WBAI-FM Upcoming Program
Cat Radio Cafe

Tue, Aug 13, 2024 9:00 PM

ANDREW BERMAN: AN UPDATE OF VILLAGE PRESERVATION

ANDREW BERMAN’S UPDATE ON VILLAGE PRESERVATION

On tonight’s show we’ll be joined by architectural and cultural preservationist Andrew Berman to discuss the upcoming and ongoing work of Village Preservation, the organization he has helmed and whose territory he has expanded for over twenty years.

Under Berman’s leadership, Village Preservation – originally Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation – has been working with other community groups to secure official landmark actions for around 1100 buildings in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo, and 10 new historical districts or historic district extensions. Among the recent landmarks have been the Stonewall Inn, Webster Hall, Café Society, Café Cino, and the homes and studios of James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Stella, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Charles Mingus and Lorraine Hansberry, to name an illustrious handful. He’s helped secure the zoning and downzoning of nearly 100 blocks of the East and West Village, helped limit hotel and dormitory construction, preserve existing buildings, retain and create affordable housing, lobby against  the expansion of NYU and 32-ft tall 5G towers, and de-mystify Mayor Adams’s campaign for “The City of Yes to Housing Development.”

Throughout his tenure, Andrew Berman, has remained the most fearsome anti-development force in New York City and has received multiple awards for his efforts, from New York Magazine, the Village Voice, Vanity Fair, and The New York Landmarks Conservancy.  My own favorite Berman  citation is on the list of “100 Most Powerful People in Real Estate,” by The New York Observer, once owned by the darling of Saudi Arabia, Jared Kushner. Berman was the only preservationist on the list.

Hosted by Janet Coleman and David Dozerr

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