WBAI-FM Upcoming Program
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Tue, Jan 13, 2026 9:00 PM

ANDREW BERMAN ON PRESERVATION VS THE WRECKING BALL

ANDREW BERMAN ON VILLAGE PRESERVATION  vs THE WRECKING BALL

On tonight’s show, we’ll be joined by architectural and cultural preservationist Andrew Berman of Village Preservation to discuss its upcoming and ongoing work and the advice we should offer in our e-mails to Mayor Mamdani.

Under Berman’s two decades of leadership, Village Preservation has worked 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 these landmarks are 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.  He already has some suggestions for Mayor Mamdani to re-invent some of his predecessor’s worst architectural ideas, and tonight, we are hoping he will share them with us, so we can warn the new Mayor just where to hold off with the wrecking ball.

Hosted and Produced by Janet Coleman and David Dozer

 

 


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