The New York Landmarks Conservancy 2023 Living Landmarks Gala to Honor Distinguished New Yorkers and Celebrate 50 Years Preserving the City

On November 1, 2023, The New York Landmarks Conservancy will celebrate its 50th Anniversary, and host its annual Living Landmarks Celebration at The Plaza.   This year's honorees are Cindy Campbell and DJ Kool Herc; His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan; Paul Goldberger; Anthony W. Marx; Mary Ann Tighe; and Angela Vallot and James G. Basker.

The following previous honorees will also participate: Stephen Lash as Master of Ceremonies and Gordon J. Davis, Emily K. Rafferty, Robert A.M. Stern and Barbara Tober as Honorary Co-Chairs for the evening. 

“Our amazing group of honorees reflects the talent and diversity of New York,” said Peg Breen, President of The New York Landmarks Conservancy. “Each has made significant contributions that have added to everyone's enjoyment of the City.”   

2023 Living Landmarks Honorees

Cindy Campbell and DJ Kool Herc   The accomplished First Lady of Hip-Hop, Cindy Campbell, stands as the driving force behind its inception.  She held a back to school party in her Bronx apartment building on August 11, 1973 and asked her brother Herc to DJ. Thanks to his unique style, Hip-Hop was born. 

Cindy went on to graduate from the Fashion Institute of Technology and hold successful  positions in fashion and real estate. But she always remained dedicated to Hip-Hop and to her brother's career.  She also lectures on the genesis of Hip-Hop.Cindy was hailed, along with her brother, at various events celebrating Hip-Hop's 50th anniversary this year. 

The legendary DJ Kool Herc, born Clive Campbell, is credited as the founder of Hip-Hop.  His mastery at the turntables is known worldwide, as are his positive contributions to the evolution of Hip-Hop culture.

Herc began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record which emphasized the drum beat—the "break"—and switch from one break to another. Using the same two-turntable set-up of disco DJs, he used two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat DJing, using funky drum solos, formed the basis of Hip-Hop music. Herc's announcements and exhortations to dancers helped lead to the syncopated, rhythmically spoken accompaniment now known as rapping.

He portrayed himself in the 1984 Hollywood movie “Beat Street,” produced by Harry Belafonte and David Picker and directed by Stan Lathan. He wrote the introduction to “Can't Stop Won't Stop,” by Jeff Chang, a history of the Hip-Hop generation which received the 2005 American Book Award.  Governor Mario Cuomo awarded Herc the Hall of Fame Award in 1994 for establishing Hip-Hop in New York. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.

The 110th Congress recognized Herc and Cindy for their achievements.  

His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan was named Archbishop of New York by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. This is the second largest diocese in the country serving 2.5 million Catholics in Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx, as well as 7 upstate counties.

Cardinal Dolan was ordained in 1976. He served parishes in Missouri before and after doctorate studies at The Catholic University of America. He was named the Auxiliary Bishop of St. Louis by Pope John Paul in 2001.

He also served as secretary to the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C.; vice rector of Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, and was also an adjunct professor of theology at St. Louis University.

From 1994 to 2001, he was rector of the Pontifical North American College in Rome.  While there, he also served as a visiting professor of Church History at the Pontifical Gregorian University and as a faculty member at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. On June 19, 2001 – the 25th anniversary of his ordination – then Fr. Dolan was named the Auxiliary Bishop of St. Louis by Pope John Paul II.

Cardinal Dolan served as chairman of Catholic Relief Services and is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Catholic University of America. He is also a member of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization. Cardinal Dolan served as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and as chair of the Bishops' Committee on Pro-Life activities.

On January 6, 2012, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI announced that Timothy Dolan was to be appointed to the College of Cardinals. Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Dolan participated in the Conclave that elected Pope Francis in March 2013.

Paul Goldberger, cited by The Huffington Post as “the leading figure in architecture criticism,” is a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair.  From 1997 through 2011, he served as the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker. He is the author of numerous books, including BALLPARK: Baseball in the American City, Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry; Building with History; Why Architecture Matters; and DUMBO: The Making of a Neighborhood. Goldberger also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City and was formerly Dean of the Parsons School of Design at The New School.

Goldberger began his career at The New York Times, where, in 1984, his architecture criticism was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism. He has also received the Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building Museum and the Award in Architecture of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He served as an advisor on architect selection and project design for non-profit institutions including the Obama Presidential Center, The New York Public Library, the Morgan Library, Harvard University, Lincoln Center, Cornell University, the Carnegie Science Center, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Glenstone Museum; for public agencies such as the Empire State Development Corporation, where he advised on the design for the New York City Moynihan Train Hall project and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where he served as an advisor on design matters connected to the redevelopment of LaGuardia Airport.

Goldberger is chairman of the Advisory Council of The Glass House, a property of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He was married to Susan Solomon, chief executive officer of The New York Stem Cell Foundation, until her death in 2022.  Ms. Solomon was honored as a Living Landmark in 2015.

Anthony W. Marx is President of The New York Public Library, the nation's largest library system, with 88 neighborhood libraries and four scholarly research centers that receive about 17 million physical visits each year. Since joining the Library in 2011, Marx has strengthened its role as an essential provider of educational resources and opportunities for all ages. Under his leadership, the Library has created new early literacy and after-school programs for children and teens, increased free English language classes by 500% and added citizenship support for immigrants, improved services for scholars and students who rely on the Library's world-renowned research collections, and led several innovative digital initiatives to expand the Library's reach.

