Whitney North Seymour, Jr: an Oral History Interview

Whitney North Seymour, Jr: an Oral History Interview conducted by Anthony C. Wood

July 29, 2006

 

TAPE 1, SIDE 1

AW: There are three areas I'm particularly interested in, which, I'm sure, are already on your hit list. But the three things are your period of involvement in the late '50s in the Village, and the work you were doing for, I think, flying the Greenwich Village Association flag and the Housing Committee, and all that activity in the Village that was getting very stoked up, in the late '50s. Then, not disjointed from that, but in particular, the work -- your involvement -- in the early '60s, in any ties to the landmarks law. I know you were on the MAS board, and I think became president for a brief stint --

WNS: Yes.

AW: -- before electoral office took you to greater seats to sit on. Then there is a third thing I'm just curious about -- whether you have any papers from those periods. Also, I was curious whether your father had left papers anywhere, on his work, on his preservation stuff, and we can just deal with that at the end.

WNS: Well, why don't I deal with it at the beginning, while it's fresh in my mind.

AW: Okay.

WNS: I don't have an index to them, but all of his papers dealing with civic matters are in the manuscript division of the New York Public Library.

AW: Okay? They are. Okay. Great.

WNS: I wouldn't be surprised if somebody hasn't already made an index of them. My suggestion is to go tackle them, and I'll bet you'll find that there is a box of them in the landmark office.

AW: They probably put a "finding" together by now.

WNS: It was something he put a lot of work in.

AW: That's great. I didn't realize his papers were there. I must have overlooked that.

WNS: There's no reason why --

AW: That's where Bard's papers are, so I spend a lot of time over there. That's great. Terrific.

WNS: I was impressed by the Public Library's enterprise. Shortly after my father died, I got a phone call from a fellow at the manuscript division, and his first statement was, "Don't throw them out. If you don't have any other commitment on what to do with your father's papers, which are on essentially civic matters, we'd like to have them." So that made our job in cleaning out the apartment a lot simpler, and also the files here at the office. They were boxed up and delivered over there, quite a hunk of them.

AW: That's exciting, because I know he was not only, of course, that whole MAS thing of his -- I'm looking more at the '50s and '60s -- but then I realized he was the chair of the Fine Arts Federation, in that period when the law was actually passed, in '65, and I actually did stumble on some minutes of the Fine Arts Federation meetings, in the early '60s, which were actually quite informative.

WNS: The other project he took on, that you may or may not have run across, was he was the godfather of the Community Trust Architectural Markers program.

AW: I've seen the book, which is great. Actually, I went to the New York Community Trust, and they actually had nice binders of all the original photos, but they didn't have any correspondence that would have explained more the thinking behind it. So maybe there will be some more on that in the papers at the New York Public. Because I did know he was involved with the New York Community Trust, and involved at MAS, and was able to be the bridge person behind the idea of finding the money.

WNS: But he dreamed up the idea of putting the markers on, and the director -- I think his name was Field -- used to josh with him. He said, Your patronage is all those markers. That was his condition of serving as a trustee over there."

AW: Oh. That was a good payment.

WNS: They've been very useful. Of course, the most important thing was the discovery that if they cast them in aluminum, they wouldn't be stolen for scrap. Because when they first went up, they were ripped off in very short spans of time by --

AW: -- enterprising New Yorkers.

WNS: Yes. Fellows who needed money for drugs, I think, primarily.

AW: Did he really get a lot of personal satisfaction out of seeing that grow?

WNS: Oh, yes. I don't know what triggered him originally, but he always was outspoken on the need for historic preservation. He got me into some projects as a result of that (which I'll tell you about chronologically). From childhood, he used to take me by the hand, walk us around the Village and down to the Lower East Side and South Street, which is how I got my first interest in the South Street Seaport Museum. Grace Church, and he raised the money to save the "Renway" school buildings "on the other side." So he really was interested in landmark preservation, through his entire adult life. Actually, when I think of it now, when he was in college, at the University of Wisconsin, he had cards printed up that described himself as an archaeologist. He actually went out, I'm sorry to say, and did some excavation of Indians. I remember, as a small boy, a cardboard box of Indian arrowheads, which, of course, would have been much better off if left in situ. [Interruption]
My daughter, Gabrielle, when she was at Princeton, did her senior paper on problems of conglomerate publishers freezing out new writers, and one of the people she interviewed was Louis Auchincloss. After she left, she discovered the recording machine had not picked it up at all. She called me in real distress, I called Louis, and I've never ceased being grateful to him for this -- which I consider to be the most Christian act one could think of in terms of kindness. He said, "All right. Send her back."

AW: Oh, isn't that sweet? One lives in fear of that, in this line of work.

WNS: All right. Let me try to address this theme chronologically. Then, if I wander too much, pull me back, and if I don't cover what you want, holler.
I think it's probably useful to know that I've always lived in a row house, and my wife has always lived in a row house, in Manhattan, both of us. So row houses and residential New York is what we know, eat, and sleep. Katrina was born in New York. Her parents had a house (at least when I was courting her) on 94th Street. I was not technically born in New York. My grandfather was a doctor in West Virginia, who wouldn't trust New York doctors, and ordered my mother down to West Virginia so he could deliver me. So I was delivered by my maternal grandfather, who then pronounced me acceptable, and sent me back to New York at the age of two weeks, and I've been here ever since.

AW: But robbed you of a New York birth certificate.

WNS: Yes. And I have to make explanations all the time, for why I was born in the hills.
When I was born, my parents lived somewhere up near City College, where my father was teaching while going to Columbia Law School. Then when he graduated, he got a job downtown and they bought a house at 170 Sullivan Street, in the Sullivan-MacDougal Gardens complex. We lived there -- I lived there until I left in 1951, to get married. I obviously went away to college and the army and so on. But that was the family abode, and they continued to live there until what we called "the flood," when a water main burst in front of the house and flooded not only the cellar, but also the basement up to the sidewalk level, which was about four feet deep, and left solid silt in the basement. It had to be scooped out before they could get the whole family papers and that sort of thing. But with that experience, they then decided they would live on a higher floor, and they went to 45th Avenue, and lived on the eighth floor there.
So living in a row house was the culture that both of us knew. When we were first married, in 1951, we had a second-floor apartment, at 263 West 11th Street, which is between West 4th And Bleecker Street. It was the apartment where Thomas Wolfe wrote Look Homeward, Angel, we discovered later, and our older daughter boasts that she was conceived in the room where Thomas Wolfe wrote Look Homeward Angel. Of course, there was a time, in the 1950s, when New York -- the Village -- had a lot of extraordinary, creative things going on.
By the way, have you seen the documentary film called Ballad of Greenwich Village?

AW: No.

WNS: We saw it at the Museum of Modern Art last December, done by a young woman whose name will come to me, who lives in the Village, and raised money just hand-to-mouth, and did segments as she went along. But she's got wonderful interviews with Norman Mailer, and Edward Albee, and Maya Angelou, and so on, and terrific footage of the scenes in the Village -- the Stonewall Inn confrontation, and the peace singers and protesters in Washington Square Park. It's just grand. It's a vital picture of New York in the '50s and '60s. The young lady is not able to sell them at a cheap rate, but for $40 you can buy a DVD of it, and look at it at home. At least for context it might be useful for the archives.

AW: Absolutely.

WNS: If you want her name, I've got it.

AW: I'm sure I can Google it, and it will pop right out.

