Historic Plaque Honors the Cultural and Social Significance of 70 Fifth Avenue
The New School was honored to join with Village Preservation (formerly called Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation) to celebrate the unveiling of a plaque marking 70 Fifth Avenue—home to Parsons School of Design and the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center—for its legacy as the historic headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and numerous other progressive, human rights, and civil liberties organizations, and as the home of W.E.B. DuBois’ The Crisis magazine. The building was designated a landmark one year ago by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in a unanimous vote to recognize 70 Fifth Avenue for its architectural, historical, and cultural significance to New York City’s diverse history.
Tokumbo Shobowale, The New School’s Executive Vice President for Business and Operations, and Andrew Berman, Executive Director of Village Preservation, were joined at the event by several social justice and architecture scholars and historians who linked the building’s history to significant developments in New York City and the U.S. during the 20th century. Speakers included: Brian McGrath, professor of urban design at Parsons’ Schools of Constructed Environments; David Levering Lewis, professor of history at NYU; Stephen Brier, emeritus professor in the urban education PhD program and School of Labor and Urban Studies at CUNY; and Amy Aronson; chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University.
“As an institution woven into the physical and cultural tapestry of New York City, The New School has long advanced the values of social justice and equality to strengthen our community,” said Tokumbo Shobowale, The New School’s Executive Vice President for Business and Operations, during the unveiling ceremony. “We take seriously our responsibility to safeguard architecturally significant buildings, and we welcome this designation, which recognizes the university’s renowned Sheila Johnson Design Center, an academic and creative hub located at 70 Fifth Avenue. This space reflects The New School’s rigorous, multidimensional approach to education and provides a street-level view into the innovative work of our Parsons School of Design community.”
“We’re incredibly proud to add this plaque at 70 Fifth Avenue as the twentieth in our program recognizing sites of historic significance throughout Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo,” said Berman. “So many towering figures of the early African American civil rights movement were connected to this building, where the NAACP and The Crisis Magazine had their headquarters, including W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurton, Countee Cullen, and many others. This is where the NAACP fought lynching and the Klan, condemned The Birth of a Nation, and formulated groundbreaking legal strategies to remove racist discrimination in voting, housing, and education.”
“We can think of no building more deserving of having its history marked and celebrated, nor one which better exemplifies the spirit of this area of Greenwich Village South of Union Square for which we are seeking landmark protections,” Berman continued.
“The New School’s purchase of the Education Building in the 1970s allowed Parsons to move downtown as it transitioned from a stand-alone art and design school to a division of The New School. Now, Parsons comprises more than a half the university’s student body, transforming a legendary institution dedicated to social research to a university where design and social research drive approaches to studying issues of our time,” said McGrath. “For me, 70 Fifth Avenue epitomizes what I try to teach my students, that there is not only an architecture of buildings in the city, but an architecture of the city. We need to look at the Educational Building not just as a landmarked building IN the city, and a fragment of the city itself as a built artifact. It is only one L-shaped jig-saw piece in a larger puzzle which is New York City.”
This is the 20th plaque marking historic sites in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo placed by Village Preservation. Prior plaques have marked the homes of figures including James Baldwin, Jane Jacobs, Lorraine Hansberry, LeRoi Jones, Anaïs Nin, Alex Haley, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Martha Graham, among many others.
Seventy Fifth Avenue, a 1912 Beaux Arts–style office building, was commissioned by book publisher-philanthropist George Arthur Plimpton and built in 1914. Among its earliest tenants was the NAACP, which leased offices for almost ten years, from February 1914 to June 1923. These years were formative to the organization, during which it grew its nationwide presence and launched a series of effective campaigns against segregation, race discrimination, and mob violence. The building was also home to several other progressive non-profit groups, including the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) who founded the National Civil Liberties Bureau (later known as the ACLU) in the building, League for Industrial Democracy, League of Nations Union, National Board of Censorship in Motion Pictures (later the National Board of Review), National Child Welfare Association, New York Teachers Union, Pan American Society, Women’s Peace Party, World’s Court League, as well as many book publishers. The New School acquired the building in 1972, which today houses the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at The New School’s Parsons School of Design.