Margot Gayle: An Oral History Interview

An Oral History Interview with Margot Gayle
Conducted by Anthony C. Wood
April 26, 1984

Transcript

A: What I want to do is: I talk to people and then I type up a transcript, which I then send back to you.

M: I see.

A: If I got you off the topic before you make the point that you wanted to make we put it in. Ultimately, it will be a typed transcript with some footnotes annotations from me that someone might not understand. We’re starting a collection of these.

M: I see. That’s nice.

A: After my grant runs out, we can get the society to continue it. Someday I want to publish some of this information. But it’s more important to collect the information. So someday if someone wants to seriously sit down and write a book about all these events, they will have more information on it.

M: Yeah, get them while you can. Yeah, you know who’s trying to do that too? It’s Charles Hosmer.

A: Yes. Yes.

M: Well, he’s trying to collect stuff. Either for another book or, I don’t know.

A: Did you talk to him when he came through last time? Cause his last book – well books – were well fascinating.

M: Yeah. Uh huh.

A: I was so happy when I discovered him in grad school. That somebody had actually taken the trouble to create a – write down the history.

M: I wanted to tell you I had a funny experience with him. You know there’s uh…Fred Rath?

A: Mhmmm.

M: I was at a session up in Cooperstown where Charles Hasmer was the guest speaker and Fred Rath was there. And Charles Hasmer was talking about the founding of the national trust and all that Rath participated in. And he was giving out facts. And Rath, who had lived the story in real life, was differing with him. And Hasmer said he knew because he had looked at the documentation and the printed things. And he was the one who had the facts and the dates right. And the man who’d lived through it –

A: Didn’t.

M: Didn’t! Wasn’t that funny? So you may find yourself doing the same thing.

A: Well, I have been involved in some of these things and seeing what gets written down and what doesn’t. What happens is sometimes they’re both right.

M: Yes.

A: In a sense, things change. Well, how… What I think I’m curious about it is: how did you first get involved in all this. All of this wonderful craziness? Yeah?

M: Yeah. Well I can see now, going back in my life, that I really cared about historic buildings. Back to the time when I got married. My husband and I went on our honeymoon, down to Savannah, when he wanted to go down to the beach and I want to go see the old houses. That almost caused a riff right there, and we did both, naturally. But I didn’t know anything about the basis for my interest. It was just kind of compelling to me. I didn’t do anything more about that. And of course, a place like Atlanta doesn’t have much opportunity for historic preservation because it was burned, if you recall. And then the commercial expansion has wiped out all the old mansions on Peachtree Street and that of thing. And one of the few historic buildings they had was The Wren’s Nest, which was the home of the man who – he invented all of those stories.

A: Right, right.

M: Joel Chandler Harris. And I happened to arrive the same time as a black woman and her child came. And the black woman was turned away. And yet the stories were all about Br’er rabbit and all of those black children.

A: When was that? I hope it was a long time ago.

M: It was quite a while ago. But it made me so irate. I remember taking it on as kind of a cause for a while. That everybody should be able to come to these historic buildings. But that’s water way over the dam. It’s just that my interest goes way back. My training and schooling and all was in such a different line that it surprises me. I got a masters in bacteriology and I was hoping I might get into medical school. But there weren’t women in the southern medical schools. My husband tried to help me get in at Emory University, and I got turned down, and it was only after, during World War 2, when we came up here and he went on overseas and I worked as a writer for CBS. I began to write about New York and stuff going on around New York, places to go and see. And that led to me really follow this vent of old buildings and historic structures.

A: When did you move to New York?

M: 1944. I found that in writing as a daily show for someone else to perform, I was always looking into these old buildings and writing them into the script. It almost seems like subterfuge now, that I was sneaking them in. Because I was also writing interviews for celebrities. And so celebrities would come into the show and use my written interviews. But I was always sneaking in these old buildings.

A: Were you living in the Village at the time?

M: Yeah, I was. And I lived in the Village for 30 years. Until about 5 years ago. And that’s a good place to be interested in historic architecture.

A: Sure, sure.

M: My first real involvement was the Jefferson Market Courthouse.

A: Is that also the first emphasis on the village? On preservation? Or what were other things going on in the village that you really got involved it?

