Jack Taylor papers
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Abstract
The collection includes the papers of Jack Taylor (1925-2019), with a focus on his activism in historic preservation efforts in New York City from the 1980s through the 2010s. The collection holds correspondence and other rich documentation related to the years-long efforts that culminated in landmark designations for the Ladies' Mile Historic District (1989), the East 17th Street/Irving Place Historic District (1998), and Tammany Hall (2013), as well as many other initiatives, such as the placement of Ivan Mestrovic's statue of Antonin Dvořák in Stuyvesant Square. The Drive to Protect the Ladies' Mile, Union Square Park Community Coalition, Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association, Gramercy Neighborhood Associates, and the Historic Districts Council are among the many local preservation organizations represented with records in the collection.
Biographical / Historical
Jack Taylor (1925-2019) was a leader of historic preservation initiatives in New York City, particularly in Manhattan beginning in the 1980s, which is the focus of this collection. He was born in Greenwich Village and lived much of his life in lower Manhattan. During World War II, Taylor was stationed in England, and served in the Army Air Forces in occupied Germany. After the war, Taylor attended Georgetown University and then began a career as a journalist, working for The Washington Post and later as an editor at Family Circle Magazine.
After retiring from Family Circle in the early 1980s, Taylor became deeply immersed in historic preservation in New York City. He held various official positions, including Chairman of the Union Square Community Coalition, President of the Drive to Protect the Ladies' Mile, Board Member of the Historic Districts Council, and a Public Member of Community Boards 5 and 6. Beyond these, Taylor was a member of a constellation of neighborhood and street associations engaged with quality of life issues and with the ongoing tension in the urban environment between the competing agendas and priorities of residents, developers, commerce, and other interests.
As with preservation efforts generally in New York, Taylor and his colleagues had their share of failures, including the loss of the Luchows restaurant building on 14th Street and the home of composer Antonin Dvořák (327 East 17th Street), but also significant successes. Among those successes was the preservation in 1989 of the Ladies' District, so-called because of its late 19th century reputation as a commercial shopping area; the designation of the East 17th Street/Irving Place Historic District in 1998; and Tammany Hall in 2013.
(See New York Preservation Archive Project's website for more biographical information about Taylor, including oral histories: https://www.nypap.org/preservation-history/jack-taylor/. For more information about Taylor's papers and NYPAP's acquisition of them, see https://www.nypap.org/saving-a-preservationists-legacy-jack-taylors-papers/.)
Arrangement
The collection is arranged roughly by subject matter, but there is considerable overlap of content at many points across the files.
Scope and Contents
The collection includes extensive documentation concerning preservation efforts in lower Manhattan from the 1980s into the 2010s, especially in the areas of Gramercy Park, Stuyvesant Square Park, Union Square, and the Ladies' Mile Historic District, all near one another. Specific locations and buildings are typically the focus of the documentation, notably Tammany Hall, the Siegel-Cooper building, National Arts Club, the Antonin Dvořák House and the placement of Ivan Mestrovic's statue of Dvořák in Stuyvesant Square Park, and many others. Disputes over quality of life issues and the character of neighborhoods also are reflected in the documents, for example in files about sidewalk cafes, food concessions in parks, tree plantings, and the nightlife of bars and other places of social gatherings.
The files include correspondence, photographs and other pictorial works, architectural and site plans, fliers and other publicity material, public statements, presentations to the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) and other decision-making and influential bodies, letters of support and opposition, clippings from newspapers and other publications, and research and research reports about particular structures or neighborhoods. Much of the activity documented in the collection was carried out under the aegis of various local organizations, such as the Union Square Park Community Coalition, The 18th Street Neighborhood Alliance (TESNA), or the East Side Zoning Alliance; the files include copies of records from these various organizations, such as by-laws, officer lists, stationery, meeting minutes, and strategies for advancing the groups' agendas. The correspondence in the collection encompasses letters to and from Taylor and other activists with city officials, journalists, community members, real estate developers, commercial interests, architects and planners, business improvement district organizations (such as Union Square Partnership), and others.
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Access Restrictions
Open to qualified researchers.
Use Restrictions
Photocopying undertaken by staff only. Limited to 20 exposures of stable, unbound material per day. Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.
Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions
Preferred Citation
The collection should be cited as: Jack Taylor Papers, MS 3150, New-York Historical Society.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The bulk of these papers was received by N-YHS in 2020 as a gift of the New York Preservation Archive Project (NYPAP), which had received them as a bequest in 2019 from Jack Taylor. These were combined at N-YHS with a 2018 gift from NYPAP of Taylor's papers concerning the preservation of Tammany Hall (now in box 19).
About this Guide
Processing Information
In 2019, N-YHS staff conducted a high level survey of the Taylor papers with New York Preservation Archive Project (NYPAP) staff at NYPAP's storage facility. Based on that survey, N-YHS provided guidance to NYPAP as to how the materials could be trimmed and shaped for accessioning by N-YHS. In the following months, NYPAP, particularly through the work of Jeffe Fellow Barbara Gombach, completed that work by eliminating excessive photocopies, separating publications not needed by N-YHS, organizing the material topically, labeling, preparing box/folder lists, and rehousing.
The organized collection was delivered to N-YHS in November 2020, where Larry Weimer took a few additional, minor preservation steps with the material, and adapted Gombach's inventory into a standard on-line finding aid. Weimer also integrated into the collection about half a box of Taylor papers concerning Tammany Hall that had been received by N-YHS in 2018 from NYPAP and that had been previously processed and cataloged by Joseph Ditta (now in box 19).