WNS: The Ballad of Greenwich Village.
Well, in any case, we moved in in 1951 and set up housekeeping, learning how to get along with each other, learning the Village, and getting to see young friends. Then I got appointed as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the southern district of New York, and that was from '53 to '56. During a part of that time I worked a little bit too hard, and I came down with TB. Katrina and I went up to Saranac Lake and I cured, and had a most wonderful year suddenly learning about witch-hobble and hermit thrushes -- things you don't have in the Village. I became a half-baked conservationist out of that experience. We came back to the Village in 1950 -- let me get those years right. We went up there in '54, came back in '55, worked another year in the US Attorney's office, and then the first landmark preservation activity began, but not in the context of New York City. However, it's not irrelevant.
Now, a quick philosophical aside. I have tremendous faith in the difference a few people can make. Indeed, I believe strongly that one person came make a big difference. It's just a matter of commitment, getting your eye on the ball, and figuring out how to do it. What I'm going to recount to you is essentially the work done by one, two, three, four, or five people, contributing to the momentum of the preservation movement.
In January of 1957, the New York State Bar Association had its annual meeting in New York, and at the final dinner my father was sitting on the dais next to the incoming president, and he said, "I've got a great idea for you. Why don't you form a Committee for the Preservation of Historic Courthouses, and I've got a candidate to be chairman of that committee -- my son, Whitney." They both had had a couple of drinks, I'm sure, and that seemed like a very good idea. Lo and behold, that sprang into being, and that summer -- which was my first summer out of the US Attorney's office; no second summer, our first child had been born -- second summer -- we took a painting trip around New York State -- spent a month at it -- with a child, and a combination crib and playpen -- staying in motels, at county seats, where we had identified pre-1900 courthouses. I painted a total of eighteen upstate courthouses, and Katrina painted alongside, sometimes doing the county clerk's office or other buildings. We then later on exhibited (and it still continues to happen) some of those courthouses. There was an exhibition of them at the New York World's Fair, at the New York State pavilion. We organized a number of ceremonies at upstate courthouses to honor the Board of Supervisors, for taking such good care of the courthouse. One of them in particular I remember was at Schoharie, New York, where the supervisors originally wanted (because of pressure from the clerks) to tear the old building down and put up a new one, that would look like a post office. As a result of these efforts, and recognition, and coverage in the local press, all of a sudden the ethics began to change, and pretty soon people began to say, "Yes, that's a grand landmark we have there." And I don't think, since that time, a 19th-century courthouse has been destroyed in New York State.

AW: Do you still have the collection of paintings?

WNS: Yes, most of them. They were scattered, from time to time. The Dean of Yale Law School asked me for half a dozen of them, so they went up into classrooms up there, then got walked off into somebody's apartment. There's only one left up there. Some were up in the state capitol. When I was in the state senate they asked me to lend them some. But I have, certainly, a half dozen of them, and I think I have photographs of most of them.

AW: That would be a great documentary piece of evidence.

WNS: Well, it also shows how you can combine your interest and activities. I'd become an amateur painter during World War II, when I was out in the Pacific, and I traded a case of beer to a Navy dentist who was stationed on the same atoll with me. His wife had sent him a paint set, so I started painting and he started drinking. [Laughter]

AW: You got the better part of the deal, I imagine.

WNS: In 1950, when I graduated from law school, I spent my first summer abroad, in France, painting. One of the paintings I did that summer, the following year won the silver medal at a competition at the National Academy of Design, sponsored by ArtNews magazine, and was published in Life Magazine, in full color, with the title, "Amateur Big League." So I've gotten a taste of the fun of painting -- en plein air painting, as they call it.

AW: Do you still paint?

WNS: Yes, I still do. Not that seriously, but whenever we go on vacation I carry a watercolor block and watercolors. Just back this June we were in Scotland and England, and I found time (and dry enough days) to do a half a dozen of them. That's a wonderful way to make you sit down and look at things. You've got to sit there, probably for an hour at the minimum.
In any case, that was not just painting these courthouses but getting to see these courthouses, getting to talk about these courthouses and having exhibitions, so the people began to develop some awareness -- then organizing ceremonies in -- I think we may have done half a dozen courthouses where they were threatened by the supervisors, under pressure from the county clerk (who was an elected, local politician), to get rid of the "old" thing, because the women were complaining that the air-conditioning wasn't good enough, and that sort of thing. Of course, those ceremonies involved the presiding judge, and the elected district attorney, and the president of the New York State Bar Association. We also got plaques and presented them to them, "in recognition." The result was, without question, changing their outlook about the principal building in most of these county seats.

AW: And the umbrella entity over the celebrations was this Committee of the Bar Association, that kind of gave it the oomph?

WNS: Yes. The New York State Bar Association Committee for the Preservation of Historic Courthouses, invented by my father and the incoming president of the New York State Bar Association, over a drink -- instead of listening to speeches, I suppose, at the dinner. [Laughter]
In any case, that was the first real inkling that it didn't take a lot to get people to raise their awareness that this was something special, and wasn't just an old thing to be shed. That life experience, I think, began to add to the things.
After that summer of painting, I came back to New York. I was working as an associate here, quite hard, but we'd also been instructed by our wonderful boss at the US Attorney's office that when we left, we young men and women should get involved in politics; that if people with your opportunities didn't do it, it would become a dirty business, and you have an obligation to do it.
So I went to the local Republican clubhouse, which was in great need of young volunteers, and Katrina and I became election-district captains on 13th Street -- a block of rowhouses -- got out the vote, and went and met all the voters, and the next thing I knew I was invited to run for the New York State Assembly.

AW: Which year is this:

WNS: This is now 1958. It may sound like a glorious opportunity, but the fact is, it was a sure loser. The assemblyman was Bill Passannate, who was the protégée of Carmine de Sapio, whose district it was, and whose ethnic background coincided with a lot of the voters. Bill was a very nice guy, so it was hard to get the juices flowing "to throw the bum out."
Still, we had a wonderful time running. It's something I advocate now, to young lawyers, whenever I can -- to go out and run for an office that you can't win, but where you can show your stuff, because people remember. Other opportunities flow from that, and I've taken the position that every good public job I've had came as the result of losing an election. Because the opportunity came then, and people are saying, "Well, who doesn't have a job."

AW: "He's smart, capable, and unemployed at the moment." Yes.

WNS: Smartness and capability aren't necessarily the criteria for office.

AW: I'm just curious about that race. Did that allow you to get any kind of inner sense, also, of what was going on with De Sapio, and the whole beginning of the reform movement?

WNS: Oh, sure. Sure. The reform movement -- the Village independent Democrats were just in their early stages -- Carol Greitzer and --

WNS: Dan Wolfe and his sponsor (I've forgotten his name now, a psychologist with a red beard). They started the Village Voice during this period. It became a voice for reform, and [ ? ] -- writing. It was a wonderfully vital time, also part of that time period that's in that Ballad of Greenwich Village, although it doesn't touch on our --
But now I had the background of preserving historic courthouses, and I knew a little something about how to do it, and I had my eye out for it. Here was this beautiful, empty courthouse, sitting at the corner of 10th Street and 6th avenue, right in the heart of my district (the district in which I was running), two blocks below it was, I think it was called, the Greenwich Savings Bank (it was Something Savings Bank), and in their window was a big blow-up of an artist's rendering of the new apartment house to replace this courthouse, which was on the city surplus property list to be sold and demolished. So here was an issue I wasn't going to get much competitive on, and I had as a campaign issue preserving the quality of Greenwich Village. I actually made campaign speeches across the street, looking up at this courthouse, and said that should be used for public purposes, not destroyed. One of my proposals was that it become a branch of the New York Public Library. At the time, the only branch that served the Village was the Hudson Park branch, over on Hudson Street, I think one block north of Houston, and the other the Jackson Square branch, at 13th Street and 7th Avenue. If you lived in the central Village, you had no library, so it made a fair amount of sense.
After the election, I remembered that I had proposed making that a library branch, and realized that a very close friend of my father's, "Besuel" M. Webster -- a wonderful man, a lawyer, an eating buddy of my father's and one of his successors as president of the City Bar Association -- was a trustee of the New York Public Library. So I wrote him a letter and said, "Bes, would you talk to whoever you need to talk to about the idea of taking over the courthouse as a branch library?" He turned the letter over to, I think his first name was, Wendall, the last name was Corey, the director of the library then. He wrote back and essentially said, "A preposterous idea!," and, typically, listed all the reasons why it wouldn't work. Then, of course, in 1961, the library took it over.

AW: As part of that library story -- there are those who have felt that the success -- and the whole effort around the Jackson [ ? ] -- Courthouse Library, and Wagner's decision to, basically say, during his 1961 primary, that if re-elected, he was behind [ ? ] -- do you think that it really did carry weight as a political issue, ultimately? Because of Wagner, or -- ?

