BOARD OF DIRECTORS Anthony C. Wood, Chair Eric Allison, Vice-Chair Stephen Facey, Treasurer Lisa Ackerman, Secretary Michele H. Bogart Joseph M. Ciccone Susan De Vries Margaret Ferguson Amy Freitag Elizabeth R. Jeffe Shirley Ferguson Jenks Otis Pratt Pearsall Duane A. Watson NEWSLETTER FALL 2010 Welcome to the thirteenth edition of the newsletter of the New York Preservation Archive Project. The mission of the New York Preservation Archive Project is to protect and raise awareness of the narratives of historic preservation in New York. Through public programs, outreach, celebration, and the creation of public access to information, the Archive Project hopes to bring these stories to light. Bard Birthday Breakfast Benefi t 2010 ___________________ Save the Date! December 1, 2010 8:30 am – 10:00 am Join Us for the 7th Annual Bard Birthday Breakfast Benefi t The Seventh Annual Bard Birthday Breakfast development issues. A former reporter Manhattan Penthouse Benefi t will soon be upon us! As a fi tting for the New York Post, Ms. Gratz has also 80 Fifth Avenue tribute to what would have been Albert S. written articles for the Wall Street Journal, New York City Bard’s 144th Birthday, we are celebrating The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, with a talk by Roberta Brandes Gratz at the Tikkun, Planning Magazine, Newsday, the Daily Manhattan Penthouse on December 1, 2010. News, and Planning Commissioners Journal. In Tickets: 2010 BBBBRefl Invite_front_new.indd ecting upon her 1 decades-long friendship addition to serving on various 10/14/2010planning 11:09:11 AM Benefi t Committee Tickets: $250 with the late Jane Jacobs, Gratz will provide and preservation boards, Ms. Gratz was a behind-the-scenes look at the research she appointed to the New York City Landmarks Benefi t Tickets: $125 completed for her recently published book, Preservation Commission by Mayor Michael Student Tickets: $65 The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow Bloomberg in 2003. of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. Utilizing her To purchase tickets or if you have own extensive body of work and the many Your support at our annual benefi t will any questions about the event, please interviews she conducted with the city’s support NYPAP’s efforts to record and do not hesitate to contact Matthew key thinkers, preservationists and planners, document the history of the preservation Coody at the NYPAP offi ce: Gratz has created an intimate account of movement in New York City. And this year [email protected] New York’s urban transformation and an your gift will have an even greater impact or analysis of how other cities might learn from by helping us meet a one-to-one $15,000 212-988-8379. its rebirth. matching grant from the Robert A. and Elizabeth R. Jeffe Foundation. We are very Your support for NYPAP and its Roberta Brandes Gratz is an award-winning excited about this upcoming event and programs is greatly appreciated. journalist, urban critic, international lecturer, sincerely hope you will join us on December and author of three books on urban 1st! Page 1 Chairman’s Column: We’re Not Alone! Anthony C. Wood Over ten years ago, when the New York its history of advocacy campaigns, Law Program, Dorothy’s invaluable papers Preservation Archive Project fi rst started preservation history is “going viral.” The now have a permanent home. Too often, to beat its drum for the preservation, latest entry is a wonderful new feature in the as families, friends, or associates have had documentation, and celebration of the Municipal Art Society’s web updates, “From to deal with the possessions of a departed history of preservation activity in New York, the Archive.” The September 8 edition preservationist, the path of least resistance we were very “out there.” With the exception featured a 1936 Christmas Eve letter from has been the one leading to the dumpster. of a few anniversary moments, it was not Robert Moses to then MAS president Electus The creation of the Historic Preservation part of the culture of preservationists or D. Litchfi eld. Indeed, as part of its recent Law Archive to preserve Dorothy’s papers of preservation organizations to devote relocation, MAS brought in a professional is a model for how to save precious primary resources or energy to capturing their own to offer advice on the organization’s archives resources. May this effort inspire many history. Preservation’s narrative was at and that collection is now in the capable imitators! best an underperforming asset, (not being hands of Kathy O’Callaghan, Manager of used to help inform, educate or inspire the MAS Archives. As a small organization, with a tiny treasury the movement) and at worse a wasting and the huge ambition of documenting, asset (being lost with the passage