Eric Allison was born in Rockville Centre, New York on November 19, 1946 to William Archibald Allison and Lila Ermalinda Allison Fox.^[1] He graduated from Shimer College with Honors in 1971 and married Mary Ann Burnet Allison that same year.^[2] Prior to becoming involved in preservation work, Allison worked as a financier and freelance writer. He moved from Long Island to Fort Greene, Brooklyn in 1984, where he soon joined the Fort Greene Landmarks Preservation Committee and became a vocal preservation advocate.^[3]

Allison served a brief term as treasurer before becoming president of the Historic Districts Council from 1990 to 2000.^[4] He co-founded, coordinated, and taught in the Historic Preservation program at the Pratt Institute, and authored Creating a Historic District: A Guide for Neighborhoods and Historic Preservation and The Livable City, co-written with Lauren Peters.^[5] Allison received his MS (1992) in City and Regional Planning from Pratt Institute, and an MPhil (1998) and PhD (2005) in Urban Planning and Historic Preservation from Columbia University.^[6]

Oral History with Eric Allison

New York Preservation Archive Project

174 East 80th Street

New York, NY 10075

Tel: (212) 988-8379

Email: info@nypap.org

Eric Allison began his historic preservation activism as a member of the Fort Greene Landmarks Preservation Committee, which he joined shortly after moving to the neighborhood in 1984.^[7] He became chair of the committee in 1986 and served in this role until 1990. Allison reviewed requests for changes to buildings in the Fort Greene Historic District and offered testimony to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.^[8]

In 1988, Allison joined the board of the Historic Districts Council (HDC). Within a year, he became the HDC secretary and, soon after, the vice president. By 1990, Allison served as HDC’s president. During his ten-year tenure, he oversaw dramatic increases in fundraising (from less than $1,000 per year in 1990 to $350,000 per year in 2000) and the transformation of HDC from an entirely volunteer-run organization to one with a full-time paid staff.

Allison continued his neighborhood preservation activities alongside his work at HDC, remaining on the board of the Fort Greene Landmarks Preservation Committee until 1992. He was a founding board member of the New York Preservation Archive Project alongside Anthony C. Wood and Vicki Weiner in 1993 (five years before the organization’s official incorporation in 1998). He also served as a founding committee member of Village Preservation’s Archive and Oral History Project in 1995 (made possible in part through early funding work of the New York Preservation Archive Project) and a founding member of the Governor’s Island Group formed by the Regional Plan Association to advance the public interest agenda in the re-use of Governor’s Island in 1997.^[9] While providing capacity-building leadership at HDC, Allison published his book Creating a Historic District: A Guide for Neighborhoods and Historic Preservation (1993), a step-by-step guide with case studies as to how to complete the process of establishing a historic district. 

While completing his graduate work in City and Regional Planning at the Pratt Institute in 1992, Allison proposed that the School of Architecture establish a graduate Historic Preservation program. In 1995, he formed an Advisory Committee to design and implement such a program and, by the fall of 1996, Pratt’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment had established a Preservation Planning certificate program.^[10] After further work, Pratt approved a Masters of Science degree in Historic Preservation focused on public policy and urban issues in 2002. The first class entered in the fall of 2004, and Allison became a professor within the program while continuing his administrative work as Academic Coordinator.^[11]

Allison was also a pioneer in moving the historic preservation community toward viewing preservation as a tool for community development, urban planning, and economic generation.^[12] He co-wrote Historic Preservation and the Livable City (2010) with architect and preservationist Lauren Peters to offer tools for implementing preservation projects in cities large and small. His research interests also extended to questions of heritage policy and implementation, leading him to serve as co-chair of the Rebuild Lower Manhattan Task Force of the Metro Chapter of the American Planning Association from 2002 to 2007 after the attacks on 9/11.

Historic Districts Council
President

Pratt Institute
Professor

National Council for Preservation Education
Chair

New York Preservation Archive Project
Board of Directors

Fort Greene Landmarks Committee
Chair