WNS: Oh, yes. Well, as you'll recall, as people began to discuss the idea, the idea of getting the clock tower came along, and a committee was formed, which I was a member of but not a leader of, by Margo and Ruth Wittenberg. I remember meeting in her apartment. She was a pretty tough dame --

AW: [Unclear]

WNS: -- and how lucky you are to have an interview with her.
In any case, they organized this committee, and started getting the light going. By then I was off to another thing, but I served as a member of the committee, and I have no doubt at all that they, particularly, representing the reformed Democrats, when Wagner was in a primary and wanted their support, he would promise them anything. So that was very smart.

AW: It's very interesting. I've been trying to better understand the political overlay, understanding that when Wagner decided it was time to break with De Sapio, and then the primary went against the party, it was in this time period when both the courthouse was an issue and also the appointment of that first mayoral committee for the landmarks. It was appointed the same summer, before the primary -- not that, I don't imagine, anyone thought that would get tons of votes, but clearly it was something.

AW: Every vote counts.

WNS: No, I have no doubt that political considerations played a part in a lot of the useful decisions in New York.

AW: Let me ask you a quick question. At that time period, in the Village -- it was spread over a number of years, but I know in the spring of '58 it got hot again -- the whole Washington Square traffic battle, and [ ? ] -- putting that committee together. Were you a member of that, too?

WNS: Oh, yes. I was a member of that committee, too. But it had already started before I became a candidate, and one of the members of the committee (I've forgotten who at this point) said, "Seymour, this is an issue you've got to get involved in, and you've got to attend," and I attended every one of their meetings. They made a deal with De Sapio --

AW: Yes, that was part of their strategy.

WNS: -- and part of that deal was that they would support Bill Passannate in my race. I was taken to lunch at Luchows by three of the people who were involved in that committee --

AW: -- by Ray Rubinow, or --

WNS: No, but Ray was involved. I did other things with Ray. No, one was my law school classmate, Norman Redlich, who became dean of the NYU Law School; one was Stanley Tankel, the architect, who, unfortunately, died shortly thereafter; and the third was the wife of a lawyer who lived on 10th Street. I've forgotten her name, but a very attractive person. They all said, "Now, Seymour, we know you've done all this work, and we know Passannate hasn't shown his goddamn head around here. But we've got to win this fight, so we're going to support him, we're not going to support you, and we want you to understand that it's all friendly, but it's politics." I remember.

AW: Would the dynamics have been that normally the reformers in the Democratic party would have voted Republican, because Passannate was the machine candidate?

WNS: Oh, I doubt it, but who knows? In any case, I don't think they would have, essentially, knocked me --

AW: They wouldn't have backed him.

WNS: -- or they would not have lied about it. But I remember their saying, "Why, I remember Bill Passannate was the first one who ever said 'We've got to oppose this plan!'," and so forth -- which was all total hogwash. I remember, at that point, learning a lesson; that in politics, people don't always tell the truth. I also learned to be careful who you go to bed with, because you may get up with fleas.
So politics played a big part in that issue, but the important thing is that we won the battle, and it was probably useful for them to do it that way.

AW: Since you were on the scene there, do you have any particular memory -- when I think of some of the names that have popped up in my research as key Village players for different issues -- Ray pops up (particularly around that one issue); Stanley Tankel pops up multiple times; and then, behind the scenes and popping up with some frequency, is Weinberg, Robert Weinberg. I'm just curious if you have any memories of --

WNS: Oh, yes. I have recollections of all of them. Weinberg, I remember, didn't have a weekend place, so one of his pet peeves was going around bad-mouthing people who went away for the weekend!

AW: He apparently had quite a sour personality.

WNS: Yes, he sure did, and he could express it. But still, a very useful citizen. Stanley was a wonderful man of vision and heart. His widow, Claire, lives right around the corner.

AW: I know Claire.

WNS: How sad for her -- how sad for all of us -- he got trichinosis from eating uncooked bear meat.

AW: Good lord! I knew he died young and kind of unexpectedly, but I never heard that.

WNS: Well, trichinosis disables you effectively, and then you catch any disease that's walking through the halls. He was in the hospital and picked up, I think, from whatever he died from. But that was too bad. But I also have a vision of going down Bank Street and there was Stanley Tankel holding a "Vote for Bill Passannate" poster as I walked by. The only times I'd seen Stanley before that was at the meetings of this committee, and Passannate was never there.

AW: Well, that's politics. That's politics, indeed.

WNS: So, as I say, I didn't know all of them. I thought very well of them as useful people, and examples of how just a tiny handful of people can make the difference. You remember Margaret Mead's observation?

AW: Right. Particularly in the Village, it sounds like.

WNS: Now, let's pick up on the chronology. In the spring of 1959, now that I have gotten some visibility running for office -- visibility, I'm talking about, for the need for the preservation of the courthouse and general quality of the Village, Judge Molloy, I think, a retired city magistrate who lived on 11th Street, asked me to become active in the Greenwich Village Association. He made me chairman of the art committee, because, he said, he liked the white furniture we had in our back yard, when he looked out his window. From there I went on to become chairman of the housing committee. I was trying to check my recollection of some of those events and dates, and went on the Times website (I bet you've long since done this), but --

AW: I've got some articles, but I'd love to --

WNS: Let me just give you the ones I've printed out.

AW: Absolutely. I know the committee gave some tours that got coverage.

WNS: The thing that is really striking is how was it possible that the New York Times would give this kind of coverage to a local community committee of three or four people? What was happening that made that newsworthy? Of course, part of it was that some editor at the New York Times thought it was important -- that preservation in the city was an important thing -- so he assigned reporters to it, and damn good ones who would come down and cover these sorts of things.

AW: Do you have any more thoughts on that? Because I know the John Oakes/Ada Louise Huxtable connection vis-à-vis the editorial board support editorials was so helpful for the preservation movement, starting in the early '60s. Would you have any idea who it was, as a news editor, who was saying, "Hey, this is something that needs to be covered?"

WNS: I'm not sure it was somebody with a cause. I think it was probably somebody on the city desk --

AW: -- who just kind of picked up the vibes.

WNS: -- who probably lived in the city, and responded to it. But where we got this coverage -- I would write out the one-page press release, from a Greenwich Village housing committee -- can you imagine that?! The Greenwich Village Housing Committee -- and say, "We're going to have a fix-up/paint-up day on Saturday the such-and-such, on Leroy Street, and down would come a fancy reporter who would write an article about it, and it would get eight inches.
Here are some I just identified -- stories that were relevant, but not things that had much copy (it's only 195 words so I didn't bother to spend the $1.95), but I'm sure you have that one.

AW: Yes.

WNS: And this one is about our fix-up/paint-up day. This is the one you just referred to, about the open-house.

AW: I don't know that I've seen the one, "What do Village Painters Paint? Nudes?" I would have remembered that. I don't think I've seen that one.

WNS: I didn't print these out, but they're part of the chronology.
So, in any event --

AW: Let me ask you specifically, because it's interesting -- the Housing Committee -- it was about saving the buildings by sprucing them up and showing that they weren't -- was there a preservation agenda behind this? Or it was really housing?

WNS: No, it was the quality of the Village and Village life, and the rights of Village residents who, we, in the Greenwich Village Association, had as our constituents. So it was a combination of trying to encourage landlords to keep the quality of their buildings up, so they wouldn't become targets for purchase and demolition, at the same time being involved with some of the larger issues about where do you put new housing? And we talked about doing over West Hudson Street, which Jane Jacobs became involved in. I don't think Jane was active in the Greenwich Village Association. She was very active at this time, and I got to know her quite well. I remember inviting them to a Christmas party at our house, and their coming over and selling wreathes to all our other guests, to raise funds for some cause! -- without saying, "Would you mind -- ?"
So we got some visibility for this, and people began to talk about the fact that, yes, the Village, and the row houses, and even the new and old [?] tenements had qualities to them that should be preserved. I think that helped set the stage for people getting ready for the notion of a landmark law.

AW: Were you involved at all, generally in this same period or slightly a little later -- '59 -- in the whole discussion of the new city zoning resolution that became an issue?

