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Community Corner

An Afternoon With Otis

Sitting down with the man who helped bring historic preservation to New York City.

It's not everyday that one gets to meet the man who helped save Brooklyn from the ‘futurama’ vision of Robert Moses.

So when Otis Pearsall—who many call the grandfather of historic districting—invited Patch over to discuss the evolution of historic preservation in New York City, we jumped at the chance.

And as we walked down the block to where Pearsall lives, up his stoop, to the front doors of his Brooklyn Heights home, it was easy to see exactly what spurred this founding member of New York's landmark preservation movement of the 1960s into action.

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"Brooklyn was, and still is, I think the most beautiful place to live in all of New York City. Particularly the Heights, which has the most incredible view of lower Manhattan," Pearsall said, coffee cup in hand as he began to stroll back in time to 1958.

The Dodgers had just left Brooklyn, the city was heading into an imminent recession, and a mass exodus of local residents from the City to the suburbs made way for Moses to set his sites on building the borough of tomorrow.

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"Basically, the plan was to replace the existing homes in the area, which Bob [Robert] Moses saw little value in, with high rise efficiency apartments that would have basically destroyed the landscape and identity of Brooklyn," Pearsall said.

That's when Pearsall and a band of unlikely agitators started a grassroots campaign to save their neighborhood.

"Looking back on it now, we were all almost kids at the time really. I'd recently just moved back to the area after Law School and the others weren't much older or more established than I was. So it really was a real ‘David versus Goliath’ story," he said.

One that pitted the 'Power Broker' against a band of 'neophyte conservationists,' which would last over seven years.

“What we had to do was educate the city as to what we had here in Brooklyn and tried all kinds of things to get Mayor [Robert] Wagner to sign off on the idea of landmark dedication for the Height," he said.

But, according to Pearsall it wouldn't be until architectural historian Clay Lancaster signed on to publish a designation report proving just how significant Brooklyn was to the architectural and historical world that people realized just how important it was to preserve what Moses had declared to be failed neighborhoods.

"Up until that time, no one, including most of us who were a part of the preservation movement were aware that all the principal 19th century architectural styles were represented here in Brooklyn—from Federal to Greek revival to Gothic," Pearsall said.

Then in 1965, the Mayor signed the city's first landmarks law and granted historic district status for the Heights.

"It was actually amazing really, looking back on it, that this group of us, who were mostly in our twenties and thirties by that time were able to accomplish what we did," Pearsall said.

Pausing for a brief moment, he reflected.

"It’s funny though, because I'm probably one of the few people who can actually trace the rejuvination back to a single transaction, the sale of a house at the corner of Sydney Place and State Street, which was the beginning of it all," Pearsall said.

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