Episode 103: Building Communitiy Through Preservation with Kelly Carroll

Written By Nathalie Kalbach

About This Episode

In this episode, Nat speaks with preservation expert Kelly Carroll about the power of community-driven historic preservation. Kelly shares how neighborhoods across New York City have successfully advocated for their historic districts and why even unsuccessful preservation campaigns can strengthen community bonds and build civic engagement.

Meet Kelly Carroll

Kelly Carroll is a preservationist whose career has focused on empowering communities to protect their historic resources. A Buffalo native with a deep appreciation for industrial heritage, Kelly has worked with diverse neighborhoods across New York City through preservation advocacy and education. She currently serves at the Atlantic Avenue Business Improvement District in Brooklyn, where she champions legacy businesses and historic storefronts while balancing preservation with progress.

Connect with Kelly Carroll:

● Instagram: @kellycarrollpreservation

Key Insights

  • True preservation comes from the ground up – from residents who want to protect their neighborhoods, not from top-down government mandates

  • Communities of color have been at the forefront of preservation efforts in Brooklyn, seeking self-determination for their neighborhoods

  • Historic neighborhoods provide what many people want today: human scale, mature trees, walkable streets, and community connection

  • Even unsuccessful preservation campaigns create lasting community connections and teach people about civic engagement

  • Legacy businesses are crucial to neighborhood identity and deserve recognition through programs like the NY State Historic Business Preservation Registry

  • Successful preservation examples include the Crown Heights North Historic Districts and East 25th Street in East Flatbush

  • The Waldorf Astoria's interior landmark designation shows how public engagement can influence preservation outcomes

Visual Documentation

A movie about the Walentyna Janta House, mentioned by Kelly in the podcast, which unfortunately got demolished.

Mohamad Salem in front of Tripoli on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn - the restaurant opened 53 years ago. Courtesy of Kelly Carroll

While the Waldorf Astoria was under Construction in November 1930, they wanted to show what exceptional service could be expected once finished -

Related Resources

Connections to Jersey City

Kelly draws parallels between Jersey City and Brooklyn through their:

  • Industrial waterfront history

  • Immigration patterns

  • Mom-and-pop businesses

  • Historic infrastructure

  • Religious and ethnic institutions

  • Abandoned railroad infrastructure

  • Hand-painted street signs and other "hidden treasures"

Explore Further

On my Substack, I'll be sharing articles on "Jersey City's Historic Businesses" and "Hidden Art Deco Treasures of Jersey City" inspired by my conversation with Kelly. I've already begun exploring this theme through a painting of a local historic storefront, connecting our conversation about preservation to the visual documentation of Jersey City's commercial heritage.

Coming Up Next

Join me for a conversation with artist and activist Jin Jung, whose ceramic plaques throughout Jersey City honor forgotten histories and tell powerful stories of people and places that shaped our community.

Connect with Nat

Website: natkalbach.com

Substack: Nat’s Sidewalk Stories

Instagram: @natkalbach

Email: podcast@natkalbach.com

Music: Our theme music is "How You Amaze Me," composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach, Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler, and Pat Van Dyke.

Support the Show: Subscribe to the podcast and sign up for Nat's Substack to receive additional stories and visuals that complement each conversation.

Share Your Story: What sidewalk stories have you discovered in your neighborhood? Share them with Nat through email or social media.

Nat's Sidewalk Stories explores the intersection of place, community, and storytelling through conversations with practitioners, community leaders, and local changemakers. New episodes release on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month through August, with a break in September before Season 2 begins in October.

Full Transcript

Kelly Carroll Transcript

Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability while preserving the conversation's content and meaning.

Nathalie: [00:00:00] Welcome to Nat's Sidewalk Stories. I'm Nat Kalbach, an artist and storyteller exploring the places, people, and hidden histories that make our neighborhoods vibrant.