Marx has helped facilitate a series of historic milestones: a $1 billion program of physical renovations, the largest increase in City funding, and the best year of fundraising in the Library's history. Under Marx, the Library has also become a national leader on bridging the digital divide through its efforts to increase access to e-books, expand computer classes and coding training, and a groundbreaking program that provides home internet access to families of low-income students.

Before joining the Library, Marx served as president of Amherst College from 2003 to 2011. He also served as a political science professor and director of undergraduate studies at Columbia University and a Guggenheim Fellow. Marx has a BA from Yale, an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and a PhD, also from Princeton.

Mary Ann Tighe has been CEO of CBRE's New York Tri-State Region since 2002, a region of 3,800 employees. Under her leadership, CBRE has become New York's preeminent firm, outdistancing all competitors in market share, revenue, and margins. 

She is a nine-time winner of the Real Estate Board of New York's Deal of the Year Award for ingenious brokerage, a record number of wins since the award was created in 1944. She also received the Louis Smadbeck Memorial Broker Recognition Award, REBNY's Bernard H. Mendik Lifetime Achievement Award, and REBNY's Harry B. Helmsley Distinguished New Yorker Award as well as being honored by the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate with its Urban Leadership Award, the first woman to receive this award. She was also the first woman, and first broker, to Chair the Real Estate Board of New York.

Tighe began her real estate career as a broker at the Edward S. Gordon Company, ultimately rising to the position of Vice Chair of Insignia/ESG, where she was regularly recognized among the firm's top producers. Prior to entering the real estate field, she served as a Vice President of the American Broadcasting Companies, where she launched the A&E cable channel.  Recognized nationally for her expertise in the arts, Tighe was also formerly the Deputy Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Advisor to Vice President Walter Mondale, and a staff member of the Smithsonian Institution.

She is a Board Member of The Howard Hughes Corporation, Lung Cancer Research Foundation, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center; Advisory Board member of National Grid; Co-chair of the Business Committee, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Vice Chair, Columbia University Real Estate Development Board, and a Trustee of St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Archdiocese of New York.

Angela Vallot is a co-founder and partner of VallotKarp Consulting, a 20-year-old New York based firm that helps organizations utilize diversity, equity, and inclusion to drive employee engagement, productivity and innovation. The firm provides services to corporations, law firms, museums, and other organizations on a range of diversity, inclusion, and equity issues. Ms. Vallot works nationally and internationally on behalf of global law firms and corporations.

She began her legal career in Washington D.C. with the firms of Jones Day and Arent Fox representing Fortune 500 corporations, municipalities, financial institutions, and non-profit entities on a broad range of legal issues, from government relations to real estate, and international business transactions.

In 1997, Ms. Vallot was recruited by the CEO of Texaco to become the first Chief Diversity Officer where she led the company's diversity efforts following the settlement of a $176 million racial discrimination lawsuit. During her tenure she created and managed the Office of Corporate Diversity Initiatives, chaired the Corporate Diversity Council, managed the work of six regional Diversity Councils, and worked closely with the court-appointed Task Force on Equality and Fairness to develop HR policies and practices designed to ensure equal opportunity for all employees. Under her leadership, Texaco became a model for corporate diversity. In 2001 she was recruited by the CEO of Colgate Palmolive to serve as the company's Global Chief Diversity Officer and Head of Business Continuity Planning.

 She is co-chair of the Board of Directors of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and serves as a trustee of Xavier University of Louisiana. She is also on the Board of Suited, a recruiting platform that uses A.I. to equitably identify top diverse talent for investment banks and law firms. Ms. Vallot graduated from Mills College and Georgetown University Law Center. 

James G. Basker is President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University. Since 1997, Basker has overseen the development of nationwide educational initiatives, serving a network of 34,000 K–12 schools in all 50 states.

Basker served as project director for the landmark exhibition Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America, mounted at the New-York Historical Society and co-developed with the Gilder Lehrman Institute. The Institute has partnered since 2015 with Lin-Manuel Miranda and the producers of Hamilton to run the Hamilton Education Program. Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and others, the program has enabled 250,000 students from Title I schools to experience the acclaimed musical. Another 400,000 students enjoyed the program online.

Basker is an elected member of the Society of American Historians and former trustee of the New-York Historical Society. He serves on the boards of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, as a trustee of the Marymount School, and as an elected director of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars.

Basker was educated at Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He taught at Harvard before coming to Barnard. He has been a Visiting Professor at NYU, Cambridge, and Rogue Community College in Oregon.

He founded OxBridge Academic Programs, which he led from 1989 until 2015, offering summer schools in Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Barcelona, and New York. Since 2020, Basker has been Director of Oxford Academia, in partnership with Putney Student Travel. His books include Amazing Grace: Poems about Slavery, 1660–1810, American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation, and Black Writers of the Founding Era, as well essays on history and literature.

TICKET INFORMATION: Tickets for the gala start at $1,000; tables start at $10,000.  Please visit www.nylandmarks.org for more information.

The New York Landmarks Conservancy honors distinguished New Yorkers from all professions as “Living Landmarks” for their contributions to the City. The New York Landmarks Conservancy, a private non-profit organization, has led the effort to preserve and protect New York City's architectural legacy for 50 years. Since its founding, the Conservancy has loaned and granted more than $62 million, which has leveraged almost $1 billion in nearly 2,000 restoration projects throughout New York, revitalizing communities, providing economic stimulus, and supporting local jobs. The Conservancy has also offered countless hours of pro bono technical advice to building owners, both nonprofit organizations, and individuals. The Conservancy's work has saved more than a thousand buildings across the City and State, protecting New York's distinctive architectural heritage for residents and visitors alike today, and for future generations. For more information, please visit www.nylandmarks.org.