designations,” said Lisa Kersavage, the commission’s executive director.

Another reason the other boroughs have historically seen less landmark activity: Their developments are only now reaching the 30-year age threshold for designation, Kersavage said.

The city’s landmarks designated in 2023 reflect this new focus, with nearly half of the sites in the Bronx and Queens.

Here are a few of the most interesting.

Bronx Opera House

Completed in 1913, this neoclassical building was designed by the architect of the Apollo Theater — built that same year — and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

The Bronx Opera House’s first decades were spent as a stop on the “Subway Circuit,” where Broadway productions would test out their roadshow potential in the outer boroughs before committing to national runs.

As Puerto Ricans and Afro-Cubans settled in the South Bronx in the 1950s, the Opera House became home to a series of Latin nightclubs that the New York Times called “crucial to salsa’s evolution.” They…