November 30, 2025

Albert Bard may be an unsung New York hero, but his life and legacy are engaging audiences well beyond the five boroughs. Whether at Edith Wharton’s The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts, or in Pennsylvania at the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation Annual Donor Reception, or at the Roslyn Landmarks Society on Long Island, or at the Village Preservation Society of East Hampton’s Annual Meeting, audiences have been inspired by Bard’s lifelong dedication to preserving civic beauty, his national efforts to combat the proliferation of billboards, and his establishing the legal basis for landmark laws.

New York audiences at Village Preservation, Victorian Society New York, FRIENDS of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, and at the Museum of the City of New York have seen in Bard the type of civic activist New York City needs today. In conversations with Michelle Young, Joe Rose, Bob Jaeger, Emily Kahn, and Ronda Wist, author Anthony Wood has lifted up Bard’s legacy. The archival journey behind Wood’s Servant of Beauty: Landmarks, Secret Love, and the Unimagined Life of an Unsung New York Hero, the definitive biography of Albert S. Bard (1866- 1963), has also inspired audiences about, and increased their appreciation of, the work of the New York Preservation Archive Project in securing the archives that future authors writing about preservation in New York City will need.

This fall Bard’s story traveled to the Charleston Literary Festival with a conversation between Paul Goldberger and Wood. Next year, in a run up to Bard’s 160th birthday on December 19, 2026, additional “Conversations With the Author” programs about Bard and his work are scheduled for New York City and such other ports of call as his hometown, Norwich, Connecticut. Bard has also taken to the airwaves with the Bowery Boys (Podcast 459), a virtual program with the Preservation League of New York State, and on Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen.

If you know an audience that would be excited by a program about Bard, please contact Emily Kahn at ekahn@nypap.org.

This article was printed in the Archive Project’s Fall 2025 newsletter.