M: Not in my knowledge. But I think if I were to talk to some of the preservation committee members at the Municipal Art Society we would find that there were things afoot that weren’t all that apparent. Do you remember they built – they took down Rhinelander houses on the north side of Washington Square when they put up new apartment houses. They bowed to the surrounding houses by making them scale by setting back to the same height as the row of houses of the other side of the square. There were other things afoot that we haven’t really – and I wasn’t really involved in. I’ll tell you what was afoot. Mary Nichols. Do you know Mary Trout Nichols? She is now the head of WNYC. Mary and others fought Moses to standstill about cutting Fifth Avenue into a deep cut.

A: Oh, into the park?

M: A depressed cut through Washington Square and having it connect to what’s now LaGuardia place.

A: Oh, I heard about that fight.

M: Yeah, and that was a great thing. But it’s just lost in the past; we should resurrect it and include it.

A: He was not stopped very often. So it’s like a major win.

M: No, no. But you see what it was, was a very good example of how you can rally the village. It’s a very rally-able place because people are educated and cultured and they feel that they can speak for the public and not let officials…

A: Speaking of rallying people, you’ve always struck me as being so attuned to the tools to rally people.

M: Yes. Yes.

A: I mean getting the postcards off and those things.

M: Oh yes, right.

A: Were you ever involved with politics? I mean how…

M: I was in politics. I mean, it’s a very political approach, isn’t it? I was very active in the Democratic Party and in New York County, which is today Manhattan, for almost 10 years. And that started with Truman, right then and there, and then strongly through the Stevenson period. And there was a group that called themselves the Reform Democrats. And we organized and actually defeated, in primary battles of the lowest scale, which is the county committees. There were a lot of tired, old politicians who had gotten into grooves of non-service and non-interest. And self-interest. And we succeeded in defeating them. One of the persons who did that was Ed Koch. He was a district leader. Another was a guy who was named Millard Madone. He became a surrogate New York candidate. He became a judge as a lawyer. And he and I did it in our area, which was Chelsea and Grammercy Park. And this was going on primarily in Manhattan, all over. And I think we were all rather stuffy about it. You know? We were the scenery nice guys and you know it’s not always black and white to get it through to the voters. To get then to get out and cast that vote on primary day.

A: But those are political tools. Maybe that’s where you moved it.

M: Well, what I felt Tony was, get into real politics. And then have your point of view expressed where the decisions are being made that are political and administrative and part of the government. And if you’re in there making decisions rather than taking potshots, actually doing the decision-making, you can do a lot for preservation. Am I talking too loud?

A: No, I think it’s going fine. It looks great. I think we’re fine. I can also fix my wonderful equipment. I can make it louder, softer. So not to worry.

M: I think that I had an edge because of my political activity. I had come to know almost everybody at the time on the city council. Everybody from Mayor Wagner on down.

A: And this helped you when you got involved in preservation in the Village.

M: Preservation of the Jefferson Market Courthouse, you see, a lot of it hinged on my being able to lift a phone and just talking to somebody on a first name basis and say what can you do to help. What can I be doing? What is the sequence of things that should be done? And, so, I just think that preservationists should be in politics.

A: Was it a hard job? I mean today the idea of recycling that building seems so natural, but back then…

M: Oh, it was on the brink of destruction. There’s no doubt. The city had tried. You know they had changed the court system so it was a redundant courthouse, and not the only one. And it was the most decorative in position, so that it was so nicely in the heart of the Greenwich Village area. The city had sincerely tried to find a city use for it. They had circulated all city agencies three times, which I think is required by law, to see if any of them had use for the city structure. But everyone had said no, so they wanted to be cavalier about it. They tried selling it, making a couple bucks off of it. But it stood empty for a year and it was used occasionally, like it was used by the police academy; the building that they were building for police academy wasn’t completed. And so they would hold certain classes there. It was an unattractive place to hold it because it was dirty and unattractive. There were pigeon droppings and pigeons, it’s a funny shape inside, and anybody who used it, I think, was a pretty good sport. They probably used it grudgingly because they could probably find something better and cheaper.

A: Haha.