Today I am excited to welcome Kelly Carroll, who was once my professor at NYU, and she opened my eyes to how preservation is really about community and not just architecture. Kelly has this wonderful ability to see the human stories in old buildings, and she helps neighborhoods find their voice. What resonated with me most in our conversation is Kelly's perspective, that even when preservation efforts don't succeed in saving a building, they can succeed in bringing people together and [00:01:00] creating lasting connections.

Her insights inspired me to look at Jersey City's historic businesses with fresh eyes and even create new artwork capturing these storefronts that tell our city's story.

Hey, Kelly, so good to see you

Kelly: Thank you for having me.

Nathalie: So Kelly, for those of our listeners that don't know you, can you share a little bit about yourself and your work in preservation?

Kelly: Absolutely. I have loved historic preservation since I was a small child growing up in Buffalo, New York. I didn't know that historic preservation was a thing that people did or studied or appreciated, until I was much older, probably pretty late into high school, honestly. The internet helped a lot with that. Looking at pictures of buildings in Buffalo that I remembered from my childhood and, um, Buffalo is important to [00:02:00] mention because it not only has an incredible architectural patrimony, but because of its trajectory as, kind of a booming industrial to gilded age city.

It was once the fourth largest American city, at the turn of the century. And what, what then led to a lot of its decline, like a lot of other cities in the mid century through the seventies is that there was so much disinvestment in the city that what ultimately happened was the city ended up being kind of preserved because of this disinvestment. There wasn't investment that was developing it, but there also wasn't enough funding to demolish all the things that were there. And so I grew up in kind of this landscape of 19th and early 20th century architecture that was essentially frozen.

As I got older, [00:03:00] I studied history for undergrad. I was not able to go to a pie in the sky school of my choice. So I chose history first. Um, and I studied history with a heavy emphasis, on research topics like architectural history and public history. I was able to study abroad in Scotland for a semester in Glasgow, where I gained the perspective of how Europe deals with their historic built environments.

And I found it very easy to deal with and just natural. This makes so much sense to me. I was a recession graduate, so I took a year off, and after finding no productive work, I swiftly enrolled, like many others did, in graduate school. To this day, we were the largest class at Columbia University's Historic Preservation Program.

We were the recession class. I think there were nearly [00:04:00] 40 of us, which is unusual, it was a lot of fun and I was able to use New York City as a classroom with wonderful instructors and colleagues. And ever since graduating, I have made it my personal mission to continue to pursue preservation, even if I'm not directly employed in preservation as much as I once was.

So, that looked like working in non profits for many years, particularly preservation advocacy. And then, in recent years after COVID, I moved into preservation education. And now I work in a cultural nonprofit and infuse preservation wherever I can.

Nathalie:

One of our personal connections is that Kelly and I actually met first when she was my Professor at NYU in the historic preservation program, where our dear friend [00:05:00] Chelsea Castro and I attended from Jersey City, which was kind of fun that we as the Jersey City crew were there.

And what we learned was that Kelly lived for a short time in Jersey City and had some real knowledge about our city and our beautiful buildings and architecture. But one of my, mine, and also I think Chelsea's favorite moment sitting in your class, was, learning about what you call community based preservation. You really opened our minds and eyes about, what does that mean or why is that important? What is community based preservation? Instead of maybe going around and saying, hey, this is a great building, it's old, it has a lot of architectural features and we should preserve it. So can you tell us a little bit more about community driven preservation?

Kelly: Yeah, [00:06:00] that class has shifted a lot over the years as I update it. There were originally two classes. One was, bottom up preservation, proactive community requests from neighborhoods, and then there was this class that followed that, which was called top down preservation, which is where the city was going in and, I guess proactively prioritizing neighborhoods for preservation because they were going to be up zoned under different city policy. So the bottom up class is really the cornerstone of my career, and I would say of the course that I still teach. But I have to shout out my co faculty, Francis Morrone and Carol Clarke. That class is based on, my 10 years of experience working directly with community members, residents, owners, interested parties, like community board members, historical [00:07:00] societies, and everyday people. In New York, especially since the early 2000s, there's been like this really severe ramp up of gentrification, which I said this a few weeks ago. I think we need a new word.

