Andrew Dolkart

Andrew Scott Dolkart is a professor of Historic Preservation at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) and Director of the school's Historic Preservation Program. Professor Dolkart is an authority on the preservation of historically significant architecture and an expert in the architecture and development of New York City. He was recently described as someone who is "without peer among New York's architectural researchers" by architectural critic Francis Morrone[1] and he has written extensively on this topic. Before joining the faculty at Columbia he held a position at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and worked as a consultant. Dolkart is a popular lecturer and walking tour guide.

Dolkart holds a BA from Colgate University (1973) and an MS in Historic Preservation from Columbia University (1977).

Historic Preservation

In an interview with the Columbia Spectator Dolkart recalled that he first became interested in Historic Preservation in his first year of doctoral studies in Art History.[2] Dolkart has had a continuous presence in the preservation field in New York since he graduated from the Historic Preservation program at Columbia in 1977. In 2014 he received the Historic District Council's Landmarks Lion award. He has authored many of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission's reports and served as an editor for the first three editions of the Guide to New York City Landmarks. In 2008 he was named Director of the program in Historic Preservation at Columbia University,[3] a position previously held by James Marston Fitch (1964–1977), Robert A.M. Stern, and Paul Spencer Byard (1998–2008). In 2009 he was awarded tenure, becoming the second tenured Director in the history of the Historic Preservation program.

Philosophy

In his teaching and writing Dolkart stresses the importance of Vernacular architecture based more on commercial need than strictly stylistic preferences. Much of his work emphasizes the practical and economic aspects of buildings, whether they were constructed to meet the needs of the garment industry, tenement housing, or high-end housing designed primarily to meet the profit objectives of speculative real estate developers. His presentation style uses humor and irony: "I trace my ancestry back to the Mayflower," Dolkart writes in the forward to Biography of a Tenement House in New York City: An Architectural History of 97 Orchard Street. "Not to the legendary ship that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, but to the more prosaic tenement on the southeast corner of East Broadway and Clinton Street named the Mayflower, where my father was born in 1914 to Russian-Jewish immigrants." On its webpage describing Dolkart's book, a staff writer from the Lower East Side Tenement Museum states, "For Dolkart, the experience of being raised in a tenement became a metaphor for the life that was afforded countless thousands of other immigrant children growing up in Lower Manhattan during the past century and more. Dolkart presents for us a precise and informative biography of a typical tenement house in New York City that became, in 1988, the site for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum...This book is a lasting tribute to the legacy of immigrants and their children, who were part of the transformation of New York City and the fabric of everyday American urban life."

Prizes and Awards

Selected publications

Full List of Publications

References

  1. ↑ Morrone, Francis. "Low in the Lower East Side." The New York Sun. December 26, 2006.
  2. ↑ Choi, Christine. "Dolkart Takes Over as Director of Historic Preservation Program." The Columbia Spectator. November 20, 2008.
  3. ↑ Dunlap, David W. "Columbia Names Director of Historic Preservation." City Room Blog, The New York Times. October 30, 2008.
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