WNS: Not in the discussion. Actually, there were two major zoning changes during this period. One, I remember actually going down and buying a set of maps of what they were going to do.

AW: Because, actually, the Village was involved in a very interesting way, too, in this general period. One is that James Felt was doing the whole zoning resolution, and in the process, the future vision of zoning they had for the Village was very sympathetic; the Village had worked for it, and that was great. But then the Village realized that -- Felt had announced, to lessen the opposition, that there would be a year grandfather period, where the existing zoning would happen. Then the Village (credited to Weinberg) realized that it was going to lose hundreds of buildings in this year grace period, so the Village went in and brilliantly amended the old zoning resolution -- that was about to be replaced, but would be in effect during the grace period -- and basically amended it to be the new zoning, by putting in the old zoning. I didn't know if you --

WNS: No.

AW: Okay. Just curious. Because that was an interesting little --

WNS: Your mentioning his name suddenly brings back an incident in 1959 -- I told you that my experience was that every time I lost a race, I got a good appointment -- I was appointed counsel to the New York State Temporary Committee On the Government Operations of the City of New York. I was the investigative arm for that.

AW: Did somebody refer to that as "the Little Hoover Commission?"

WNS: Yes.

AW: Okay. So that's the same thing. I saw that in an article that you were mentioned in.

WNS: Yes. We had a series of public hearings about things not operating correctly in the city, and we came across something that involved James Felt that was murky. It might have involved his brother, I think, who was a developer.

AW: Irving Felt.

WNS: Yes -- and we planned to have a public hearing on the subject. Felt called me and asked if he could come see me, and he did.

AW: James Felt called you.

WNS: Yes. He came to see me in our official offices, and he said, "I don't care about myself, but I care about this zoning law, that I have put all my heart and soul in for several years. If you really destroy my credibility, you'll destroy all that work." So we never had the hearing.

AW: Huh. Well, this is really interesting, but I want to jump ahead for a moment, chronologically, because you mentioned Felt. One of the unanswered questions around this little later period of Penn Station is, of course, this whole situation -- we've got James Felt, chair of the City Planning Commission, the person in the administration who has brought in the preservation agenda, has ushered it along, picked Platt and Goldstone -- working with them, hand-in-glove, to move this through the city government, at the same time that his brother is -- Madison Square Garden-tearing down Penn Station is happening -- the movement for the landmarks law is always just a little bit behind the process to move the Madison Square Garden project along. Both Goldstone and Platt, in my interviews with them -- the portrait they painted of Felt, James Felt, and the portrait of Felt, generally, in the newspaper, was of a guy who, as a young man, had wanted to be a rabbi, had the highest personal ethical values, and it was inconceivable in their mind that there was anything inappropriate going on, even though it was Felt's brother.
Now those of us raised in the post-Watergate period are a generally a little more cynical. To me it's always been an interesting question; and since you actually had some dealings with James Felt, do you have any thoughts on any of that?

WNS: I certainly would never believe that he would have done anything that you and I would consider corrupt. What subconsciously happens, who knows? But I always had a very high opinion of him, and still do, to this day.

AW: My personal take on it is that he was incorruptible -- which doesn't necessarily conflict, in my mind, with the notion that his values, sense of values of what was best for the city -- and, assuming he was truly a friend of preservation -- what was best --

TAPE 1, SIDE 2

AW: So, in essence, I don't, myself, see any corruption-collusion; I actually see some values that might have made him strategically want to make sure that Landmarks didn't crash up against Penn Station, when it would have been decimated by it politically.
Anyway, thanks for mentioning the Felt connection.

WNS: And I would be quite sure that if he did have to make a policy decision one way or the other, he would have rationalized that this was the best course for the city. All right.

AW: So we're into the late '50s, I think.

WNS: Yes. Now I've finished my tour as counsel of this commission. It's now 1962 or thereabouts.

AW: Now during that period did you necessarily have to put all your energy into your work with the housing group?

WNS: Yes. These were twelve-, fourteen-hour days.

AW: Yes, I would imagine.

WNS: You can't do the other things. But when I would that up, was suddenly back at home and had some time, somebody put the arm on me to become involved in the Parks Association of New York City, and pretty soon I was president of the Park Association of New York City, doing a lot of their work. A couple of their projects -- I think it was just as a member of the board that I worked with Ray Rubinow to save Madison Square Park.

AW: Was this against putting in the underground parking garage?

WNS: Yes, I'm sure it was. And our committee was about three of us. But I did a lot of research on the history of Madison Square and Grammercy Park, and we published a newsletter under the banner of the Park Association of New York (this was before we merged), and it was entirely dedicated to why Madison Square was important and what its glorious history was, with photographs. We used that as one of the public opinion pieces.

AW: I stumbled onto a few references to that issue. Help me understand. Did that issue become of citywide attention?

WNS: No. The battle was won early --

AW: -- so you were able to cut it off at the pass, so to speak.

WNS: I think -- was that a Moses plan? In any case, whoever was behind it stumbled fairly early on, so it never became --

AW: Also, if my memory's correct, I think the park commissioner at that time, Newbold Morris, actually came out against it also, at some point.

WNS: Yes.

AW: So that must have helped too, as opposed to who was on the other side.

WNS: For what it's worth -- two projects of the Park Association during this period, in the very early '60s, that were useful in preservation terms, were, one, we got a $15,000 grant from the J.M. Kaplan Fund. I had lunch with Ray Rubinow at the Player's Club, and he said, "The Kaplans would like to do something in parks," and I said, "Ray, I've got a project for you. It'll cost them $15,000." He said, "I'll get it for you." It was to take -- I can't remember now how -- Oh, I know how we got it. We sponsored an exhibit at the AIA, down on 39th or 40th Street --

AW: Was it in the same building where the Architectural League was, on the street that was just south of the Public Library, there? The old Wilkie building?

WNS: No, this was before that. This was before that -- before they tore the building down that was over on 39th, I think it was, just west of Park Avenue, next to the old Princeton Club. We sponsored an exhibit on small urban spaces, that Bob Zion had put together. He was a landscape architect, a very talented guy. He later faded away. But he was the one who came up with the idea of using running water in small parks, and the key design in this exhibit was the idea of building a wall at the end of the lot with "stream" stones set in cement, and then having water run over it.

AW: Paley Park, right?

WNS: Bingo. But Paley Park grew out of that exhibit. Paley, or his advisors, saw the exhibit and said, "We'll take it." So it went right in up there. We then found three vacant lots up on 128th Street between 5th Avenue and -- I've forgotten, now, the name of the next one over -- and we built three vest-pocket parks there. One was an urban, adult sitting park, which Bob Zion designed for us -- and it's still there! Now this goes back to the early '60s -- forty-four years ago. I went by it the other day. The second was a park in the middle of the block for small kids, which had a rowboat set in sand and built so they could climb on it, and a venture playground, which hadn't existed in the city yet. The third was a teenage park, over at the west end of the block, which was adjacent to the Baptist church. It had a basketball court, and places for teenagers to hang out and have parties and record hops and that sort of thing. We had a bunch of volunteers, got some students from Pratt to design murals, and paint and build. The money came from Kaplan, $5,000 for each park.

AW: Did he also help fund the exhibit? Or was that a separate thing?

WNS: No, no. That was separate.

AW: The $50,000 that Ray produced was for these three parks.

WNS: No, $15,000.

AW: Fifteen-thousand, right. You got a lot of mileage out of $15,000.

WNS: Well, it was all [ ? ] -- went into materials. One of the human-interest aspects of that experience was that, in order to court the Kaplans, and get them to think this was a good idea, we arranged for them to go up and see these vacant lots. We picked a day and a time (it was noontime), and Katrina packed a wine-and-cheese-and-French-bread picnic, to go stop in the "Ramble" in Central Park and have a picnic first, then go up and go through these parks.
Well, it rained. So we had the picnic in the back of this chauffer-driven limousine, and to this day Katrina believes that it was because the Kaplans felt so sorry for her, that they agreed to put up the money!

AW: Was that J.M. who was in the car?

WNS: And his wife.

AW: Oh. And Alice.