The gentrification that happened with the brownstone movement in the 60s, 70s, and 80s is not what's happening now in cities where you have private equity firms buying up. Um, so you, you know, you have blocks of corporate ownership not human beings anymore. I don't think that's gentrification. I think it's something else. But regardless, these forces created an environment in New York that really felt like everything was slipping away from people. And this most drastically took the form of severe teardowns in communities, in every borough, especially communities that [00:08:00] were historically low density and didn't have the zoning, contextual zoning that disincentivizes those kinds of demolitions.

So it's, was an era where, and it still is, you can make a lot of money by tearing down a smaller building and building a bigger one, simple as that. Um, and these neighborhoods that had more or less looked the same for the past hundred years were suddenly vanishing overnight. With that, bringing a lot of other issues, not just architectural ones, but, perceptions of safety, public nuisances, such as, you know, illegal dumping, people moving into these teardowns, you know, the famous rats that the city can't conquer.

Working with communities really opened my eyes that preservation in my experience, and this is what I will say over and over and over again, uh, really comes from people who want it. There's a prevailing narrative [00:09:00] generated by real estate interests mostly, or people who are just simply uninformed.

And I've never spoken to anyone who's tried to landmark where they live, that there's a this top down government's coming for your house. And, and this is why we can't afford to live here anymore. And, It's, or it's only for rich white people, and it's really a bunch of nonsense. The majority of communities I worked with during my career and continue to help, were communities of color who really were seeking some self determination and futures of where they lived and the properties that they owned.

I really think that community preservation is, it's this unsung hero in preservation. The historic districts council does a great job of of elevating those neighborhoods and those community groups, but it really, [00:10:00] at its most fundamental existence is a grassroots movement.

Neighborly coalition building activity that brings people together to make a land use change where they live. And I, I can't think of anything more democratic or equitable than the pursuit of that process by its citizens.

Historic neighborhoods have key elements that are now very desirable for a lot of people, and these elements are a human scale, mature trees or the presence of greenery, mature greenery in general, walkable neighborhoods. Urban infrastructure, things like sidewalks or pedestrian bridges, foot bridges, curbs, planting, things like that.

And so I think there's been a shift in these generations away from my car, my driveway, my suburb to, [00:11:00] I want to be able to walk.

And get a coffee or a glass of wine. And I want to be able to know who I live next to instead of having a, you know, a giant chain link fence with massive trees planted along it. So I think there's been a paradigm shift in terms of what people are desiring culturally. But I also think that historic neighborhoods didn't always start out as nice neighborhoods.

So a lot of the historic districts in New York City that are now considered unattainable for most, so places like Park Slope or the Upper West Side, or even Tribeca downtown were not, the gilded, shiny, upper class spots that they were when they were designated in, in the early, early seventies and into the eighties. They were neighborhoods on the cusp of great change.

They were heading in a better direction. And that was part of the reason for the historic district designations. Those designations were [00:12:00] supposed to help along the, the neighborhoods by when they eventually became invested in. And again, there would be guidelines about how to best preserve them living in a historic district, I can absolutely point to some of the most iconic commercial corridors in New York City are also historic districts.

Nathalie: I think these are such, important points you're referring to when it's like, yes, I mean, we're traveling a lot to walkable cities, all over the U.S., but also Europe. Why are we going there? Why would we love Amsterdam or London? Because we, we like the historic houses, but also being able to just walk and do everything without a car and maybe public transportation, but that's a different topic as well. But I also like that you pointed out that these neighborhoods preserved in New York did not look like they look right now, which I think a lot of people [00:13:00] don't see or it's sometimes I think, hard for people to see that when they see neighborhoods in Jersey City.

And they may not see the potential, or the buildings may be hidden, through vinyl siding, people just don't see that potential in these neighborhoods right away.

And thinking about that, these neighborhoods look maybe as they were looking a couple decades ago, and New York is an interesting thought process to go through, but let's go back for a second to the community driven preservation. Do you have a specific example that you would like to talk about how a community in New York or somewhere else that you've worked with, basically advocated for their own district or area to be designated?

