CURRICULUM VITAE
Courses and Teaching Positions
The City Transformed---New York's Architecture and Urban Planning from the Dutch Days to the Present Begun in 1975 at the New School for Social Research, sponsored by the Municipal Art Society 1979 to 1987 and from 1988 to 1992 by the 92nd St. "Y", this year-long course is now under the aegis of Cooper Union. Sixteen lectures in two separate semesters cover the city's architecture and urban growth from the 17th to the 20th centuries including styles from the Federalist, Greek and Gothic Revivals and Italianate through the Beaux-Arts, Art Deco and Modern; urban neighborhoods are covered from SoHo and the Upper West Side to Brooklyn's Prospect Park and Park Slope. (See Cooper Union Forum page for details)
New York School of Interior Design; adjunct professor, 1988 to the present. Modern architecture, Europe & America, since the 18th century is covered in a two semester survey course that begins with Robert Adam and ends with the post-Modern. Two specialty courses on Beaux-Arts work and modern design 1890-1940, and twentieth century modernisms 1900-1950, fill in the gaps not covered in the survey course. Designers and styles covered in all four courses include, among others, the works of Robert Adam, John Soane, Henri Labrouste, the medieval revival, the English Arts & Crafts Movement, C. R. Mackintosh, Art Nouveau, the Vienna Secessionists, Czech Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Art Deco, Art Moderne, the Modern Movement and the post-Modernisms of today. (See New York School of Interior Design page for details)
Lecture Series
These mini
series were sponsored by various educational and cultural instiutions including The Municipal Art Society, The 92nd St. "Y", the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the South Street Seaport Museum, the University of Pennsylvania and the New York Transit Museum.
Brooklyn Bridge and the Sister Cities It Joined: an engineering marvel sets the foundation for the 20th century metropolis.
Richard Morris Hunt: America's first professionally trained architect brought professional design principles to America's innovative architectural ideas.
The Victorian Moderne: the "modernisme" of the Late 19th Century
Art Deco
From Europe to America
The Park, the Parkway and the Planned Community
London: Its Growth and Its Architecture
Individual Lectures
This is a sampling of lectures and special tours delivered from 1979 to the present:
Columbia University: introducing foreign students to New York City's history and growth.
Cooper Hewitt Museum: various lecture and walking tour series.
Harvard Graduate School of Planning and Architecture: the dilemma of development at the South Street Seaport.
New York University: seminars, lectures and walking tours.
University of Pennsylvania College of General Studies: walking tour seminars of New York neighborhoods; lectues on subjects including art deco and the 19th century precursors to art nouveau.
Gensler & Associates, Architects: design history seminars.
Haines, Lundberg, Waehler, architects: design history seminars.
Skidmore Owings Merrill, architects: design history seminars.
Cahill, Gordon & Reidel, lawyers: introducing summer interns to New York City.
New York Conference for Neighborhood Funders: all
day tour linking Bedford
Stuyvesant, the Lower East Side and the South Bronx.
American Institute of Real Estate Appraisers: the development of the Upper West Side.
Real Estate Board of New York: walking tours and lectures on NY's development.
Cushman and Wakefield, March, June, 2005, breakfast seminars on downtown, midtown and the evolution of the skyscraper.
American Society of Landscape Architects, New Jersey Chapter, February, 2004, keynote speech at annual meeting, Central Park and the American Garden Suburb.
Winston & Strawn law firm, August, 2004, program for summer interns, organized by Kate Edmonds Events, Ltd.
Central Park Conservancy, Lecture, November, 2004, Greenbelting the American City: Olmsted and Vaux and Victorian City Planning.
Zone: Chelsea, Center for the Arts, December, 2004, Exploring Contemporary Design in NYC, introductory lecture to visiting group of Russian designers.
The Today Show (NBC)
March, 2004 interview, 100th Anniversary of Times Square, produced by Ya'el Federbush.
August, 2004 Republican Presidents (and Hopefuls) from New York City, marking Republican National Convention; short video tour produced by Bob Meyer.
The NYC Transit Museum: lectures on NYC neighborhoods developed by rapid transit; "one-day tours" of neighborhoods in Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn built around commuter and rapid transit lines.
Metropolitan New York Paint & Wall Coverings Association, annual dinner, 2003, "White Is Not The Only Modern Color", a survey of how much color has been a part of modernism from the 19th to the 21st centuries.
Morgan Library Lecture, March, 2003,The Garden in the City: Olmsted & Vaux and Victorian Town Planning.
The Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.
March, 2002 The Neighborhoods of New York from Greenwich Village to Harlem.
July, 2003 New York! New York! Seminars on the Brooklyn Bridge, the Els & the Subways, the New York Skyscraper & Grand Central Terminal.
November, 2004 A Celebration of Times Square on Its 100th Birthday.
Tours
Since 1975 I've been conducting special architectural and historical tours for various non
profit, museum, university and professional groups. These tours range from geographic neighborhoods (the Upper West Side, Park Slope, Wall Street, etc.) to stylistic overviews (Art Deco Skyscrapers of Midtown, Victorian Rowhouses of Brooklyn, the Apartment Houses of Upper Broadway, etc.).
Out-of-town tours have include:
Philadelphia;
Lyndhurst and the Hudson Valley Mansions;
London, including the works of Inigo Jones, Sir Christopher Wren, Robert Adam, John Soane and Philip Webb.
Publications
New York Walks; edited by Batia Plotch of the 92nd St. "Y" with John Morse; Henry Holt & Co., NY; 1992.
Contributed one of six walking tours: Midtown NY: The City's High
Charged Core.