M: Let’s see who else used it… Oh, the US Census, they ran the census, for at least part of the city, out of that building. Then there were some other temporary uses. It was just an inappropriate structure and everybody just wanted a new fresh start. And even the library did not want it, did you know that? The library which occupied a small, neat looking building, it’s a square somewhat left of 7th Avenue. Is it Abingdon?

A: Maybe Abingdon Square.

M: It was designed by Richard Morris Hunt, I think. It was just inadequate in far as the size. And they had been asking the city for half their budget funds. They city said ‘well the community wants a new library and they’re pushing us to find a new use for the building. And so we had formed a committee to bring attention to the problem of the building and called it the Committee for the Clock. Meanwhile, trying to figure out what to do because we had already gotten the building saved. So we start a second committee called the Committee for a Library. And I was chairman of the first one. I was co-chairman with a man named Harold Birds. A man who became a judge. He was a city official so he had some know-how. But he didn’t want to work at it. He said he would provide his name. You see, you should realize and I would like to have it on the table. Women would say I want to form a committee. I’ll do all the work, but we need a man to sit at the table. And I’m sure it was a way to make things work. And women didn’t know how to take the lead anyways. So we were co-chairs. So when I formed another committee. One with Wittenberg. What’s her husband’s name?

A: Oh, Phillip?

M: Yeah. Phillip Wittenberg. I say to him ‘you be chairman and I’ll be deputy chairman’. That was the terminology and again we said that I’ll do the work and Phillip you be the big shot and make the speeches. He didn’t do a lot. But what he did helped out a great deal. It was Ruth’s first time. She helped me. Now later on, she…uh…well she’s been in the picture. It’s a slightly fuzzy thing that I’m not going to talk about. But Ruth certainly worked hard. But I will say this, later they kind of pushed me aside, she and Phil. And I remember Bob Low, when he came to the council that the city had agreed to turn the building into a library. And Phil didn’t even ask me to be on the platform. So you can see how it’s fuzzy. But the outcome was that Mira Wagner (who doesn’t get enough credit for what she did) told them that you can’t have capital funds to have a library unless to use the budget to restore this building and have your library there. But they said that they didn’t want it and that they only wanted the site. She said we want a new plate-glass library there. So now everybody isn’t in preservation for preservation.

A: So Wagner actually saved it. Did he then force the library to –

M: He did. He said ‘take it or leave it. If you don’t want your library there, then you can’t have your funds in the capital budget this year.”

A: Do you think that he did this because he was educated about preservation or do you think he had a sincere-

M: No. There are people like me, kind of around, who are helping him to understand. But remember, he was the man that came up with the Landmarks Law; remember that Tony. I think he should receive an award from us, if not this year then next year.

A: That’s a wonderful idea, because next year is the 20th anniversary of the law. And there’s a big hoopla. In the planning stages, I’ll write that down.

M: He is such a quiet, modest guy. He needs to be rediscovered.

A: He’s the quiet political champion.

M: He left office pretty quick and it seemed to be Lindsay’s work but it was actually Wagner’s.

A: Since he was involved in creating the law, were you involved in getting the law created?

M: Yeah, but you know…not so very much. It was mostly the Squire Society and some other. You probably have archives on that.

A: We do have some archives, but they’re not what they should be.

M: You could get someone to do some, do all the work.

A: Good idea. I’m going to be talking to Geoffrey Platt, and I think he was a good figure to pull a lot of things together.

M: Sure. Where does he live now?

A: I think he lives in Connecticut, but he comes in to his firm,

M: I see. I would get a hold of Geoffrey as fast as I could. People disappear off the scene, Allan disappeared. Astisis dead, isn’t he?

A: I don’t know. I don’t know him.

M: Oh, he was the chairman of your committee

A: Oh, really?

M: Well, Dan Hopping could help you on it. Oh, maybe we should create a committee set up for marking the 20th anniversary of the law. Put me on the committee and we’ll work towards having Bob Wagner made a hero.

A: Out of his project, I’ve been thinking about the history. Because I had been reading all of the clippings. And it struck me that the 20th anniversary is coming up and no one was really going to do anything. So I spoke to Jean Norman, Laura Kent, and Baffleman, and we now have a hoopla for good press, but get substantive things to get from it. This is great.

M: Is that right?

