Anthony C. Wood: Book Talk

By Kathleen Cunningham

The audience in attendance at the Village Preservation Society of East Hampton’s 2025 Historic Preservation Award Ceremony were in for a real treat on Saturday, September 20, 2025. Our guest speaker, Mr. Anthony C. Wood, a nationally recognized preservationist who began his career as a preservation advocate in New York City participated in a Q&A with his colleague and VPSEH Trustee, Joseph B. Rose about his new book, Servant of Beauty: Landmarks, Secret Love, and the Unimagined Life of an Unsung New York Hero. Mr. Wood has played leadership roles in many historic preservation organizations including the Historic Districts Council, the Preservation League of New York State, Partners for Sacred Places, and the Drayton Hall Preservation Trust, earning awards such as the 2020 New York Landmarks Conservancy Lucy G. Moses Award for Preservation Leadership. He has served on the adjunct faculty at Columbia University and is the founder of the nonprofit New York Preservation Archive Project, whose mission is to document, preserve and celebrate the history of preservation in New York. Wood is also the award-winning author of Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmark (2008) and has been featured in several documentaries about the history of preservation. Our moderator, and VPSEH Trustee, Joseph B. Rose, is a private sector real estate developer, who devotes significant time to not-for-profit endeavors and is the founding chairman of the Advisory Board of the Rose Center for Public Leadership, a joint program of the Urban Land Institute and the National League of Cities that works with mayors and city governments nationwide to support excellence in public land use decision making. Mr. Rose was Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Robert Wagner Graduate School for Public Service. He has lectured at The Harvard School of Design, The Yale School of Architecture, Princeton University, NY Law School, and The Urban Land Institute.

Mr. Rose queried Mr. Wood about the subject of Mr. Wood’s new book, Servant of Beauty: Landmarks, Secret Love, and the Unimagined Life of an Unsung New York Hero, an attorney and architect named Albert Bard. The book was published to coincide with the 60th anniversary of New York City’s landmarks law (the Bard Act), the first of its kind in the nation, providing local municipalities the authority to protect landmarks. Mr. Bard’s tenacity and perseverance established this legislation which created the venue through which local preservation laws could legally be adopted by individual municipalities. Mr. Wood also took time to sign his new book, which was for sale courtesy of BookHampton, East Hampton’s local bookstore. Mr. Rose had high praise for the book and called it ‘a great read’ and summed up the discussion with a call for participation, entreating the audience to be involved with the preservation process. Without civic action, historic preservation falls by the wayside.