Kelly: I will always go back to Brooklyn [00:14:00] communities. I think about the hard work of the Crown Heights North Association and the work that they have been able to achieve to get three historic districts in central Brooklyn.

It's just incredible. If you haven't ever been to Crown Heights, you're really missing out. You could get lost. Walking block after block, all the buildings are different architects, but the styles, even if they're different styles, just blend so seamlessly with each other.

And with the tree canopies and stoops and the churches, houses of worship, schools, some apartment buildings, it's just incredible. And, that's all due to the Crown Heights North Association. They're dedicated and that's an organization, by the way, that has no staff. So they were able to accomplish a tremendous amount of work.

I also immediately think about, um, Zulmilena Then who is the founder of preserving East New York. She is a [00:15:00] preservation architect that was active in her community. And started getting more involved when she learned that East New York would be the first neighborhood rezoned by then Mayor de Blasio in 2016.

And she took it upon herself to create Preserving East New York and Got one building landmarked. It'll be the 10 year anniversary of that rezoning pretty soon. So I think we need to come up with a new list to bother the electeds and the landmarks commission about. It's really remarkable what she was able to accomplish because I think the administration started with East New York because they didn't think they were gonna get a lot of pushback.

I think it was, you know, it's this community at the end of the line. No one's really looked at it from a land use perspective since the early 1960s. It's had a lot of disinvestment from the [00:16:00] city itself. There's redlining. There's all kinds of things going on. And she was able to, in coalition with others, including the historic districts council and the community board and elected officials get this one dairy landmark, which is, it's a remarkable individual landmark.

And when the city was that was not a part of their playbook at all. They were going to go in, up zone. Landmarking was not part of the, the urban planning process. I will say this also over and over again, that historic preservation should be always part of any comprehensive planning process.

You cannot go into a community and propose changes to it without doing a historic resources report. Like, it's really mind blowing to me in a city that has the largest municipal landmarks preservation commission, that that's not like square one. [00:17:00] So despite all that, she was able to get a building landmarked.

And not only that, but was able to be a steward successfully enough that when that building was landmarked we were all able to work together to create a better outcome for the intervention that was built there, which was essentially a high rise built adjacent to the factory portion of the building, including the preservation of its smokestack as a legible, character defining feature of an industrial complex which they wanted to demolish.

'Cause it would've been in the, the way of people's views. She even went as far and had a peer structural review done of the chimney because they were saying it couldn't be saved. So, and yeah, we got the chimney. So I would say her. And I would also say, Julia Charles from East 25th street and East Flatbush, it's another community where.

It's kind of, it's hilarious, but it's not funny actually. It's the first landmark to ever be [00:18:00] designated was in her community district in 1965, and then they never went back. They designated the, I'm pretty sure it's the Wyckoff house.

No one went back to East Flatbush from the city, like, until 2020. And, and decided, oh, there's like, there's other stuff here. And there is, there is some great architecture there. It's not technically in her community district, but there's some older Dutch stuff.

There's the old Sears Roebuck, which is an art deco building. There was nothing in the actual community district. So, um, Julia Charles started this process before the pandemic, and then during the pandemic was able to create a really amazing preservation campaign that got, her block of which is East 25th Street between Avenue D and Clarendon Road landmarked and there are these beautiful Renaissance Revival [00:19:00] bow fronted limestone and brownstone, homes from the early 20th century, and they have these incredible gardens and, there's a thriving Caribbean Community there, which is also part of their culture. A lot of them brought seeds and, being gardeners and planting, having flora is really important to them.

If you've ever seen this street, it's, I think they have won greenest block in Brooklyn now, five times, I think I've lost count. So I would say those three communities all kind of near each other, in central Brooklyn. Communities that are not heavily served by transit, very low scale communities, communities that had historically been redlined and communities that started having African American and Caribbean populations move in since the great migration.