WNS: Alice. Right. They were really wonderful, salts-of-the-earth, who enjoyed putting on airs and were kind of fun to see doing it. It was almost like they were playing house. But good folks; good hear. In any case, Ray gave them style.
That was one thing we did. Out of that we published a book called Small Urban Spaces, published by NYU Washington Square Press. That was later translated into Japanese, and became a basic urban-landscape design work in Japan.

AW: Was Holly White involved in any of this?

WNS: No.

AW: Okay. I know he became so associated with social [ ? ] -- for public spaces.

WNS: And he was also working for Nelson Rockefeller.

AW: Yes. He was in a different spot. Okay.

WNS: But a fellow who did grab onto it was Robert Kennedy, when he was running for the Senate. He made a tour of Harlem, and "all the great things we're doing in New York, to help improve the life of the neighborhood." Then he picked up this second idea of ours. We did a clean-up/paint-up/fix-up day, like the one we did in Greenwich Village. Now the Park Association did it in Bed Stuy, before any projects had gone in there. It was just a community. We went over there, we met with the leaders of several block associations, and got them to volunteer that they would get their association members to cooperate. We got a little funding, and had a rental truck that came over with window boxes filled with red geraniums and Boston ivy. We sold them for $1.00 (so the property owners would have a stake in it), provided the property owners cleaned up their front area ways, and painted the stoops and railings. Then they could buy them for a dollar. We did have three blocks going there, and almost every house ended up, at the end of the day, with these wonderful, bright-red window boxes, and a tremendous new sense of civic accomplishment.
So all these things were looking toward preserving the quality of city life, making it more acceptable, and adding to the amenities. Brendan Gill was a fellow member of the board of the Parks Association. I don't know who it was that got me on the Park Society board. My father had been on the board.

AW: Yes, he had been president.

WNS: At that time, another public education initiative came out of the Seymour household, and that was walking tours. Until that time, nobody had ever done a walking tour of Greenwich Village. The American Bar Association was coming into New York, and the Women's Activities Committee (imagine a time when they had women's activities), headed up by -- what's her name? Mrs. Harold Medina, Jr. (I can't remember her first name; it will come to me), who put the arm on Katrina, as a young wife, to do an event in Greenwich Village. So Katrina and I put together a walking tour of Greenwich Village, which included having lunch at Enrico Paglieri's (it used to be on 11th Street, it's now gone), with a wonderful ground-floor and basement in a brownstone, wit an atrium, I think. Having invested that much time into the walking tour (I believe the year was 1964), having put that much time into the walking tour, we decided, "You know, this is a good idea. Why don't we publish it?" So we took the text, which Katrina actually [ ? ] -- , and then drew a map. Katrina drew illustrations for the map, and we had it printed up this way. We went up to Nantucket, I think, that summer, and on the boat to Nantucket they sold a sheet this side with a cover, and inside a map was folded. So using that as a prototype, we did the same thing here, and we published the first walking tour of Greenwich Village. And I believe the first ever, the Villager published a book that might have been structured as a walking tour, but this was the first ever walking tour. I think so.
We enjoyed it so much, and it was such a wonderful activity for our two children, who were now beginning to be six and eight, in that age range. So on the weekends we would go out, and using the WPA Guide, and a couple other sources but that was the principal, we developed walks, first of all in Greenwich Village; then of downtown Manhattan; then, because of the threat to Madison Square, Madison Square and Grammercy Park area; and then Brooklyn Heights. We ultimately published four of these walking-tour maps.

AW: Were they published under the Parks Association?

WNS: No, no. Published by the Seymours, 290 West 4th Street.
Then we got fancier and fancier, and actually did one with a colored cover, and actually persuaded a fellow who distributes to newsstands to put them in the newsstands and sell them -- and, of course, they didn't sell a goddamn one, so they came back. But they did end up being a steady seller at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So, at least, we had that [ ? ] -- I've got samples of them. I no longer have the Brooklyn Heights and Madison Square. They never got this kind of cover; they had a black-and-white cover. But here are two of Greenwich Village, and two of downtown New York. You'll see the copyright dates down here. Those are the different years in which we tinkered with them a little bit more, printed them a little bit more, and you can see how the map itself folds out (it's a little fragile, with the years), so you can hold it, and actually carry this around with you as you do the walk. Then, on the back, there's actually a glossary of the architectural styles. These are all Katrina's little sketches here.

AW: And it's a mixture of architecture and history and --

WNS: -- gossip.

AW: Thank you. This will fit right in. These are terrific. I didn't know these existed.

WNS: Yes, well, You're too young.

AW: One of the few things I'm too young for.

WNS: So that was just a family activity, and not just for the two of us. There were four of us now. The kids were involved in it. It was also during this period that we discovered Fulton Street, which will lead to the South Street Seaport Museum.
The office of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, at this time, was at 120 Broadway, which is between Pine and Cedar, I think it is, two blocks north of Wall Street. They were young lawyers, and during decent weather we would often walk over to Sloppy Louie's for lunch, or the old -- what's it called? The Seamen's Institute. Right. I remember taking different routes down to Sloppy Louie's, and going down John Street, where there was an absolutely beautiful, half-block of 18th-century commercial buildings -- residential; I guess they must have been residential -- three- or four-stories high, with that very soft, light-red brick color to them, a kind of lumpy texture and kind of low doors, where you could almost bang your head. One day I went down, and it was a parking lot. That's when the shock really hit me; that this stuff was going to be destroyed.
So I said, "I've got to do something louder about this," and I wrote -- I don't know how the Times ever had the nerve to --

AW: Is this what led up to your piece?

WNS: Yes. Actually, I had written an earlier piece, about city parks, because I was head of the Parks Association. Katrina and I had gone over to England as guests of her parents (her father was [ ? ] -- lawyer in London), and while were there I took a little camera along, and we went around and visited the London parks, to see what they had. I did an article and submitted it to the Times, called, "London's Lessons for New York Parks." It was a real attack on Moses. It showed -- imagine -- at venture playgrounds there were depressions in lawns so you could recline on the grass, in a comfortable fashion, and other little touches like that. The guy who was editor of the Times Magazine at that time was prepared to do things on New York, and he thought it was kind of a cute idea. So he published this article, which was a feature magazine article, with my photographs in it. The following Monday or Tuesday, Robert Moses wrote to Newbold Morris and said, "Newbold, you've got to take care of this whippersnapper, and this is what I suggest you write to the paper about this." Then he lays out "how we attack Seymour."
That letter currently hangs in the ground-floor hallway at the Hall of Records in New York City, where there are a bunch of documents tracing the history of New York. The last one (or at least it was the last time I looked) is the letter from Robert Moses to Newbold Morris, telling Morrs -- telling Morris -- how he is to respond to this "whippersnapper," and whippersnapper is loud and clear. As I think of it, in my later whippersnapper days, I'm very glad he bothered to notice.

AW: Did Newbold ever send a letter in, in response?

WNS: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And because of my Parks Association ties, I was invited to a couple of social functions by board members, to which Moses was also invited, and he very carefully never spoke to me.
In any case, you know this piece.

AW: Yes, which is great. But the other -- the Parks piece -- I could Google that, probably, and get that.

WNS: Yes. The title is London's Lessons for New York. Well, you know how to use the Pro-Quest, at the Times?

AW: Actually, my research lady, for some reason, has the ability to do that without paying for it. I don't know why. So I e-mail my requests to her, and they are magically fulfilled.

WNS: It was obviously the accumulated experience of all these various activities, but it was really seeing that building on John Street (I still wince, every time I walk by, because it's still a parking lot), a vacant lot, used for revenue from cars, and it's in the block that has a restaurant, I think it's called, the Yankee Clipper, or the Yankee Peddler, or Yankee Something-or-Other, directly across from the back of the "museum" [ ? ] ; that, and taking the girls down, with Katrina, and walking around the fish market and so on; and recalling my father taking me down -- I had to reach up to hold his hand -- and walking along South Street, and him showing me -- That accumulation of experience got me to sit down and -- and this is a fair amount of work.

AW: Oh, yes.

WNS: It's got quite a lot of thought in it.

