Carolyn Wade Cassady Kent (July 20, 1935 – August 22, 2009) was an American historical preservationist and activist who lived most of her life in New York City on Riverside Drive,2009 Manhattan phone book under Edward & Carolyn Kent one block west of her alma mater Columbia University. As founder of Manhattan Community Board 9's Parks and Landmarks CommitteeManhattan Community Board 9 Parks and Landmarks Committee minutes 1990–2009 and co-founder of the Morningside Heights Historic District CommitteeManhattan Community Board 9 reso, dated September 20, 2010, stating that Kent and O'Donnell co-founded the Morningside Heights District Committee in 1996Morningside Heights Historic District Committee minutes 1996–2009 she worked to advocate for the architectures and communities of Morningside Heights, Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights in close collaboration with community, city and state organizations and agencies, to effect landmark designations, restorations and interventions that have preserved and protected buildings and entire neighborhoods.Landmarks Preservation Commission records 1990–2009Morningside Heights Historic District Committee minutes 1996–2009Manhattan Community Board 9 Parks and Landmarks Committee minutes 1990–2009 Angel on a mission to save uptown, New York Daily News, July 16, 2007] In 2007, she was given the first Preservation Angel Award. Angel on a mission to save uptown, New York Daily News, July 16, 2007] In addition, Kent served as Secretary of the Renaissance English Text Society.Renaissance English Text Society
Early life and family background "Lyn" was born in Rochester, New York,Birth records Rochester, New York re: July 20, 1935 where her father, Maynard Lamar Cassady,http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=1478 Cassady (Maynard Lamar) Papers, 1932–1941 was teaching religion at the University. Maynard was an ordained minister who had obtained his theology degree at Princeton.The Princeton Seminary bulletin, Volumes 14–17 by Princeton Theological Seminary He met Lyn's mother, Louise Virginia Sale, at William and Mary where she had been one of his students. Louise was the last of seven children of one of Virginia's so called First Families located in Fairfield, Virginia.Library of Virginia, Call Number CS71.S163 2009; Author: Yaratt, Shirley Marie Thomas; Title: Connecting Sale & Thomas families of Caroline County; Compiled by Shirley Marie Thomas Yaratt; Publication: Chesterfield, Va.: S.M.T. Yaratt, 2009 Instead of leading a conventional existence, she became, with her husband, an active civil rights worker, a tradition which she passed on to her children. Maynard died relatively young while teaching at Crozier Theological SeminaryRe: Crozier Seminary: Members of the Association 1945–1946, Oxford Journals, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume XIV, Issue I, Pp.54–64Re: Crozier Seminary: Annual Meeting, Oxford Journals, Humanities, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume XIV, Issue 1, Pp. 68–80 where Martin Luther King Jr. was at that time a student.Crozier Theological Seminary, 1940's archives His three daughters, Carolyn, Elizabeth, and Anne, of which only Lyn was barely a teen, were left with their mother who moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan as Dean of Women at Kalamazoo College.Kalamazoo College archives Louise later married Charles Johnson, pastor of First Presbyterian Church there.
Education Kent graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1957, where she was editor of the newspaper and president of the student body.Sarah Lawrence College records 1954–1957 After graduation she spent a year at Oxford where she was a recognized student working with Catherine Ing.Columbia University records 1957–1958 She then began studies at Columbia University under Marjorie Nicolson in 17th Century English literature and completed her Masters with high honors and doctoral orals with "distinction".Columbia University records, late 1950s and early 1960sProgram notes, Preservation Angel Award 2007, Hamilton Heights/West Harlem Community Preservation Organization archives June 2007
Preamble to activism While making a home in Morningside Heights and raising three children, Kent began a dissertation on the printing press's impact on English Renaissance Poetry. This called her attention to the decorative printing ornaments embellishing turn-of-century Morningside Heights, and a preservation battle centering on her building, The Paterno,Manhattan phone book: The Paterno's address, 440 Riverside Drive is listed under Edward & Carolyn Kent drew her into the New York City historic preservation effort. Through book history and editorial theory she had "explored the implications of authorial intention which then translated to a respect for the architect's intention and a belief that historic preservation based on this is critical to a culture's integrity and strength." C. KentProgram notes, Preservation Angel Award, 2007, Hamilton Heights/West Harlem Community Preservation Organization archives June 2007
Professional life
As founder, in 1990, of Manhattan Community Board 9's Parks and Landmarks CommitteeManhattan Community Board 9, Parks and Landmarks Committee minutes 1990 and co-founder in 1996 with Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell of the Morningside Heights Historic District Committee,Manhattan Community Board 9 reso, dated September 20, 2010, stating that Kent and O'Donnell co-founded the Morningside Heights District Committee in 1996Pdf of CB#9 reso, September 20, 2010Morningside Heights Historic District Committee minutes 1996 designations under her watch included Hamilton Heights/ Sugar Hill Historic District, Hamilton Heights Historic District Extension, The Riverside Church, Hamilton Theater and Lobby Building, and the Plant and Scrymser Pavilions of St. Luke's Hospital. Restorations included moving the home of Alexander Hamilton, the Hamilton Grange, to St. Nicholas Park; and the return of windowed walls to the 125th St. elevated subway station. Interventions included winning "disapproval" from the Landmarks Preservation Commission of a Certificate of Appropriateness for exterior changes to the designated Casa Italiana on the Columbia University Campus; and a "disapproval" by the NY City Council of the LPC's Cathedral of St. John the Divine designation because it opened the historic Close to unregulated development. (For more detail about any the above see the sub-titles below)Landmarks Preservation Commission records 2003–2009Morningside Heights Historic District Committee minutes 2003–2009Manhattan Community Board 9 Parks and Landmarks Committee minutes 2003–2009Landmarks Preservation Commission records 1997–2006Morningside Heights Historic District Committee minutes 1997–2006Manhattan Community Board 9, Parks and Landmarks Committee minutes 1997–2006New York Preservation Archive Project 1997–2006
Attending to preservation duties around town, "...a looming Mrs. Kent [she stood 6 feet tall] appeared always with an innate regal dignity. She was an amateur in the positive sense ... and a civic activist in the same tradition as Jane Jacobs and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. For all her elite early-American ancestry, enhanced by a first-class education at Sarah Lawrence and Oxford, along with her cultivated patrician-sounding voice, so old-fashioned that it's a type seldom encountered today, not outside of the Broadway stage, Carolyn was, ironically, the very quintessence of nonconformity." – Harlem historian, Michael Henry Adams
Collaborators in preservation advance During her career, Kent worked in close collaboration with: Manhattan Community Board 9, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, Sugar Hill Preservation Committee, 5-Block Protection Association, Upper Manhattan Society for Progress through Preservation, Hamilton Heights/West Harlem Community Preservation Organization, Manhattan-Ville Heritage Society, Morningside Heights Residents Association, and Morningside Heights Historic District Committee.Records maintained by cited organizations, generally from 1990–2009
Designated Landmarks Fire Engine Company No. 47, 500 W. 113th St.; (1889–90) Napoleon LeBrun. Designated June 17, 1997. LP 1962 Hamilton Theater and Lobby Building, 3560–3568 Broadway; (1912–13) Thomas Lamb, designated February 8, 2000 LP 2052 Hamilton Heights Historic District Extension, designated March 28, 2000 LP 2044 Croton Aqueduct 119th St. Gatehouse, 432–434 W. 119th St., George Birdsall, NYC Dept. of Public Works, designated March 28, 2000 LP 2051 Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill Historic District, designated June 27, 2000 LP 2064 Hamilton Heights/ Sugar Hill Historic Extension, Oct. 23, 2001 LP 2103 Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill Historic District Northeast, Oct. 23, 2001, LP 2104 Hamilton Heights/Sugar Hill Historic District Northwest, June 18, 2002, LP 2105 The Riverside Church, 490–498 Riverside Drive; (1928–1930) Henry C. Pelton with Allen & Collens, designated May 16, 2000 LP 2037 Plant and Scrymser Pavilions, St. Luke's Hospital, 401 W. 113th St. and 400 W. 114th St.; (1904–06, 1926–28) Ernest Flagg, designated June 18, 2002 LP 2113 Claremont Theater Building, 3320 – 3338 Broadway; (1913–14) Gaetan Ajello, designated June 6, 2006 LP 2198Landmarks Preservation Commission records 1997–2006Morningside Heights Historic District Committee minutes 1997–2006Manhattan Community Board 9, Parks and Landmarks Committee minutes 1997–2006New York Preservation Archive Project 1997–2006
Restorations The Hamilton Grange, Alexander Hamilton (1802) family home at the time of his death, 287 Convent Avenue; final Manhattan Community Board 9 Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) vote on June 21, 2001, remapping St. Nicholas Park so as to provide an easement for the National Park Service to move the Grange and thereby restore it to the original design by John McComb Jr. Fully integral revitalization, complete with water and electric globe, of the John Hooper Fountain, Maher Circle, W. 155th St., a landmark as part of the Macombs Dam Bridge designation, January 14, 1992; restoration by the Division of Bridges, NYC DOT. Return of windowed walls to the 125th St. elevated IRT Broadway Line Viaduct station, (1900–1904) William Barclay Parsons, designated Nov. 24, 1981; LP 1094; restoration by the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Replacement of the white glass tile panels without the addition of inauthentic decoration to the walls of the Columbia University and Cathedral Parkway stations included in the IRT Subway Stations Underground Interiors designation of Oct. 23, 1979 LP 1094; (1904) Heins & LaFarge; restoration by the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Use of "City Hall" rather than "World's Fair" benches in the restoration by NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation of the Morningside Heights sector of Riverside Drive, 113th – 117th Sts. and generally. Remounting and repair of the facade of the Sigma Chi Fraternity House at 565 W. 113th St. as part of the construction of the Broadway Residence complex, 2900 Broadway, (2000) Robert A. M. Stern for Columbia University.Landmarks Preservation Commission records 1997–2006Morningside Heights Historic District Committee minutes 1997–2006Manhattan Community Board 9, Parks and Landmarks Committee minutes 1997–2006New York Preservation Archive Project 1997–2006
Interventions Won a "disapproval" in 1995 of a Landmarks Preservation Commission Certificate of Appropriateness for designs submitted by Columbia University and the Republic of Italy for exterior changes to the Casa Italiana, 1151 Amsterdam Ave.; (1926–27) William Kendall, McKim, Mead, White, a designated landmark. Brought a halt to plans by the Amsterdam Nursing Home, 1050 Amsterdam Avenue, to demolish the Croton Aqueduct 113th St. Gatehouse (1874) for construction in 1997 of the Home's Amsterdam Avenue wing.