And they've been amazing stewards of these neighborhoods ever since, and all the [00:20:00] credit goes to them that they are landmarked.

Nathalie:

Yeah, and also neighborhoods that have seen probably an influx of new people and heightened interest in changing the neighborhoods, making it all the more important for them to fight for their neighborhoods and preserve it.

So that's really interesting. Kelly, you also talked in your class and that is something that really resonated as something to think about, about the, I remember we had one lesson and I don't want to deter anyone who's interested in taking this class, a fantastic class, fantastic program, but I think one of the most important lessons was actually when you were talking about things that have not worked out.

Meaning that, a community tried to preserve a building, and it did not end up with the designation or even saving the building, but you said [00:21:00] something that happened. This is still important, that these unsuccessful efforts can actually strengthen communities in unexpected ways.

Can you talk a little bit towards that? What does that mean? Or can you share an example, How a community came together and then maybe did not succeed in their initial goal, but still something great came out of this.

Kelly: I have two examples. One is the Walentyna Janta House, in Elmhurst, Queens, or it was in Elmhurst, Queens.

This was proposed to be a cultural landmark. It would have been the city's only landmark affiliated, with the history of World War II, particularly, from an ethnic Polish standpoint, and through the lens of the Polish underground and the, the activism that the woman who owned it and lived there until her death right before the [00:22:00] pandemic.

Her role in being a translator of essentially what was the first reports of what the Nazis were doing over there, which took many years for anyone to believe. Helped the Allied cause, with liberation and also, of course, later with the Nuremberg trials, and even later in history with the prosecutions.

The Elmhurst History and Cemeteries Preservation Society which is a group made up of local Elmhurst residents, as well as there's some community board leadership. They, they do a fantastic job of doing neighborhood walking tours and decided after successfully getting James Parish House landmarked after the City initially said no, because they actually said it was too restored true story. Um, they, they were able to overturn that with this coalition building of, you know, nonprofit organizations, the elected officials, et [00:23:00] cetera. And they, for many years, had council member Daniel Dromm as their representative, who was always an ally to preservation.

So they started to, to try to, and we worked together to try to landmark the Janta house. It was not successful for many reasons, but it did bring together a broader community, it helped them grow in, in ways that were, were, would have been unforeseen. So, for example, because of the international implications of this historic site, it, this, it brought in conversations with national media, with international organizations.

Including the Polish consulate, including Polish media, Polish newspapers, Polish TV. And it also brought in the [00:24:00] surviving victims of the Holocaust. We had a candlelight vigil one night. These were events and activations that spanned beyond just This wooden house in Queens.

It really elevated it. We had a celebration in Buffalo, because this woman, Walentyna Janta, like many Polish people settled in Buffalo before eventually going elsewhere when they were displaced people after the war. A lot of them couldn't go home. And even though it was not successful, it still is important, even as an exercise because it showed that group in that community that they were able to leverage political attention, political activation, bring about some real change. There was a street co naming, and this activation and participation at a civic level is never a futile exercise. There are people all over this city who will never interact with an elected official in their life, and that's fine for them, but I think that once the light switch gets turned on to engage politically, maybe you don't get what you want, but you get on the path to what you want.

And you know that your voice has power. I think it changes you forever and gives you agency. As a person to create change in your community and know that it's your civic responsibility to do so. So I think even though that was lost, the community, I will say they're starting to dip their toe again. This is what happens a lot, with preservation efforts that fail, is that their people become very crestfallen after they've [00:26:00] worked very hard for many years, and then the thing that they want doesn't happen, can be very exhausting, and it's, it's, it's like a, you're, you're mourning, but they're coming back to it, and it's never a lost cause.

Nathalie: Yeah, I could see that. The story of her, was actually told and, amplified in a way that the story might have never been told if the building would have been, designated right away, which it sounds weird, but in a way that story reached more people and stuck. The story lives on, right?

