Oral Histories

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• NYPAP has created a series of oral histories with preservationists who were directly involved in much of the groundbreaking legislation and grassroots activism of the 20th century. The collection includes approximately fifteen oral histories. Six have been conducted and transcribed in the past year and a half with notables such as Simon Breines, Robert Lowe, Henry Hope Reed, and Marjorie Dunbar. We have been working with the Columbia University Oral History Project to standardize our work, and hope to contribute NYPAP's collection to the Project. The NYPAP interviews are online in transcript form with audio clips and photographs.

• Otis Pratt Pearsall

• Doris Diether

• Simon Breines

• Everett Ortner - Park Slope

• Dierdre Stanforth - Brownstones

Penn Station Veterans

• Diana Goldstein

• Lee Pomeroy

• Giorgio Cavaglieri

• Jordan Gruzen

• Michael Zimmer

• Ed Acker

• Stanley Judd

• Laurel Lovrek

• William Conklin

• Sanford Malter

• Costas Machlouzarides

• Peter Samton
  
  
  In the 2007 Fall semester, the New York Preservation Archive Project launched an oral history project in partnership with Pratt Institute's graduate program in Historic Preservation. NYPAP Chair, Anthony C. Wood, and then Administrator Vanessa Norton worked with students in the Public History class taught by Marci Reaven and Jeanne Houck to develop questions, schedule interviews, and record conversations between preservation students and preservation veterans. The series of 6 interviews focuses on the theme of grassroots preservation of the 1980s:
  
  Hal Bromm - TriBeCa historic district designation and the early days of HDC
  Robert Kornfeld, Sr. - Riverdale historic district designation
  Joyce Matz - preservation campaigns including the City and Suburban Homes, and St. Bart's
  Lorna Nowve - the early years of the Historic Districts Council (HDC)
  Joe Rosenberg - the early days of HDC and the fight to protect historic Broadway theatres
  Jack Taylor - Drive to Protect the Ladies' Mile Historic District, Luchow's restaurant, and the Dvorak House
  
  NYPAP and Pratt Institute's graduate program in Historic Preservation partnered again in fall of 2008 to collect oral histories from figures who played key roles in historic preservation during the 1970s:
  
  Thom Bess - designation of the Longwood Historic District
  Bronson Binger - Former Assistant Commissioner for Capital Projects at the NYC Parks Department; designation of Carnegie Hill Historic District; Old Metropolitan Opera House
  Michael Gruen - former Chair of the Historic Districts Council; designated of the Riverside Drive-West 105th Street Historic District
  Lenore Norman - former executive director of the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission