The SS United States Conservancy leads the global effort to celebrate and commemorate an enduring expression of American pride and innovation, the SS United States, and to ensure that the legacy of America's Flagship educates and inspires for generations to come.

The Conservancy began as an initiative of the SS United States Preservation Society, a nonprofit organization founded in 1992.  The Society helped secure Congressional support for the SS United States through the SS United States Preservation Act of 1992, legislation designed to protect the ship from destruction. The Society also helped secure the ship’s listing in the National Register of Historic Places. The ship was added to the National Register even though she was less than 50 years of age because of her “compelling national significance,” a status earned by less than one percent of the National Register’s more than 90,000 recognized historic properties.

Incorporated as an independent nonprofit organization in Washington, DC in 2009, the Conservancy formed a prominent board of directors and advisory council, recruited a talented team of staff and consultants, and opened offices in Washington, DC, New York, and Philadelphia.  This progress attracted transformative gifts totaling $5.8 million from prominent philanthropist and businessman H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest that enabled the Conservancy to purchase the SS United States outright in February 2011.

For more than a decade, the Conservancy’s worked to save one of the nation’s great post-war treasures by building a global community of supporters from all 50 states and almost three dozen countries, producing an award-winning documentary film for American Public Television, building a major collection of art, archives, and artifacts from the SS United States, installing a major exhibition at New York’s Forbes Galleries, developing plans for the future SS United States Center for Design and Discovery, earning extensive national and international press coverage, mounting educational and communications programs, creating the SS United States Redevelopment Project to support the vessel’s conversion into a mixed-used development in an urban waterfront setting, and organizing a grassroots “All Hands on Deck Campaign” that enabled supporters from across the nation and around the world to help “Save Our Ship.”

In 2021, without warning and outside the terms of the dockage agreement, pier operators Penn Warehousing doubled the monthly rent it was charging the Conservancy to berth the SS United States at Pier 82. The Conservancy continued paying the mutually agreed-upon rent amount. In 2022, Penn Warehousing sued the Conservancy and evicted the ship from her berth. While the Conservancy prevailed in court against the unreasonable rent demands, a court-ordered timeline for removal of the vessel ultimately forced the Conservancy, which had saved the ship from scrapping in 2011, to sell the historic vessel to Okaloosa County, Florida, in October 2024. 

With your help, the SS United States Conservancy is now developing a world-class museum and visitors center that will showcase the Conservancy's extensive collections, incorporate iconic components from the ship, and convey how America’s Flagship will inspires and endures for generations to come.