Barbara Haney Irvine
Barbara Haney Irvine is an American advocate for the preservation of women's historic sites. Irvine is the founding president of the Alice Paul Institute, named after American suffragist leader Alice Paul, and was the executive director of the New Jersey Historic Trust. In 2007 she was an honoree for Women's History Month by the National Women's History Project.
Historic preservation
"While Barbara Haney Irvine was initially influenced by Alice Paul, she has created her own powerful legacy through her tireless efforts to ensure that the stories of women’s lives and the places where women lived, worked and died will continue to inspire us and all future generations. - The National Women's History Project
Alice Paul Institute and Paulsdale
Finding inspiration in the life of Alice Paul, the suffragist and women's rights activist who initiated and ran the main actions and events of the 1910s Women's Voting Rights Movement which successfully lobbied for the 19th amendment winning women the right to vote, Irvine co-founded the Alice Paul Centennial Foundation in 1984 to celebrate the centennial of Paul's birth. Later, APCF became the Alice Paul Institute. In 2024, on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, API became the Alice Paul Center for Gender Justice.For over 16 years Irvine served as volunteer president and board chair for API, leading successful campaigns to preserve historic objects related to Paul's life. The group successfully raised over $58,000 to purchase a collection of Paul's books, papers and personal items, including a desk owned by Susan B. Anthony which Paul also used during her movement. The collection was then donated to the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard University.
Less than a year after the collection acquisition, API was offered the chance to purchase Paulsdale, the birthplace and childhood home of Alice Paul, in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. The home was surrounded by a housing development, which threatened to swallow the six-acre site. Irvine led the national campaign to preserve the site, raising over $1.8 million in private and public funds to purchase and rehabilitate the site, turning it into a leadership center for girls and young women. In 1991, under the leadership of Irvine, the property was declared a National Historic Landmark. Paulsdale continues to serve as a leadership development center for women and girls attesting to the ongoing inspiration of Paul's vision for women's equality. The Barbara Haney Irvine Library at Paulsdale honors its founding director.