Obituary
Jack Taylor, 93, preserved Ladies Mile, Tammany
BY GABE HERMAN
Jack Taylor, a preservationist who
fought to save many historic Downtown
buildings, died on Feb. 8 at age
93.A
mong Taylor’s victories were the
Ladies Mile row of century-old buildings
on Sixth Ave. in the upper teens
and low 20s blocks that were landmarked
in 1989; and the Tammany Hall
building at 100 E. 17 St., designated a
historic site in 2013 after a decades-long
struggle.
A few years ago, Taylor fought a proposal
to add to the Tammany building a
turtle shell-shaped dome, referencing a
statue inside the building.
“It’s nothing that preservationists
want, as far as I’m concerned,” Taylor
told The Villager in 2015. “We pressured
the Landmarks Preservation
Commission for 29 years to landmark
Tammany Hall — and now we got into
this.”
Taylor also noted in the article, “The
Tammany building was designed to
simulate the old Federal Hall on Wall
St., where Washington took the oath of
offi ce. The original Federal Hall was a
Georgian design — there certainly was
no dome.”
Marjorie Berk, who knew Taylor
since 1981 and worked with him in the
Union Square Community Coalition,
said he had a remarkable knowledge of
the city’s buildings.
“It’s impossible to describe how
strong historic preservation was in
him,” she said, noting his leadership in
so many preservation efforts. “He was
extremely passionate about keeping as
much of New York as possible.”
Taylor was a board member at
U.S.C.C., and was also on the board of
the Historic Districts Council, which
Jack Taylor, left, giving a Ladies Mile tour in 2010. He was a leader of
the effort to landmark the blocks of former department store buildings.
Photo by Miriam Berman
bestowed on him its Landmarks Lion
award in 1992. He was on the landmarks
committees for both Community
Boards 5 and 6, and was also involved
with the Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood
Association and the Gramercy Park
Block Association.
“He worked tirelessly, I don’t think
he could ever be replaced,” said Anna
Sawaryn, chairperson of the Coalition
to Save the East Village, who also
worked with Taylor at U.S.C.C. “When
he talked about old buildings, how wonderful
they are and how they need to
be landmarked, it was like listening to
a poem.”
Jack Taylor lived on E. 18th St., according
to Carol Greitzer, a former
councilmember who worked with Taylor
on some preservation efforts, including
an unsuccessful effort to save composer
Antonin Dvorak’s house on E. 17th St.
Taylor was born on April 25, 1925, in
the Hotel Earle, now called the Washington
Square Hotel, at 103 Waverly
Place, across from the park.
He attended Trinity prep school in the
city, where he was in a play with Truman
Capote, and then went to Phillips
Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts,
where he knew George H.W. Bush, according
to Berk.
Taylor served in the Army during the
later years of World War II, and was
stationed in England. He later attended
Georgetown University and worked for
the Washington Post before being an
editor at Family Circle Magazine, according
to The New York Times.
Taylor’s preservation work started
after he retired as an editor, when he
fought to save Luchow’s restaurant on
E. 14 St. The famed eatery was eventually
torn down in the 1990s.
Though not every effort was successful,
Taylor was instrumental in saving
many of the historic buildings around
Union Square.
In 2015, Greitzer and Taylor co-wrote
a brochure for U.S.C.C. that marked the
50th anniversary of the city’s Landmarks
Law and noted the 14 buildings
the group successfully supported for
landmark designation. Some of those
buildings include the former Bank of
the Metropolis, at 31 Union Square
West; The Lincoln Building, at 1 Union
Square West; the former Union Square
Savings Bank, at 20 Union Square East;
and Tammany Hall, across from the
park’s northeast corner.
“He was a nice man, had a great disposition,”
said Sawaryn, who recalled
spending time with him every year at
U.S.C.C.’s street fair. “He was wonderful
to be around. I’m going to miss him
tremendously.”
Greitzer recalled that Taylor refused
to buy a computer. She would receive
letters in the mail from him, often relevant
articles that he had duplicated, with
even the envelope addresses punched
out on his typewriter.
She said if you were on a board or
committee with Taylor, someone would
always have to be appointed to call him
to let him know about the next meeting
date.
“He was very proud that he got along
without a computer,” she said. “I tried
to tell him he was inconveniencing a lot
of other people, but that didn’t seem to
make any difference.”
Berk said he was modest and didn’t
want the limelight, instead preferring to
focus on the preservation work.
Sawaryn said of Taylor, “It’s going to
take a lot of people to fi ll his shoes because
he did a lot of wonderful things
for our community.”
Rivera and Rosenthal call for softer sirens
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
On Feb. 13, Councilmembers
Helen Rosenthal and Carlina
Rivera introduced legislation
to change sirens on city ambulances
from the American wail to the European
two-tone.
The new legislation is a push to reduce
the amount of noise in the city,
one of New Yorkers’ most frequent
complaints. According to the city’s
NYC Open Data, there were 388,383
noise complaints made to 311 in 2018.
“Noise pollution is an often unrecognized
but very real public health issue,”
said Rosenthal.
Studies have shown that exposure
to chronic environmental noise, like
construction and traffi c, increase adverse
health effects, such as sleep disturbance,
cardiovascular disease and
hearing loss.
Rosenthal, who represents the Upper
West Side, has received many complaints
from constituents about sirens,
especially from ambulances, since her
fi rst year in offi ce. In 2017, her offi ce
reached out to Mt. Sinai Hospital about
the complaints.
The hospital is no stranger to siren
complaints, according to Joe Davis, senior
director of EMS Services at Mt. Sinai
Hospital. Mt. Sinai has a total of 24
ambulances that responded to 100,000
emergency calls last year.
By the time Rosenthal’s offi ce
reached out to the hospital, however,
Mt. Sinai had already started testing
the effect of European two-tone sirens
— which emit a high and then a low
tone — with four of their ambulances
to address complaints.
Davis learned in 2017 that the Whelen
brand sirens used on Mt. Sinai ambulances
can emit a variety of tones.
The two-tone siren was then tested on
four ambulances.
“It’s funny that we changed it, and
the complaints started to go away,” he
Davis.
After hearing positive feedback from
the drivers and crew, Davis decided to
present the two-tone siren sound at a
community board meeting at the hospital
to gauge public opinion.
“I told them what was available, what
we had, and it’s funny they all picked
the ‘high-low,’ ” said Davis.
Now all of the hospital’s two-dozen
ambulances use the less-piercing European
two-tone.
“We still get them,” said Davis about
noise complaints to the hospital.
People will always hate sirens, Davis
conceded. “But it’s not as many as we
had,” he said.
8 February 21 - March 6, 2019 MEX Schneps Media