A: Well the whole village. That Jefferson Market episode helped the village to coalesce for the designation of the village…

M: I do think that it helped a lot, but what I think we helped immediately, was the passage of the law. We got a lot of publicity with the Jefferson Market Courthouse. I don’t know what I did with all my clippings once I moved; I may have given them to the library. And Ruth may have kept stuff. If you read between the lines, you can see that I find it hard to communicate with Ruth. But that doesn’t mean that she isn’t a resource in all this history. Ruth is not a well woman. Someone should do it with her. You should help her. But I think that we really paved the way, along with Penn Station. That came a little later. Do you want to put down a couple dates?

A: Yeah, sure.

M: They’re going on the table. We started the Committee to Save the Clock at a Christmas Cocktail party in December 1959. It was right at the end of the 1950s.

A: That early? Wow.

M: That’s where Hal Burns and I, and some of our neighbors formed a committee. Along with the Rattners - Bob and Eleanor Rattner. We said ‘let’s do something about this building. It looks so dead with the clock standing still for almost two years. Why don’t we get the clock going while we try to figure out what to do with that building.’ We sent a message write to Mayor Wagner, like a little “what I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” letter. “What we want for Christmas in the Village is to get that clock started on the old Jefferson Courthouse.” So we sent him a wire and he communicated back some way. And we let this out to the press that we were forming a little committee to get the clock going. And then we got the Church of the Ascension minister to say “well we’ll make a contribution if you get a Committee going.” I was connected to that church during the time. And as we went into 1960, we cut a coupon in the newspaper, and asked for people to send it back with a dollar attached. And I just love to raise money by doing little things like that.

A: Oh yeah.

M: Yeah, because it means participation. So, we had an awful lot of people in a couple months that had a stake in it because they had mailed in a dollar. Of course it was really nice that a local paper would do that. And into 1961 we were collecting dollars, we had someone survey the clock and see what it needed. It was a big thing because the face goes 6 feet across. So we’d get someone, he was an antique dealer, to go up every week and wind up the clock. The old works were really so worn. Twenty minutes winding up the weights that were a part of the clock.

A: Oh wow.

M: The chains that went down into the tall tower, we would wind them up. And then a brinkman, is that what you call them?

A: Yes, I think so.

M: Then he would drop that and then move all hands on the clocks. All four faces at once. We were so far in over our depth; I didn’t even know how a clock worked. And so we found that we had to electrify the clock, and this guy who had done the business of winding it up all the time was so relieved.

A: I can imagine.

M: But we went on to raise around $4,000, and we had the works replaced with the electrified works. And we also had all four faces replaced because they were heavy glass and one of them and a big crack in it. We were afraid that it would fall on somebody. So, now I think we have in there plastic face. I’m not very satisfied with the way things are lighted. It’s so dim; we should keep it nice and bright. It amuses me, to think that to work on city property we had to take out insurance. And had to take responsibility for that tower, which is built quite separately from the building. You get into the building through the 10th St. side and go up a little medieval stone staircase.

A: I’ve never been there. That sounds wonderful.

M: Oh, yeah. You’d love it. But we rented, we leased from the city that tower for $1 a month. We controlled that big tower even though we paid $1 a month in rent. And then we were allowed to work on the property we had rented.

A: That gave you a foothold on the issue.

M: Yeah, and it means that the city was working with us. They were cooperating. They found a way for us to work on the building while we worked on getting funds for our library.

A: Were they genuinely interested?

M: Well, we got people interested. It was such a macabre kind of thing. And there were so many problems with the building anyways. There were pigeons in the building. There were dead pigeons in the building because they would get in and couldn’t find their way out. Poor building. There was no reason to keep it up, so it just kind of drifted downhill. That tower was there because it had been a fire lookout tower. There used to be one up in Harlem. There used to be one at the old Jefferson Market, a wood one. But when they tore down that tower and the little bitty jail, they city required them to build a fire lookout tower. So that’s why the tower was owned by the Fire Department and the rest of the building belonged to the court system. No one’s ever written it out.

A: Well you should.

M: So what? Write it out and then file it in a folder?

A: No, no, no, no.

M: Well I have a lot of ideas to write about, but if they’re not going to be published I’ll be damned if I’d write it. But it’s just a funny story. However, I think that saving that building in the 60s…well when was Penn Station?

