Advocating for history

BY VICTORIA EDWARDS

From her early childhood, Kate Wood was taught the value of preserving notable buildings — she would spend hours working with her family working to restore their 1927 Tudor Revival House in New Jersey.

“So that was normal to me. That you would spend all of your time taking care of something that had history to it,” Wood said recently.

Wood has made a career of doing just that as president of Landmark West! a nonprofit preservationist organization that works to achieve landmark status for historic buildings and neighborhoods on the Upper West Side. Wood has been active in the organization for the last 16 years — about half of its history. She said the organization’s work has been paramount in protecting the neighborhood’s character and history.

“We’ve been a strong stabilizing force over the years. When there are proposals to change regulations that would have a negative impact on the city; we are very vocal and blow the whistle,” she said. “We reinforce the fact that New York has value and it’s not just about maxing out every developable foot of space.”

Still, Wood says the fight to preserve the neighborhood’s character is an ongoing one. They are currently working to get landmark status for the IRT Power House on 59th Street, which was designed by architect Stanford White of the firm McKim, Mead and White, which designed the original Pennsylvania Station and Columbia University’s main campus.

Wood said although architecturally and historically, the building meets the city’s landmark criteria, the building’s owner, Con Ed, has fought fiercely against the designation. The building is on the city’s landmark calendar and by December will either get the designation or be removed permanently without protection. Landmark West! has led a campaign to advocate for designation.

Still although Wood has focused on preserving this neighborhood and its buildings, it’s a community she herself no longer calls home. She lives with her husband David Sprouls, president of the New York School of Interior Design, and son Patrick Sprouls at the tip of 187th and Cabrini Boulevard, a neighborhood she calls the “upper” Upper West Side. But she says she misses roaming the neighborhood that she works so vigilantly everyday to protect.

“I used to walk through the neighborhood every day on the way to work and now I take the subway underneath it so I don’t get to roam the streets quite as much as I used to,” said Wood.