Jane’s Walk is an annual festival of free, community-led walking conversations inspired by Jane Jacobs and for the first time ever on the whole of Long Island, Great Neck will be the inaugural participant in an international event held May 7 at 10 a.m.
Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) was a writer, urbanist and activist who championed the needs of everyday people in neighborhood planning. She urged people to really “walk” their neighborhoods, get to know its history, think about its safety, and the vitality of its social hubs.
Jane’s Walk is a celebration of her vision, courage and down-to-earth wisdom and an opportunity to talk about what we value in our communities.
Ms. Jacobs was a member of the Action Group for Better Architecture in New York, which fought strenuously to preserve Pennsylvania Station. There was no Landmark Preservation Commission in the early ’60s and it is acknowledged that Penn Station’s destruction was a watershed event that heightened the public consciousness of the need to protect irreplaceable buildings and the establishment of the commission in 1965.
Our walk will be led by Andrew Cronson, a young architectural historian and expert on Long Island residential architecture, who recently presented a program for the community on Ralph Walker, who designed the Telephone Building in Great Neck Plaza.
Cronson currently serves as vice president of the Save Chelsea organization where he is responsible for the advancement of their special projects and digital initiatives.
His preservation work has been featured in local and national publications including The New York Times, Newsday, AmNY, and Untapped Cities. Cronson is an alumnus of New York University and will be attending Columbia University in the fall for graduate school.
He is also a member of the Wings Club, Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York, and the New York Academy of Sciences.
We will ramble through beautiful Great Neck Estates beginning at the Village Hall which was designed by George J. Hardway and pass by the house where F. Scott Fitzgerald lived and wrote The Great Gatsby.
We will loop by homes of note designed by Gustav Stickley, Frank Lloyd Wright and Emery Roth, all east of Bayview. We will have all this and the backdrop of a flowering, budding springtime morning. This stroll will take approximately one hour. Join us.
Our May 7 meet-up will be at 10 a.m. at GNE Village Hall, Atwater Plaza, 4 Gateway Drive. Masks are required for in-person Great Neck Historical Society events at this time. No raindate. For further information, write us at [email protected]