A: 1963 - I think it started to comedown.

M: And when did the architects picket it?

A: Somewhere very early that year.

M: So ‘63 and we were going in ’60 and ’61. So, we have two events here that quite reached the city public and got them to where they would beg for a Landmark’s Law, or at least want it.

A: Well, it’s very interesting because in Wagner’s mind, the law got going because of James Felt. He was the City Planning Commission Chairman. He had been talking to people at the Municipal Arts Society and everyone had this concern, and they sent a letter to the mayor, who was very…

M: Who is ‘they’?

A: They, meaning Felt. And he gave an address at the Municipal Art Society and the topic was on landmarks. And then everyone sat down and just thought we were are all in the same place. And Felt was the one who had to move it.

M: He was a developer and a real estate man.

A: Yeah, but the fact was that Wagner was already attuned to it because of the Village experience.

M: Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. You know, I used to see Wagner in a lot of political situations. And we got to a point where he would say “Margot, don’t mention the Jefferson Market Library.” I was working for the city by then. Thanks to my political activity by then, I was on line if I wanted a job. And I wanted a job, and I was given a nice job doing public relations for the department of public events. Oh it was interesting. I did the publicity for the ticker tape parades. And at these events the mayor would be the top honcho. And he would say to me “Margot, no more about the Jefferson Market Courthouse.” There must be other people around who would mention it from time to time. Anyways, he certainly was sensitized to it. He was of a mind, and his son was to, to want to do some long-range, good things for the city, don’t you?

A: Oh, yeah. I think that his record- the time to rediscover the Wagner legacy is upon us.

M: Even at the time. He didn’t go around meeting his press. He didn’t go around, you know, going “How am I doing?” and all that, like Ed Koch.

A: Right, right. Well in the village, he was kind of saving the clock, which was then the big hook.

M: I have found that people are really interested in public clocks.

A: That’s true. I’ve noticed.

M: I’ve been involved in 3 or 4 as a matter of fact.

A: The sun clock, right?

M: The sun clock and there was a clock in St. Peter’s Church over in Chelsea. And I remember writing something into the CBS show about it. And people sent dollars over there.

A: So there was that Village fight on the Market and then…It was really your first splash onto the market of activism.

M: And it took over my life. Oh yeah, and it nearly ruined my marriage. Let me tell you. It was all run in my front room. With the constant phoning and the… with two teenage girls and this, my husband nearly went crazy with the phone calls. And he was not an activist kind of guy. He was quite an academic, you know? He liked to spend quiet nights in. So, I would be out at a meeting and the phone would be ringing.

A: Oh, boy.

M: I think there are women like me who like what they do and are effective, but it takes a toll on their families.

A: Well it takes such a demand on your time. Well what about the designation fight for the village itself?

M: I wasn’t into that so much. I think Ruth probably was
.
A: Looking back, what was the next battle on the horizon?

M: Well, I’ll tell you, I took that position after that whole Jefferson Market thing had come out successfully. And we had capital budget funds, and the building had not been auctioned because it was due to be auctioned off, and an apartment house was to be built on the site. And the West Side Savings Bank there, which is not Emigrant Savings Bank, had a proposal presented and a dinner to announce it at the 5th Avenue hotel. And they were very far along with this. And the fact that our clock committee had this guy Harold Burns, who was that time Housing Committee Commissioner, and then later became a judge. He helped stave off the auction. It was such brinksmanship. It would be such a shame if it was destroyed. And we had the help of the borough president, Ed Dudley. I don’t know if you remember Ed Dudley. He was the black man who is now a judge. He helped us. The point I wanted to make was that I felt that last minute, these grandstand kind of things were not the way to handle preservation. You have to look ahead and plan and identify what needed saving. And work toward it in an orderly way. Just what we’re doing to this iron front bores the hell out of me, really. That and this thing that Selma Ratner tried to do down in Union Square. It’s just too little too late. And if they’re lucky they may succeed, but it’s not worth all that human trauma. And we should be as businesslike about saving historical structures as we are about other things. So, I said to myself that I would never again be a main figure in a last minute brinksmanship kind of thing. It’s a deep conviction I have now. And I think we’re all much better about it.

A: I think oh, we are.

