Walking tour: Margot Gayle’s Tribeca

Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society (MAS). Reservations required; click here for information and registration. ($35, $25 for MAS members).

This tour of Tribeca, focusing on its many cast-iron wonders, is a tribute to the legendary preservation advocate Margot Gayle, former member of the MAS. historic buildings committee and 1997 winner of the Society’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal. Without Margot’s efforts, Tribeca likely would not be the protected historic neighborhood it is today. Your guide first led a tour of cast-iron architecture in Tribeca in the mid-1970s, as a volunteer for Margot’s “Friends of  Cast-Iron Architecture” (where he cut his teeth as a tour guide, later  becoming co-chair of walking tours). This walk retraces the steps of that tour of 50 years ago, with special focus on the work of James Bogardus – one of Margot’s special interests – as well as  facades cast by D.D. Badger’s Architectural Iron Works, the only major 19th-century iron foundry whose catalog still exists. Most of the iron buildings visited are city landmarks; your guide, on the LPC staff in the 1980s and ‘90s, wrote several of the relevant designation reports.