famously said House Speaker Tip O'Neill. He was close. "All living is local" is more like it. Recent events draw our attention to the global and nation-wide realities that crowd our lives, but over which we have very little control (the Middle East, global warming, the plight of whales). Here at home, the realities press in as well, but affect us more deeply, more immediately, more personally. Sandy, the bursting and re-inflation of the real-estate bubble, the Barclays Center.
Living local is why LANDMARK WEST! exists. Why, for 28 years, it has been an aggressive advocate, defending the best of our neighborhood from West 59th to 110th Street, Central Park to Riverside Park. Why it was successful in expanding the number of landmark-protected Upper West Side buildings from 337 in 1985, to more than 2,800 today.
Every one of these structures, then at-risk from overheated development pressures, is landmark-protected today-immodestly, but accurately, as the direct result of LW!
As Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for Vanity Fair and the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School, said:
"You can never put a neighborhood on auto-pilot. LW!
will always have a role as the conscience of the neighborhood."*
But the message here is plain and simple:
LANDMARK WEST! needs you. The protection and enhancement of the neighborhood we live in-our everyday local life-does not happen by spontaneous combustion. It needs people. It needs organization. It needs you. Now. Please.
Please make sure you are a LANDMARK WEST! member. Contribute and join today by clicking here. Your annual membership contribution keeps LW! on its feet, standing up for the character and quality of life that makes the Upper West Side the Upper West Side-for you, me, neighbors, families, our children's children.
We opened with Tip O'Neill, we close with Robert A. Caro**:
"What's the need for an organization like LANDMARK WEST? Well, on the one side, you have these great forces, everything that we think of as progress ... What's on the other side to keep it balanced, to preserve enough of the 'old', so that the heart of a city remains? That's what LANDMARK WEST! is ... It's a rallying point for everybody ... concerned with preservation and what preservation means, which is keeping the spirit of a city."
CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT LANDMARK WEST! DELIVERS TO YOU!
Please come through for us, so that we can continue to come through for you, whenever and wherever you need us. Thanks so much for standing with LW! to protect the wonderful West Side!
To learn more about all we are doing right now to preserve the soul of our neighborhood--your neighborhood!--please visit our website and blog.