M: And the Landmarks Commission does identify and give priorities, the way it should be done. Then we were such amateurs. We ran on emotion and excitement.

A: It seemed necessary at that time, though.

M: Oh, maybe so. It was the only way we could have saved that building. And saving that building was key to the later Landmark’s Law. Which now makes it possible for us to be more orderly.

A: True.

M: But then you see what I did was to organize and help the Victorian society to emphasize 19th century buildings.

A: I heard that the American branch was formed over your kitchen table.

M: It was. That’s all true. Bandon always says that it was formed in Margot Gayle’s kitchen. But the truth is that we did run it out of my apartment.

A: When was this?

M: 1966. Some of us were in England, attending Attingham Park summer school. And at that summer school, Sir Nicholas Klesmer took us aside and told us that he decided that we should form a branch of the Victorian Society in the United States. They had had theirs going for about 10 years in England to stop the destruction of Victorian buildings. And he said that we should start one in America because if you don’t save your 19th century buildings, you don’t have so much. You don’t have gothic cathedrals or roman buildings. He tried to inspire us to start, there were 4 or 5 of us. And when we got back to the State we kept running into each other. And we would say “are you going to start a Victorian society?” We were all scared because it’s so much work and it would probably fall flat on its face. And then we just said “Let’s try it” and this was in June 1966.

A: So who were the five?

M: So the five were Stuart Johnson, he was then at the Metropolitan Museum, he’s now at the Modern Museum. There was Carolyn Carpinski who was at the Metropolitan Museum, I don’t know where she is now. Washington, I think. And Margot Gayle, who was then working with the City Planning Commission, public relations. And a girl named Clara Meyer who worked at Cooper Union and specialized in textiles. I know I’m leaving out somebody. And so we got together and we formed a Victorian Society and we said that maybe we’ll have 25 or 30 members. But my god it took off like wildfire. It was just an idea whose time had come and my god we went crazy. Just as a group of volunteers, we ran this thing out of my apartment, out of the front room. Only on the weekends, because I still worked for City Planning and had to do correspondence. We had a meeting every month with a lecture, urging people to join, to put up little exhibits. I remember at the National Trust I ran a little homemade exhibit. And I ran the National Trust in Philadelphia. This annual meeting. And everything was so homemade. But we did get the Victorian Society started. But later on March 18th, 1970, I founded another group, kind of on the same premise. Like plan ahead, work ahead. And that was the Friends of Cast Iron Architecture.

A: And that group. And that, in your mind, was planned to do Soho? That was in your mind as a steppingstone?

M: I wasn’t thinking quite so specifically. But I was thinking that these buildings are being mindlessly destroyed because people don’t recognize them or have any interest in them. And if we had an organization that did care and did identify them, then we could work towards historical preservation. And anyways, it’s not like you have to buy the buildings. You just have to take the step to identify them and make the people who do own the buildings understand and not let them get away. And maybe there are some governmental bodies that might protect them. And that was a great way to get the Soho district. We sure helped a lot.

A: Tell me about that.

M: Should I be specific. Anyways, the Landmarks Commission, particularly the chairman of the time, said that they would designate some part of Soho, Greene St. and Broome St.

A: Who was chairman of the Commission at the time?

M: Harmon Goldstone. And we wanted the whole area, and they talking about two streets. You can’t designate anything unless you have it heard publicly. And there was this staff member Mike Gold, he went on to Richmond, VA later. And he said, well I don’t know what he said but he made it apparent that the Chairman wanted this kind of minimal kind of designation, and there was a lot of interest in what is now the District 26 blocks designated anyways. And he said, let’s hear it anyway. And he took the key step so that it would be heard out. And Harmon may not have heard it later, if not. And so for the hearing they gave it those boundaries, from Canal to Houston. Crosby to West Broadway, and the hearing was held. And I’m sure that the idea was for these two streets. And so we held a campaign with the Soho Artists Association and our Friends of Cast Iron Architecture. With the Mayor’s office and the city councilmen, and with any key officials that could save the landmarks. “Why aren’t you doing this? Save the whole 26 square blocks.” And we had a petition campaign; I think I have an example of what we did. Instead of having a huge petition with hundred of names, we had small individual petitions. We had hundred of them printed, each one signed by a person, and then sent to Mayor Lindsay. And he kept getting these individual things to do this. And some of them we would go out to do ourselves. We would have bridge tables down in Soho. We would sit there on a Sunday and get people to sign these things. And we would take them back so that we could mail them, because we knew that they wouldn’t mail them. And we had a beautiful box. One of our members was very artistic and designed a beautiful leather kind of box. And we put them in here and mailed them down to City Hall. And they were, this is what I heard, I knew one of the people who worked in City Hall. So he took it down to the Mayor’s office and put it on his desk, and the mayor says, what is this beautiful thing? And it’s black with a great picture of an iron building in front of it, that shiny box. And he opened it and said “Oh, no! Petitions!”

