Municipal Art Society - 1965 Landmarks Law - WNYC
Working with the WNYC Archives, Winthrop archivist writes blog post for the 50th anniversary of Landmarks Law describing the Municipal Art Society's work in saving the past half century.

Winthrop Lead Archivist Sam Markham researched and wrote a blog post on behalf of Winthrop client, the Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) for the recent 50th anniversary of the passage of the Landmarks Law.  This legislation gave legal authority to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) to protect and preserve buildings and neighborhoods of cultural importance in New York City.  Several months ago Mr. Markham contacted WNYC Archivist, Andy Lanset, about a MAS radio program called "The Livable City," that ran on WNYC in the 1970s.  While Mr. Lanset found no surviving recordings of "The Livable City", he did locate and subsequently digitize from the Municiple Archives several Landmarks Preservation Commission reel-to-reel tapes from the 1960s.  One of these, a 1964 interview with the first LPC commissioner, Geoffrey Platt, provided an excellent platform to discuss the instrumental advocacy and preservation work of MAS in the decades before the 1965 Landmarks Law.  To read the blog post and listen to the interview click here.