AW: And the ending is pretty hard-hitting. Your language is right up there with Ada Louise's editorial. It's a great ending.
I don't know why I have it -- maybe I got it from you -- but I have a copy of a letter J.M. Kaplan wrote you, in response, saying how great this piece was.

AW: I don't know how I got that.

WNS: I don't have it.

AW: Well, if you like, I'll send you a copy of it. Somehow -- in the archives, I've been pilfering, and I got that. [ ? ] -- Okay. Now, by this time you were on the MAS board --

WNS: Yes.

AW: Unfortunately, the MAS minutes, during the most interesting period, vis-à-vis something really happening over there -- the mayor's committee being appointed in '61 -- from '61 to '65, the minutes are not available. They don't have them at MAS. They have one here and one there but not consecutive, so I can't get a sense of the rhythm of expectation, as one can when you read their regular minutes, in the '50s, where you can see drums being beaten and things evolving. I don't have that for this period. I get a sense that now, with Platt inside government now, with Goldstone inside government at City Planning, and working to be helpful -- that in a sense what had been an outside, "you've-got-to-do-something" was now inside, trying to do something; and, that MAS is also extremely well represented on the mayor's first Landmarks Commission. In a sense, they're kind of taking their lead from the commission, more or less.

WNS: I suppose so. They weren't involved in outreach and other things, but in terms of landmark --

AW: In terms of landmark stuff, the ball was in the Landmark Commission's court.

WNS: You remember, up until that time the cataloging of the landmarks of New York was done by MAS.

AW: Right, and MAS --

WNS: They had published the list --

AW: -- which had finally been turned into "Birnham's" book, in '53, actually very much at the same time as -- I think the official party for the book was probably two weeks after your piece. It coincided with the beginning of the demolition of Penn Station. I believe there's an article that [ ? ] -- Right. That, indeed, guided them. I haven't been able to find -- I stumbled, in van der Pool's papers -- there was one set of minutes I found, from the Landmarks Preservation Commission meetings, in the pre-law period. But the whole collection of those minutes is not yet found. I have feelers out at the law office, and the Landmarks Commission, and we've looked at the Municipal Archive. I don't know if we'll find them.
But, anyway, it's very interesting to me, the dynamics of that period.

WNS: If you get somebody to go check my father's papers, have them look at the MAS box. It's possible that there might be some of them.

AW: I'm going to look at those myself.

WNS: Well, I hope they're there. I don't guarantee it. But if they're anyplace, that's where they are.
All right. Now, I think probably the next thing that happened that's relevant on this is that I found myself nominated to run for the state senate in 1965, and by some fluke was elected. It was a re-election, maybe a special districting under order of the Supreme Court. There was some reason it was an off-year election. In '64, because Goldwater had run -- Mac Mitchell had been defeated as sponsor of the [ ? ] --

AW: After umpteen years.

WNS: Oh, yes. He was there forever.

AW: Did you know him well?

WNS: Not well. He was never the kind of guy anyone could know well, but I think he was, if not the leader, he was at least the principal figure in the Republican Club on 10th Street, which was my club. And I, having been the last candidate who ran for the Assembly (maybe there had been one after me), Mitchell had lost his nerve about running for re-election, because he didn't want to risk losing. So he agreed that I should be the candidate, and I ran in '65 and won the seat back, so to speak.

AW: It had been lost in the Goldwater debacle. Right.

WNS: Right. A clean sweep.

AW: Can ask you one other thing about Mitchell, before we move out of the time period?

WNS: Sure.

AW: His name appears -- whether it was the Bard Act; whether it was prior to the Bard Act -- some legislation (I think he was part of it) trying to save the Rhinelander buildings; the Carnegie Hall was him. Part of it, I know, was he was the chair or leader on the right committees in Albany -- But was that just him being responsive to his constituents, or did he have some real affinity for preservation as an issue, or simpatico to history? Or was he just being a good politician, representing the people who came to him and said, "Hey, this is important, so do it."

WNS: I don't want to demean his motivation, but I'm quite sure it was just a response to what his constituents wanted. Mitchell always referred to me as "that goddamn Boy Scout."

AW: [Laughs] I think you're going to have a hard choice between what you want on your business card -- whippersnapper or goddamn Boy Scout. Those are good choices to have.

WNS: There's one that Richard Nixon let out in the Oval Office, when I was United States Attorney, an "expletive deleted."

AW: That's a third choice.
Okay. We're back here. You're running. You've just been elected, to reclaim the seat.

WNS: Now, at this point, John Hightower and the New York State Council on the Arts has a retreat up in Harriman House, on the preservation of architecture. All the new boys -- and there were a lot of them, because of the sweep, there are a lot of freshmen elected -- we were invited to this retreat. They explained the Arts Council law, and what limited powers they had, but they talked about the idea of expanding this to architecture. One of my notions was to put in a bill to create a New York State Council on Architecture. I actually put in such a bill, but it was killed by the speaker of the Assembly (who didn't like architects).
But while we were up there, during a break, I asked them whether they had money to do a feasibility study, putting a maritime museum in South Street. Because if you look at the threatened landmarks, the number-one landmark is --

AW: -- the old "loft" on Fulton Street.

WNS: Right. [ ? ] --

AW: Okay. "Higher" commercial buildings along South Street. "These are reminders of the great sailing days, and are important because of their association. They are perhaps the most significant aspects of our history as well as a port. They might appropriately house a maritime museum."

WNS: So I said, "How about putting up some money and doing a feasibility study of whether or not that could be a maritime museum?" He assigned Fred Raft, who was his vice-chairman (wonderful man), Frederick Raft. He used to be a National Park Service Ranger.

AW: Now what was he wearing at this particular time?

WNS: He was wearing a hat as vice-chair, vice-president or whatever -- whatever Hightower's title was, he was the vice-. So he was assigned the job of doing the feasibility study. He came down to New York, and I took him to dinner at Sweet's restaurant. We talked through what could be done down here. He said, "Before we do the study, you need to have a civic sponsor." So I made a pitch to the Municipal Arts Society, and they said, "Sure. We'll sponsor you." So the Municipal Arts Society was the one who requested they do the feasibility study.

AW: At this point was "Kent" at the Municipal Arts Society?

WNS: No. Oh, no.

AW: This is still another decade away.

WNS: No, this was Ruth Loud.

AW: Right. Ruth McEnerney Loud was the "player."

WNS: Let's see. Was she staff then? She succeeded me as president.

AW: No, she wasn't staff, but she seems to have run the place with very short reins.

WNS: Yes. Right.

AW: They probably didn't have a staff except for the lady taking minutes -- Mrs. Walsh, or whatever her name was.

WNS: I just love thinking about this period, because these were lean organizations that didn't have time for all the intricacies, the ins and outs and the politics -- "Oh, we can't afford to upset people," and so forth. It was, "What's the right thing? Let's do it." It was just that.

AW: That was a nice time.

WNS: A great time.
In any case, they sponsored it. So Fred did a wonderful half-inch thick feasibility study, which then gave credibility to it. And in my very first week -- first month, at least -- in Albany, I wrote up and sponsored the bill to create the South Street Maritime Museum, in fulfillment of that commitment, and because of my belief that I could do something about it. And I had this feasibility study to show it was real. I was too young to even know I needed an assembly sponsor; but, because I was in a honeymoon stage, where people were curious --

AW: -- nice to you.