A: Sounds very effective.

M: Oh yes. There’s no doubt that it was very effective. And I don’t know how it happened. But I think that John Lindsay must have said something to the Chairman like, “What are all these things I’m getting? Why aren’t you doing what these people want? What’s your problem?”
And I can hear Harmon saying, “We can’t do all that. Because we don’t have a big enough staff to do all that. A big addition to a district like that.”
And I can see John Lindsay saying “well, we’ll see that you get more staff, but the people really want this, and I don’t see why not.”

A: Yeah, “Stop those petitions!”

M: Yes. “Stop those petitions!” And, so, the upshot of it was that the larger area was designated. I don’t know what happened behind closed doors. Ask Jeff Platt. He has some background, inside stuff. No one would really talk to me at the time because I was a pressure person.

A: I’ll make note of that. Was there any real opposition to this movement besides the apparent reluctantness on the Commission’s part?

M: I don’t think so. I don’t know where it would come from. I would like to be with Jeff when he talks about this, I think that you should add Jeff to the thing for the 20th anniversary.

A: Yes, because he was so… He was the head of the interim Committee, and the Commission in those early days.

M: Yeah. Think about the hours that he must have spent in the…

A: The dedication necessary. Well, you must have spent a lot of hours as well.

M: Yes, I did. And so did everyone else.

A: Well, what do you think about Soho now? It’s changed so much over the years.

M: Well, you could say, being sentimental and say, “I liked it the old way, which almost everyone does.” And yet you cannot stop these processes from happening. You can’t go around beating your breast saying “Why did we let it happen this way?” I just don’t see what we could have done. It is an attractive area, and we made it so that when those buildings are fixed up they are wonderful spaces.

A: They are beautiful.

M: All those lovely iron columns inside that open up the ground floors. But in the old days they would have to have these thick brick partitions to hold up the walls, but now they have these nice slender columns. That’s what the cast iron did. And I just hope. You see, I think that it’s fine. I hope that it just doesn’t become a passing fancy because it isn’t in style anymore, I don’t want it to become a little slum. You see, that’s what happened with Old Town in Chicago. Old Town was from the 19th century, but there wasn’t much of that stuff left in Chicago. So they fixed it up and they kind of had a mini Soho. And then people got tired of it and the drug trade came along. And that thing just went straight downhill. We’d hate to see that happen to Soho. I think the fact that it is so central and close to transportation, we shouldn’t hand it over to the drug dealers. But that is something that we might want to bear in mind. Not against the artists, but in connection to the people.

--- cuts off ---

A: Test. One, two, three.

M: How are we doing?

A: We’re doing great. One thing I’m curious about is, how do you think…well you’ve really seen preservation from the beginnings of New York.

M: But you must remember that it was already going before I was in it. At the Municipal Art Society, you had those listings…

A: Right, during the late 50s. I’ve stumbled upon that stuff. I’ve seen the listings in our basement, and boxes of old files, which I’m now reading through. They’re from the 50s and 60s. Well, it’s not easy. Have people…have opinions changed publicly at least?

M: I certainly do because all kinds of men on the street want us to save the interesting old buildings. Even taxi drivers say “Hey, that’s a pretty building.” And “Did you notice that one?” Don’t you think that’s different?

A: That’s true. No, I think so. I’m wondering, has preservation changed? I know that it’s changed some, but has it changed the right way?

M: I want to tell you something Jim Vanderpol, remember him? Jim was a kind of a specimen-minded, kind of museum individual. He was also a preservationist. But the kind where if you saved one, you didn’t have to save anymore. And I think that we were lucky that he didn’t head our Commission too long, because we really don’t want that kind of position, clouding our decision. We didn’t believe that all long as you keep one of each kind of building, the rest could go.

