The second annual Bard Breakfast featured a talk titled, “White City, Gotham, and the American Renaissance” given by renowned architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson.  The City Beautiful movement was an especially important topic to Albert S. Bard, the BBBB’s namesake and a significant theme in New York’s preservation history. 

Richard Guy Wilson, Commonwealth Professor of Architectural History at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and Director of the Victorian Society in America’s Newport Summer School, has received a number of academic honors, among them a Guggenheim fellow, prizes for distinguished writing, and in 1986 he was made an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). He received the outstanding professor award at the University of Virginia in 2001. He has served as an advisor and commentator for a number of television programs on PBS, C-Span, the History Channel and A&E; he appeared on most of the sixty-seven segments of America’s Castles. A frequent lecturer for universities, museums and professional groups, he has also published widely with articles and reviews to his credit. He is the author or joint author of 10 books that deal with American and modern architecture. He has been the curator and author for major museum exhibitions including The American Renaissance, 1876-1917; The Art that is Life: The Arts and Crafts Movement in America; The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941, and The Making of Virginia Architecture. 

Albert S. Bard was best known for drafting and securing the passage of the New York state authorizing legislation of 1956, also called the Bard Act, that empowered New York City to have a landmarks law. For over 50 years Bard was a major voice for advancing aesthetic concerns in the public realm. A visitor to the Chicago World’s Fair, Bard returned to NYC and worked tirelessly on the cause of civic beauty. He died in 1963, but the Archive Project celebrates his life and his work every year around his birthday, December 19, 1866.

Location:
The Harvard Club of New York City
35 West 44th Street
New York, NY 10036
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