WNS: -- about this new guy who replaced Mac Mitchell, when I got the bill out on the floor, they passed it with no debate. Now it has passed the senate and it's in the assembly, where it was sure to die. Then the oddest thing happened.
When I went to school it was drummed into me that good sportsmanship was everything; that you always yielded to the other guy; always congratulated the other guy, even if they beat the hell out of you. That sort of thing. Everything was graciousness, and all throughout my life I've been dogged by that, because every time I've done it, particularly in a law case, the lawyer on the other side has kicked me in the teeth -- using the opportunity. I was reflecting on the subway this morning that they probably took it as a sign of weakness. But I did it again and again and again. I can think of all sorts of situations. But I try not to do it anymore.
In any case, this is the one positive thing that came out of doing that policy. I was made chairman of -- they wanted every Republican (in the majority, now) in the senate to have a chairmanship of a committee. So they created a housing committee; and, because I had been involved in the [ ? ] -- Association, I put in my hat to be chairman of the Housing Committee. Into the Housing Committee comes a bill to authorize some change in the middle-income housing law. I read it, I looked at the memo, and it looked like a good bill to me. It made a lot of sense, so I recommended it out. I spoke in favor of it, and it passed the senate. It had already passed the house.
Well, now, the museum bill has passed the senate, it's over in the house, and I get a call from an assistant saying, "Speaker 'Travia' would like to meet you" -- the speaker of the house, of the assembly. So I go over and meet him, chit chat with him a little bit, and then he said, "Senator, that was a nice thing you did on my housing bill. What can I do for you?" I said, "Well, Mr. Speaker, I've got a bill to create a South Street Seaport museum." "Great idea. What's the number?" He writes down the bill number, and the next day it passes the assembly.

AW: Ah, Albany.

WNS: Now, here comes the inside story. It's now on the desk of Nelson Rockefeller, governor of the state of New York. The staff people at the Downtown Lower Manhattan Association suddenly read that this "goddamn crazy bill" from this freshman senator has passed both houses! They've got to do something about it. They then talked to their chairman -- of the Downtown Lower Manhattan Association -- who happens to be the brother of the governor of the state of New York. I go up and meet with him. I say, Mr. Rockefeller, this is a much better idea. Putting a big insurance complex in there is really a destruction of New York's great heritage," blah, blah, blah. Of course, he couldn't have cared less.
But now I see I'm in real trouble. The next thing that happens -- I'm sitting in my office at the end of the week -- no, longer. The Albany sessions were usually three days, and you'd get two days in the office -- and in comes a delegation led by Harmon Goldstone and Louis Auchincloss. They say, "Just as a courtesy, we wanted to tell you that the Museum of the City of New York is going to file a memorandum in opposition to your bill, urging the governor to veto it." I said, "Why?" "Because it competes with the bill to save the block over next to Fraunces Tavern."

AW: Ah. Okay.

WNS: I say, "I don't think you guys really want to play that kind of politics with this sort of thing." I talked to them at some length about the importance of South Street, the maritime tradition, and so forth. They ended up not doing it. Sometime later, I remember Harmon Goldstone coming up and saying to me, when I encountered him, "You know, I often wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, when I think of how close we came to doing that terrible thing, of filing a bill in opposition to preserving South Street." To his credit.
So now I've beaten them off, and I've now got David Rockefeller to deal with. So I then had this idea. I hand-wrote a letter: "Dear Nelson -- " and I talked about the importance of preserving the heritage of New York and the great economic opportunity and so on, and its past. I said, "I know your brother is opposed to this legislation, and he probably recommended to you that you veto it. But I urge you to disregard him, and do the right thing and sign the bill." And I wrote, "CC: Ada Louise Huxtable; New York Times." He signed the bill. [Clapping]
Then, three or four years later -- by this time they had a committee now, and they were beginning to raise some money down at South Street -- they had a ribbon-cutting, and guess who came down to cut the ribbon: David Rockefeller.

AW: David! [Laughs]

WNS: He said, "I've always thought this was one of the grandest ways to save the heritage of downtown New York!" and I never said a word.

AW: The better part of valor.

WNS: South Street is still struggling, but, goddamn it, we saved the place. I wouldn't like to see the quality of its museum interpretation turned around.

AW: I've heard they're still in pretty rough times, aren't they?

WNS: Oh, yes. Because the real problem is that Peter Neill, with all his wonderful qualities, didn't like museums. He didn't like the idea of people coming in there, and he didn't like the idea of storytelling and interpretation.

AW: What did he like?

WNS: Oh, he liked wheeling and dealing. Oh, he did some quite wonderful things, like having the museum become an arm of the educational institution. His background had been that he had used a schooner up in New Haven as a high school. So he understood the educational potential; and, to his credit, that's all been very good. But there's a lost opportunity there.
I'm sorry we're going on so damned long.

AW: I'm happy, but you're probably the one with a train somewhere to catch.

WNS: South Street I suppose I'm most pleased about because it happened so early in my senate career. But then there are three or four other things you might be interested in, that are not irrelevant. One is I got a call (still my freshman year) one night at the Port Orange Club, where I was saying. The voice said, "Mike, this is your Princeton classmate, David Huntington." "Oh, David. Hello. How are you?" "Mike, there's a bill in the legislature to authorize saving Frederic Church's home, Olana. I said, "David, tell me about it," so he told me all about it. This was a guy who'd made his professional career as an art historian, and Frederic Church had written the definitive book on "Churchill." The Church estate couldn't afford to keep it up, so it was on the block. [ ? ] -- had bid on it. They were about to put up a new community college, state financed, down the hill, and the plan to save it was to make this an appendage of the community college, as a cultural center. That would have gotten the developer out, and the state to buy the property.
So Warren Anderson I had gotten to know, who was chairman of the finance committee and a terribly powerful man, and I went in and talked to his chief of staff. We found the bill, and he said, "Not a chance. We're not going to spend state money for that nonsense." I said, "No hope at all?" He said no. So the following weekend I take Katrina and the girls, and we go over to Olana. It's chained off, but we park at the bottom of the hill and we climb up. The caretaker up there gives us a tour of the house, and it just blows us away.
One of the things that blows us away (P.S., you can't see it anymore) was on the top floor, a room occupied by one of Church's sons, who took his own life. There were bloodstains in the wooden floor, that you could still see. Now, on the tour, they're not open. I think there's just a carpet on them; that they're still there. In any case, my girls, who were then teenagers, were much taken by that.
So I saw it. I was satisfied that it was really for real, and that it had to be saved. I went out and bought a copy of David's book, I went in to Warren and said, "Read the book." He did, and he said all right, reported the bill out and passed it.

AW: And at that point it was tied to --

WNS: -- the school.

AW: And the school never happened.

WNS: No, no. Then they spun it off as a separate institution. But now it's a major landmark of the Hudson Valley. If I hadn't been there, and a classmate of mine from college hadn't called, and if I hadn't put in the effort of driving over there, and buying a copy of -- See, individuals, at the right place and the right time, can make a tremendous difference.
Two other things. One is that during this time they were abandoning railroad trails all around the state. I got a bunch of my colleagues, Republican colleagues (who were then the majority) around the state to co-sponsor with me a bill to make them available to become bicycle trails. That's what started the bicycle trail movement. The third thing that happened at this time, that is not irrelevant -- but now this involves nature, and Katrina and my year living up at Saranac Lake, in the Adirondacks. A law partner of mine here, a dear, dear man, and his wife invited us one weekend up to Cornwall-on-Hudson. They took us for a walk through the Black Forest, and said, "This is where Con Edison is going to put up a pump storage holding pond. They're going to destroy all these trees and dig a hole here." Then they showed me the drawing of the pump storage plant, dug into Storm King Mountain, down at the bottom. Katrina and I both became members of their committee. I introduced a resolution in the state senate, recommending that the Hudson Highlands be designated as a national preserve of some kind. Katrina became chairman of the Citizens Organizing Committee. Meantime, one of the local politicians meets with the townspeople in Cornwall-on-Hudson, and tells them about all the wonderful construction jobs that are coming. He said, "Here's the opposition by the bird-watchers, nature-fakers, and militant adversaries of progress, trying to take your jobs away from you."
Well, this was quoted in the paper, which he was very proud of. We get a clipping, we pick it up, go find a volunteer graphic designer, and we do up a brochure that says on the front of it, "Are you a bird-watcher, nature-faker, or militant adversary of progress?"

TAPE 2, SIDE 1

WNS: In any case, that was back in the days when you could get through to people. Katrina got on the phone and called every theatrical celebrity she could think of, authors and that sort of thing, who were in the New York area, and told them about Storm King, and asked them if they would lend their names. It was amazing. She got a list twenty-thirty names long. She did it again, on another thing, later on. But that became the Citizens Organizing Committee, and it scared Con Ed enough that they tracked down the addresses of these people, and kept bombarding them with letters, telling them [ ? ] -- But it was fun to be part of that battle.