A: So the Commission has always, in my mind, gone for the designation purely on the architecture. And it’s been somewhat weak on saving buildings that weren’t as pretty, but may have a lot of history.

M: Or that had a lot of importance in a local environment. It enriched the environment. That’s what kind of worries me. It’s when the community really wants the building, that’s the thing that makes it home. And makes it their community. And I’m thinking of some churches, for instance, in really poor communities. These churches are really important to the community and are really beautiful. But the Catholic Church says that it isn’t really a landmark, “We don’t want it to be a landmark. It isn’t really wonderful architecture.” And Bill Shopson comes in and testifies for the Catholic Church, that it really isn’t important architecture and they say it’s not historic, it’s just been there since 1893 or something like that. And the community, they adore that building, and a lot of them are Catholics and go through their lives there. And our law doesn’t really provide for the environmental approach too much. To me that’s one of the exciting thing; to try to save key buildings in more impoverished communities.

A: Have you ever had any disappointments during your time in preservation?

M: Well, I think I’m about to have one up at Pecan Hills.

A: Well, even if you do save that one from your living room, it still may be a disappointment.

M: Well you know that real estate and everything’s just so expensive that unless you’re a millionaire and can afford to but it you just have to sell. Well we just lost a building about a year ago, 142 Trump Pearl. I guess it’s been a year now, down on Hanover Square. It wasn’t really noticed that much. If you look in my book, it’s the first on pictured in my book. I am really sorry that that had to go. But they were on Broadway, on Thomas St., there were the Thomas Twins. An iron building on each corner. And Harmon was the chairman during that time, and he did not try to save these twin iron buildings. That seemed really sad to me. Around the corner from where Landmarks was, they used to be on Broadway, on I think Reade Street. He let another iron building come down unquestioningly. The Lange stores were terrible; all that time and money that could have gone into saving them. They were not safeguarded adequately. They could have been safeguarded adequately. So, that was a really sad thing. And even the second place where they put them was not safe for storage. Did you ever go look at it? I went to go look at it once.

A: No, was that under the bridge?

M: It was about 51st St, way west; a little space in between two tenements. That had a wall in front with some kind of cheap door with no padlock, and no roof, as I recall. In other words it used to be a little alleyway of some sort. And let’s say it was closed off at both ends, but you could see down into it. But they broke through the padlock. I don’t know why there couldn’t have been a better place than that. And anyways we lost those parts. And Jim Fitch could have had them recast and put up in the Seaport. Do you know that story?

A: No! I haven’t heard that.

M: I’ve got an article that tells the story; I’ll give it to you. Much better than telling the story now. In fact I’ll give you a couple copies because I think that my printer printed 2000 instead of 1000.

A: As long as he didn’t bill you for 2000 copies.

M: I can’t see why we have too many. But he did bill me for the proper amount. I always like to have a few copies of the original. I will give you a handful.

A: Oh, terrific. I’ll put them all in the information exchange.

M: Would you mind if I go check my mail?

A: Not a problem.

A: You’ve been great, but I can see that you have other things to do. But if I could just invite myself back at some other time? To pick your brain.

M: Oh, you’re not picking my brain; you’re just giving me a chance to put some of it on record.

A: Yeah, once we’re done you get to see this again. I have all the machinery at home and have all the transcriber stuff.

M: That sounds like a lot of work.

A: Well, the grants have been great. If I didn’t have that then it would be my own little project.

M: Where did you get the grant?

A: It was a little grant from the Education Facilities Laboratory. It’s NYSCA money. New York State Council for the Arts money. They have this policy of giving little grants for them to pursue their own work. Susan Tunic got one to pursue her terracotta work.

M: Oh, she did? That’s so nice.

A: Yeah, so they’re been really valuable and the grants are a lot smaller now, but I bought a computer, so I can type this up on a word processor. And I can do it over and over.

M: Did you get that with the grant?

A: Yeah, it’s great.

M: Could I do that?

A: Sure.

M: I’ll talk to you about that sometime.

Interview with Margot Gayle on Thursday April 26, 1984. Tony Wood.