of time). The importance of recording the preservation preserving and celebrating the history of Certainly, no one was “sweating the asset.” dimension of larger historic narratives is also preservation, NYPAP early on embraced being discovered. The Museum of the City the “Tom Sawyer” business model. We seek Fast forward to 2010. I’m happy to report of New York’s major exhibit, “America’s to inspire, cajole and in all ways possible, we are no longer alone in our appreciation Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention recruit others to “paint the fence” for us. of preservation’s history. The culture of of New York,” not only addresses Lindsay’s Preservation’s history is a big fence belonging preservation is indeed changing. Others are preservation legacy but a related special to us all and it will take all of our combined seeing its importance: they are helping to program, “Lindsay’s Forgotten Preservation efforts to get it painted! document and preserve it and are using the Legacy: Air Rights and the Strengthening preservation narrative to inspire and inform of the Landmarks Law,” puts preservation’s It is gratifying to see the culture of the movement. This is a movement that is history front and center. preservation beginning to evolve to include beginning to value its own history. Though a greater recognition and appreciation of NYPAP cannot take credit for the exciting Another example of the growing appreciation the value of preservation’s history. Creative work that has begun to take place, we would of preservation’s history - and the need to efforts like those mentioned above are like to think that our beating of that drum document and preserve it - is the opening on emerging. If you are aware of other such for the past decade has perhaps inspired September 23rd of the Historic Preservation examples please let us know so that we some of the new energy being used to tell Law Archive at Pace University School of Law can share them as models. If you are preservation’s story. Library as the home of the collected papers contemplating taking on a project – large of Dorothy Miner, a NYPAP Board member or small – that involves the history of the That story is now unfolding in some exciting and supporter, and a seminal player in the preservation story, and you need some help ways, one of which is through the Web. last several decades of preservation in New or advice, we are here to assist you. We Whether it is the Greenwich Village Society York City (see story on page 3). Thanks to love to partner on programs and archival for Historic Preservation’s web feature, the assistance of Dorothy’s brothers, Richard initiatives. “Remembering the Pioneers of Greenwich and Robert Miner, as well as Nick Robinson, Village Preservation,” or Landmark West’s Dorothy’s teaching colleague at Pace, the We’re no longer alone and it feels great! website with its special section documenting Pace Law Library and Pace’s Environmental Come paint the fence with us! Page 2 New Archive Opens! Historic Preservation Law Archive Honors the Memory of Dorothy Miner will help future generations of scholars, lawyers and preservationists achieve some sense of the preservation powerhouse that was Dorothy Miner. NYPAP has a special affi nity for Dorothy, one of our earliest and longest-serving board members. She shared intensely in our mission to preserve, document and celebrate the history of preservation, realizing that this is essential for preservation’s future. While we all miss In Memoriam: Dorothy dearly, this archive will help to keep her passion, knowledge and generosity alive Robert Kornfeld, Sr. for those who will follow in her footsteps. Historic District Pioneer Dies at 91 Thanks go to Dorothy’s brothers, Richard Robert J. Kornfeld, Sr., instrumental in creating the Riverdale Historic District, passed away in and Robert Miner, as well as Pace Law Inwood on August 23, 2010. Co-author of the School, and especially to Professor book Landmarks of the Bronx and chairman of the Nicholas A. Robinson, Dorothy’s colleague Bronx Landmarks Task Force, Bob Kornfeld was Pace Law School, courtesy of Pace University at Pace, for their instrumental roles in the passionate about preserving the Bronx, and in preservation of Dorothy’s papers and the particular, Riverdale, the neighborhood he called NYPAP is excited to announce the offi cial creation of this archive for the education of home for 56 years. “He felt that Riverdale was opening of the Historic Preservation Law generations to come. so beautiful and that it shouldn’t be changed. It Archive at Pace Law School. Established by meant so much to him that he was an important part of Riverdale,” Celia Kornfeld, Bob’s widow, Richard and Robert Miner, in honor of their told The Riverdale Press shortly after his death.