AW: I can imagine.

WNS: Out of that came -- which Joan was involved in. Joan Davidson helped fund it, this [ ? ] -- Preservation Conference -- out of that came the meeting one day when Harold Orum (for whom Joan was a fundraiser, and helped pay the expenses to get him in) came in. By then they had sent out a lot of direct mail, and gotten a lot of responses back. They'd also gotten a lot of letters from people saying, "How do you do it? We've got a problem in our community, and we want to do it." Pretty soon it was getting beyond our capability of handling, and Orum said, "You've got to go national. You can't just keep doing this local thing."
So Harold Orum, Steve "Duggan" (this partner I was talking to you about), and I had the pleasure of founding NRDC, which has now become the premier conservation group in the world, I think. This was 1969.

AW: Wow. I did not know you were partially to blame for NRDC's wonderful work.

WNS: I'm partially to blame for that.

AW: When did John Adams come on the scene?

WNS: I was the one who called up John Adams and said, "Are you interested in a job?"

AW: So you invented John Adams.

WNS: I didn't invent him, but Dave "Seid" and I interviewed him, for the first interview.

AW: Wow.

WNS: We had a "rump" group that was meeting at the Century for lunch, to plan how to make this happen. We interviewed two other candidates. One was David Brauer, who had just left the Sierra Club, but he wanted to do his "oral" project. The other was a professor, whose name has just popped out of my head, who was in a law school in Washington and had been active in running a campaign against smoking. But he wanted to continue to stick with that, so he stick with that. And John was the third person. He was working down with the Federal Strike Force, essentially on obscenities, as I remember. He was fed up with it, and wanted out. It was the right man, at the right moment, with the right magic in his genes. How lucky.
We went over to meet Gordon Harrison at the Ford Foundation, to try to persuade him to come up with funding, and he said, "Well, you know, it's funny. There are six supreme-court law clerks who were in here last week, and they wanted to get some funding for a conservation group. But they were all too young and inexperienced. Maybe I can work out a marriage." So he did, and the combination of Steve Duggan, who had been head of -- I guess he'd been chair of "Scenic Hudson" -- and John Adams, as an older, experienced prosecutor, and then these six wiz kids -- the Ford Foundation said, "Here's a couple million dollars. Get going."

AW: I love endings like that. Beginnings like that.

WNS: I can tell you a lot of them that don't work.
I think that probably, effectively, brings us up to date. I then went off and became a United States Attorney, and have been doing things more on the national scene. My only landmark involvement really came about from getting to know Bruce and Arlene, and their telling me that they couldn't understand why the commission was behaving the way it was. I said, "It doesn't sound right to me. Let's file a [ ? ] request." They said, "How do you do that?" So I told them, and we got those documents requests, which showed some monkey-business behind the scenes. So I volunteered to bring the litigation for them. We got thrown out, but there's more to come.

AW: Absolutely -- I hope. I hope.

WNS: We had a meeting just yesterday morning. Now this steering committee, of this new Citizens Emergency Committee -- and they're a wonderful group --

AW: I pledged my hundred bucks --

WNS: Good.

AW: -- to support the effort.

WNS: Well, the tambourine is coming.

AW: I know it is, and I hope that, now that the "book" is under control, I hope it will re-emerge. I'd like to see that horse run a little, and see where it goes.

WNS: Yes.

AW: Let me ask you one question -- and then I know you've got to go. Maybe I can invite myself back, if this also triggers other things --

WNS: Oh, I know. I have one other letter I wanted to show you.

AW: Oh, good. Okay.

WNS: This is "which" letter to the Times, about the landmark legislation [ ? ] -- I didn't know if you had a copy of it.

AW: You know, I should, but this isn't ringing a bell.

WNS: Well, just add it.

AW: This is November 17th. Right. This is after they announced it was going to the City Council?

WNS: Yep.

AW: Right. Okay. Fine Arts Desk. That makes sense. Great.

WNS: Sorry. One other. This is 1976 -- jumping ahead -- After I left the US Attorney's office I was on the board of the New York Public Library, and they made me their designee to the New York Art Commission, where they have an automatic seat. While I was there I saw a list of all the surplus city properties. Somebody had done a written description of what they were, and I knew some of the buildings. They were in the Village, I went around and looked at them, and there were wonderful emblems and seals and so on. My daughter was then at Brearley, an she had a classmate who was as handy with a camera as she was. I said, "Why don't you go out and photograph these buildings, and let's put together an exhibit on it." Here is Ada Louise Huxtable's article about that exhibit -- which is kind of pleasant, but, again, shows an instinct in the right direction and another generation.

AW: Yes. This is terrific.
Just a kind of over-the-span-of-time question -- After the landmarks law was passed, I think because of how long it took and the struggle, and how tenuous people felt it all was, even when it was passed, how tenuous; they felt that the law might not stand up to challenge, etc. -- in a sense, the first great goal the Landmarks Commission ever had was preserving the landmarks law. That really created a cultural attitude at the commission that certainly lasted well past the Penn Central decision. It's kind of in the DNA. As a result, the "kind of preservation civic community" has had it drummed in their heads that not only did you have to be very careful what you did, but the one thing you never did was try to tinker with the landmarks law. Because if you opened it up, god knows what could happen.
You're a unique person in that (you're unique in many ways) having been a player in the pre-law times; having been there to see the law happen; and now, in a sense, being one of the few people who sees, potentially, some merit in improving the law, or seeking to improve the law, in a sense you have a different attitude about that. I'm curious about why -- is it your attitude about laws, as living things? I'm just curious.

WNS: It's understanding the process. Laws are made by people, and although I understand the basic philosophy of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," in this case it's broke. So it needs fixing, and the real trick is don't let somebody else do it poorly, but get in control of the process, and get the confidence of the people who've got the power to make the change, so that they will consult you, and will not double-cross you in the process. Then you can protect it against going awry.
I, indeed, have already drafted two proposed changes to the landmark law. We were talking about them yesterday. One of the nice young people there -- I think betraying ignorance of the process -- said, "I'm one of those who says don't do nothing to it, because you never know what will happen." But, no, unless you've really got some people on the other side, who've got very corrupt motives, or are vindictive, or have otherwise agenda-laden motives to change it -- in which case they're going to do it anyway. I mean, they're going to accomplish the destruction anyway, one way or the other -- I think you've got to follow the process the way it's set up.
Now what's perfectly clear to me is that the real estate industry in New York now recognizes the landmark law as an enemy, and that the way they're going to make their killings is to find ways to avoid its effects. Part of the way they do that is to put the Landmarks Commission I their pocket, et the mayor's office on their side (the mayor is pro-business). I think I made a notation this morning on it. I think we now need to research very carefully where the real estate money has gone in terms of campaign contributions, to buy access and good will, because those are the people to watch as to what they're doing, in relation to the Landmarks Commission. But the thing I think is perfectly clear from 2 Columbus Circle is that City Hall is the place where it's going to happen, and the fact that City Hall is keeping so many commissioners just dangling out there, not re-appointing them, so that they don't dare sneeze, is one of the very effective techniques that they have.

AW: My last question for you (and I think I know the answer, because it's been a theme that you've talked about) -- You've been doing civic involvement/activism for almost your entire life, and have some great victories to show; but, I'm sure, have an even longer list of disappointments. Yet, you're still at it, at a time when you could be lying on a beach eleven months a year, sipping pina coladas or something. I think the answer to why you do it is because you've seen the impact one person can have.

WNS: Absolutely. I wrote a book once called Making a Difference, which is on exactly that subjects. It's just a collection of anecdotes about people who -- single individuals.

AW: Will it pop up somewhere?

WNS: Yes. Yep. I would not go to the in-print market; it's totally out of print.

AW: Oh, I'd go to Amazon. We'll see who's got it.

WNS: It's called Making a Difference, published in the '70s, I think, maybe early '80s. But I continue to seek out role models, in individuals, as individuals, because they were committed to their cause and just hung in there, and made a huge difference.

AW: Well, you're certainly on the list, to have done that.

WNS: Well, I certainly understand what drove them.

AW: Well, I think we now have a better sense of what's driven you, also, which is terrific.