Kelly: Yeah, that's an excellent point. Through the advocacy campaigns, whether it was the vigil, the lectures, the heart bombing that we did for Valentine's day or podcast that we did, it really did, you know, getting people in Buffalo to email New York [00:27:00] city landmarks commission.

It, it really did get the story out about. Her legacy and in this celebration of her life, right after the time that she died to which I, I think she would have appreciated.

Nathalie: And, seeing that your voice can be heard and can change something, maybe not in the way that you think, but you can see that something was shifting, that is important to see and gives you a different perspective of power structures as well.

I want to shift real quick to your work that you do right now with the Atlantic Avenue business improvement district that's in Brooklyn where you work right now. That is a very interesting perspective to preservation. The street reminds me personally a lot of a street here in Jersey City where I often think, wow, that is such a cute street, on Monticello Ave. How does your [00:28:00] role personally connect you right now to your preservation background on Atlantic Avenue?

Kelly: Right now, most exciting thing that connects back is I just sent a flyer out to everyone to come to getting one of our historic businesses listed on the relatively new New York State Historic Business Preservation Registry. So, it's an honorific registry. But so is the national register. So I think it's good to have these different tools, even if there's not necessarily a layer of protection, I think celebration and awareness and documentation, all these things are important. And so when I started a couple of years ago, I noticed that Atlantic Avenue had so many [00:29:00] legacy businesses. Which is different than other New York City commercial corridors. I love having concentrations of them.

Bay Ridge is kind of like that. There's a lot of old restaurants and stuff that have been around since the sixties. And it's just fantastic. And that's the same here, even some places are much older. And so, Senator Andrew Gounardes, his office had a call for, what are some 50 or plus old businesses in his district and I had a list ready to go.

One of them is Tripoli, which opened in 1972 by Mohamad Salem, who is from the city Tripoli in Lebanon, and it's going to be just wonderful. We're going to have food, there'll be remarks from the elected officials, it will bring people in.

To me, the most important part is bringing in new people from the community. Maybe their go to spot is more of the posh places we have on Atlantic Avenue because we also [00:30:00] a lot of those and you need a reservation and there's a line out the door but maybe the best restaurant you haven't tasted yet in your community is just around the corner.

And so I'm hoping to bring in new people so that we can sustain this business and they can appreciate part of the neighborhood's history, which is deeply, deeply rooted in food and immigrant culture, specifically from the Middle East. I have conducted walking tours for the Municipal Art Society, of Atlantic Avenue from approximately like the BQE to 4th Avenue, which is the district.

I engage in design work for new construction. I sit on a committee with the Historic Districts Council, which reviews all changes to landmarked buildings that may fall within my catchment area, because I do have four historic districts here, which are Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Boreham Hill, and the Boreham Hill Extension.

And I have also, because of the [00:31:00] special nature of our architecture, I've elevated this visually in all of our media so that when you click on our Instagram or go to our website, It's very clear that this is a really cute street and it has amazing wooden storefronts and great architecture.

And it looks like the main street that you want to head out and stroll. If that is my only job and if that is what I can get people to do, then I've done my job right.

Nathalie: It doesn't only look like it, it is actually Chelsea and I were very lucky to come and do our Christmas shopping there.

So, but yeah, that is an interesting way to how you are balancing preservation but also progress in your own district and by the way, you do a fantastic job. Fantastic newsletter, which I love, how you highlight the businesses around, but also have these little bits of historic areas, like sometimes you have just [00:32:00] the, I forgot what it's called, the store, like, Shield, I think,

Kelly: I do. Are you talking about the mystery details?

Nathalie: Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Kelly: Yeah. Once a month I will do a mystery detail, which is like an architectural feature that is very prominent to me. But to other people it might be kind of more, it feels more like a scavenger hunt.

And I really, I do it to encourage people to step out and really look and engage with the architecture. If they guess correctly, they get free stuff from my organization.

Nathalie: I think that's great. So, Kelly, you lived both in Brooklyn and Jersey City. What parallels do you see? In Brooklyn and in Jersey City?