The 1992 Berlitz Travellers Guide; edited by Alan Tucker; Berlitz Publishing Co., Inc., NY.
Contributed the essays on Architecture/New York and Queens.
Kew Gardens: Urban Village in the Big City; published by the Kew Gardens Council for Recreation and the Arts, Inc., Kew Gardens, NY; 1999.
An historic overview of Lewis' own NYC neighborhood, an early 20th century planned community in the Anglo-American "garden suburb" tradition-a tradition re-christened for the 21st century as "The New Urbanism".
City Secrets: Rome, edited by Robert Kahn; the Little Bookroom, NY; 1999.
Contributing writer; an insiders' guide to Rome, whose authors are all scholars who have taught or studied at the American Academy in Rome.
Video
City-Close Up Video Series on Five NY Neighborhoods, January-May 1997, NYC's Channel 25 (PBS). My own company, City Close-Up (with partner Mary Butler), joined with the New York Transit Authority to produce 5 short videos on 5 diverse, historically interesting city neighborhoods: Crown Heights, Jackson Heights, Fordham Road, St. George and the Upper West Side.
This video series was purchased by WNET, Channel 13 (New York City's PBS station) in the spring of 1998 for airing at various times between July, 1998,and June, 2001.
A Walk Up 42nd Street with David Hartman, aired August, 1998. Produced by Channel 13, directed by Emmy award winner James Nicoloro, co-hosted by myself and David Hartman (former anchor for Good Morning, America). Nominated for a 1998 Emmy award.
A Walk Up Broadway with David Hartman and Historian Barry Lewis, aired March, 1999. This video walking tour covers Broadway from Bowling Green to the Harlem River. It received excellent reviews and the estimated audience was 2 million viewers.
A Walk Through Harlem with David Hartman and Historian Barry Lewis, aired December, 1999. Third in the series for Channel 13. This legendary neighborhood was covered architecturally, historically and socially including a dozen interviews with Harlem luminaries. It received rave reviews in the New York Times, the Post and Newsday.
A Walk Around Brooklyn (Part One) with David Hartman and Historian Barry Lewis, aired August, 2000. Fourth in the series for Channel 13. This legendary "city masquerading as a borough" is covered from Greenpoint to Coney Island. Past and future are brought together as the "new" Brooklyn of the 21st century is given its place in the sun. The response of its debut week made it the most popular video to date in the Thirteen series.
A Walk In Greenwich Village with David Hartman and Historian Barry Lewis, aired March, 2001. Fifth in the Channel 13 series. One of New York's most famous neighborhoods is explored from the colonial period, when its quirky, independent street system set the tone for the community's future, through its numerous demographic cycles from aristocratic WASPs of the pre Civil War years to immigrant Italians, pioneering bohemians and psychedelic hippies of later generations.
A Walk Through Central Park with David Hartman and Historian Barry Lewis, aired December, 2001. Sixth in this series for Channel 13; produced with the generous co-operation of the Central Park Conservancy. Central Park's conception, design & construction in the mid-19th century sparked a generation of urban park building in the United States that civilized the cities that followed suit. Interviews include the Park's own dedicated staff plus those including Tony Bennett and George Plimpton who are its dedicated users and admirers.
A Walk Through Newark with David Hartman and Historian Barry Lewis, aired August, 2002. Seventh in this series for Channel 13, Newark today is on its way back with first-rate cultural facilities, varied housing stock, Olmsted designed parks & ready accessibility to just about everywhere. Newark is where Brooklyn was 25 years ago: un-discovered, under-priced but with a great future.
A Walk Through Hoboken with David Hartman and Historian Barry Lewis, aired August, 2003. Eighth in this series for Channel 13, Hoboken, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, has run the gamut of reputations, reviving in the 1970’s & 80’s with an alternative music and arts scene. Today its population remains varied, & the city itself is a light-filled, low rise and low-keyed alternative to Manhattan’s skyscraper culture.
A Walk Through Queens with David Hartman and Historian Barry Lewis, aired December, 2004. Ninth in the series, this is an overview of America's melting pot county peopled by immigrants from all over the world. Adding to the mixture, “garden suburb” neighborhoods like Forest Hills and Douglaston and premier cultural spots including the Noguchi Museum, PS 1 and the Museum of the Moving Image makes Queens very much part of the 21st century New York “scene”.
A Walk Through the Bronx with David Hartman and Historian Barry Lewis, aired December, 2005. Tenth in the series, walking the Bronx from the Grand Concourse to City Island, from the casitas of Morrisania to the lush landscape of Woodlawn we showed people that the urban uptown neighborhoods of the Bronx are coming back to life decades after the “South Bronx” became a synonym for urban meltdown.
Awards
Distinguished Service Award for 2001 by the New York Society of Architects
The William Breger Faculty Achievement Award, May 2001, New York School of Interior Design, for “excellence in teaching” and making the subject of architectural history “come alive not only for our students but for the public at large”.
Landmark Lion Award, 2005, from the Historic Districts Council, New York City.
Education
University of California at Berkeley
Sept. 1962 - June 1964; Spring Term, 1966. Majored in sociology and minored in history.
University of Paris, Sorbonne College
Cours de la civilisation francaise, Sept. 1964
June 1965, emphasis on French architectural and urban design history. Worked with group saving the Marais district from destruction.
New School for Social Research, New York City
Sept. 1966
June 1968. Awarded B.A. degree, June 1968.
American Academy in Rome
Visiting Scholars' Program to study Roman architecture from ancient times until modern, 1996.