Kelly: Um, for sure. The industrial history, especially that of a working waterfront, you know, the immigration patterns are very similar. Would have had the same types of people building the bridges and tunnels [00:33:00] that connect us growing up in Buffalo, Buffalo is a blue collar town.

It's a working class city. It's what I connect with the most. No matter where I've lived, I've always kind of looked for blue collar Buffalo, where I can find it. And Jersey City really felt like that to me. And so does my current neighborhood of Bayridge. I think it's the low scale.

I think it's the mom and pop owned businesses, um, including just, you know, dive, like dive bars with old interiors that haven't been touched. And the presence of these old ethnic organizations. And old Catholic churches that are around, the Armory in Jersey city, which is also an old armor, a couple of them in Buffalo and there's one in Bay Ridge, but you could never recognize it.

Now it's like this ugly storage facility basically wrapped in trash, I think the proliferation of family owned businesses, [00:34:00] like you can get a great Italian dinner in Jersey City or Bay Ridge or Buffalo and that recipe is from that spot and you're not going to find it anywhere else.

And the walkability, especially in Jersey, not so much as Brooklyn. But what I loved about Jersey City was all of the leftover railroad Infrastructure and just how industrial Jersey city was. It reminded me of Buffalo so much, just all these abandoned factories and railroad tracks that were left behind and cemeteries.

It's almost like a past, crying out, like, look at me. And Bay Ridge is not as old as Buffalo or Jersey City. It was pretty much settled after the R opened for the most part. There were some people who would argue with me about that, which I understand, but for the most part, if we're talking about development, Jersey [00:35:00] City just has little treasures in it.

Like how Buffalo does, I was walking on Sunday night there. You can still find hand painted street signs, that are, it's like, you can see where someone had the paintbrush strokes because it's been planed away by the weather over the years. Buffalo has things like that too. It's like, how is this still here?

And that's just, to me, it's so fascinating. So I would say that, and the fact that, and the diversity. I think Buffalo, Jersey City and Brooklyn are so diverse we're all kind of crammed in, but we all get by somehow without too much trouble with one another. I really love that.

Nathalie: Yeah, I love that. That's a great note. So, Kelly, I have a signature question that is a little bit different for everyone, but similar enough. So for you, it is: if you could step into any storefront or building, you've helped preserve at any [00:36:00] point in its history, which would it be and what moment would you want to witness?

Kelly: This is of course, a difficult question. When I was, when I'm thinking about it, I, I had to do three things. One, I had to remember that a lot of the things I've worked on were not successful. I would think of a place that I'd want to talk about. And then I'd be like, that actually was not a success story, which is good.

Par for the course with preservation. You have to, you have to be prepared to lose. It got me thinking about how much of what I've helped to preserve has actually been pretty vernacular places where normal people live and lived in general, in my life, that's what I like.

I've never been one to really follow celebrity culture. I really like working people's history, social history, vernacular, architecture, et cetera. Um, but, but, but, I really went through everything [00:37:00] and I remembered that years ago, we worked very hard to preserve the interiors of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

The Waldorf Astoria, the latest iteration of it, which was completed in 1931, in 2016 was bought by a foreign company. And I only say foreign because we were very worried that someone from overseas would not understand the inherent value of the interiors or the building because it's not their shared culture.

So in reaction to this, my colleague at the time, Barbara Zay, she and I visited the Waldorf Astoria. There was no one in there. We walked through every ballroom. We went into all of these antechambers. We went all the way to the 19th floor, which used to be the skylight roof.

And there was nobody around. There was like, I'm like, how are we, [00:38:00] like, we're in the middle of like midtown Manhattan. I mean, we just went through the entire hotel, photographed all of the original art deco, most of the original. The building did go underneath the renovation in 85, but there was, the, not a lot was disturbed.

So we documented everything and then we came back and with the pictures and historic evidence, mostly postcards that we found on eBay we made a self-guided walking tour of the interiors. Like we found the floor plans and then we had like our whole message was go to the Waldorf and see the interior before it's gone because it might be gone.

And the hilarious part is then we linked with the Art Deco Society to announce this self guided tour with the Art Deco and with Historic Districts Council Megan Weatherby was the director at that time. And then after everyone does their self-guided tour we'll all go have a drink in Peacock Alley. So 300 [00:39:00] people descended on the Waldorf Astoria to do this on the night that we advertised and we had no idea that it was actually the same night in the building as their shareholders meeting.

So this new buyer probably was like, Whoa, people really care about this building. Yeah, it was kind of hilariously miraculous. And I think because of the sum of these ingredients and the press that we got and the pomp of the Waldorf being synonymous with luxury it's a brand. It's like a global brand of like the best.

Anyway, so all of that to say the Landmarks Commission moved pretty fast. And they, they did, they landmarked it a year later in 2017. The other reason this was kind of miraculous is because it's very difficult to get the city to do interiors of land. It's very complicated legally, [00:40:00] and you have to have a lot of buy-in from the owner.

And even when an interior is landmarked, it doesn't mean that it will perpetually be landmarked. If the use changes, it's very complicated. We got it landmarked. I would love to go see the Waldorf after prohibition ended, because I know that they built that whole thing with bars in it, even though it was technically illegal when it was under construction.

But I would love to go in the depression, I mean, even to just see that part of town, you know, everything, all the deco that was under construction or brand new to see like that style of architecture brand new to see, um, the ballrooms and the bars and the restaurants full of people. Like, I never have seen that side of the Waldorf, it was Barbara and I, sneaking around ballrooms with no lights on in 2016, I would love to see the hotel full, and I would love to see the [00:41:00] clothing.

And the fashion, I really love like the depression era, like WPA era in general, I think it's a really interesting time. Especially stylistically, I love it. Um, from design, whether that's furniture or automobiles or architecture or jewelry, I appreciate the era a lot. Unlike other art deco, skyscrapers of that time.

It wouldn't be the same to observe life in the Chrysler building or the Empire State building. People went to the Waldorf to be seen. It would be an incredible snapshot of humanity to see: Who's there? Who might I see that's, you know, famous?

Or what did people dress like to be seen in New York City in the 1930s, on the eve of World War II? So that's what I would love to see.

Nathalie: I would love to join you. That sounds amazing. And I think it is reopening soon, right? Yes.

Kelly: I have to check. I need to check because I want to go back. I haven't been since and [00:42:00] COVID slowed everything down with the, you know, there was a construction pause for a long time. So that it's behind a little bit because of that. But yeah, we should all go back. That should be a future field trip.

Nathalie: Yes, I think this is a future field trip for you, me and Chelsea and whoever else wants to go. Maybe in your finest, art deco dress. That was wonderful. Thank you so much, Kelly, for being a guest. Super interesting. Lots of great insights and I add a couple things in the show notes that are referring visually or in terms of research to the things that you have mentioned throughout our interview. Thank you so much.

Kelly: Thank you so much for having me.

Nathalie: Thank you, Kelly for this conversation that's already inspired me to create new artwork of our own historic storefronts here in Jersey City. Our talk reminded me that preservation isn't just about the past. It's [00:43:00] about creating the kind of human scale, walkable neighborhoods we all want to live in.

Kelly's passion for community driven preservation has me looking at familiar streets with new appreciation. I will share some new articles on my Substack on Jersey City's Art Deco Treasures and our historic businesses that have weathered decades of change.

Thank you for listening to Nat's Sidewalk Stories. I'm your host, Nat Kalbach. Join me next time as we continue exploring the people and places that make our communities unique. Our theme music is How You Amaze Me, composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by local musicians Jim Kalbach, Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler, and Pat Van Dyke.

You can find show notes, more information about my guests and related content at my website natkalbach.com. My next guest will be Jersey City Artist and activist Jin Jung. Until [00:44:00] next time, and remember to look up at those beautiful old buildings as you walk through your neighborhood, each one has a story to tell.

Nathalie Kalbach
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Episode #102: Persistence and Place with Charlene Burke