Oliver E. Allen, Tribeca Historian and Author, Dies at 94
Oliver E. Allen in Tribeca's Duane Park. Allen was a co-founding member of Friends of Duane Park, a group that undertook the renovation and then the redesign of the historic park to reflect its original layout. Oliver and Deborah Allen's Hudson Street apartment overlooked the park. Photo: Chuck Levey
Longtime Tribeca resident Oliver E. Allen, the author of two books and nearly 150 articles on the history of Tribeca, died on Saturday. He was 94.
Allen had been in frail health in recent years and passed away following “a final bout of pneumonia,” his son Fred wrote in an email.
A former writer and editor for Life magazine and later editor at Time-Life Books, Allen authored more than a dozen books, including two histories of New York City: “New York, New York” and “The Tiger,” a history of Tammany Hall. But in Tribeca, where he moved to a Hudson Street loft overlooking Duane Park with his wife Deborah in 1982, Allen was best known for his Tribeca Trib column, “Old Tribeca,” and for his volunteer contributions to the community as co-founder of Friends of Duane Park. He also was part of a small group whose work led to the designation of Tribeca’s four historic districts.
In the 1980s, Allen joined a band of local activists that dug into the history of Tribeca’s buildings and published “The Texture of Tribeca,” by architectural historian Andrew Dolkart. The volume, illustrated with photos by Allen, provided the Landmarks Preservation Commission with the research it needed to designate Tribeca’s historic districts in 1991 and 1992.
Approached in 1994 by neighbor Lynn Ellsworth to help with her idea of restoring dilapidated Duane Park, Allen and wife Deborah were her first recruits to what was to become Friends of Duane Park.
“I called him up and he invited me over,” Ellsworth recalled during a Friends fundraising event in 2010 to honor Allen. “I explained the project and Oliver got on board immediately and it started from there.”
Like Ellsworth, Trib editor Carl Glassman was introduced to Allen by longtime Tribeca resident Jean Grillo, who told him, “You must speak to Oliver Allen,” when she heard that he and his wife April Koral were launching a new neighborhood paper.
“He didn’t know us from Adam and he knew we could only pay him a very modest fee,” Glassman recalled, “yet he immediately said he would be happy to write articles about the neighborhood’s history. That was the luckiest moment in the life of the Trib.”
Allen’s first “Old Tribeca” article appeared in the Trib’s first issue in September 1994 and the column turned out to be immensely popular. Many of the pieces were anthologized in two books, “Tales of Old Tribeca” and “Tribeca: A Pictorial History.”
“Oliver’s irrepressible enthusiasm and sense of wonder about our neighborhood and its history was contagious. He conveyed it both in person and in his writing,” said Ellsworth, founder and president of the architectural preservation group, Tribeca Trust. “He was a real defender of its many beauties and insistent on accuracy.” She called Allen “that increasingly rare kind of person” who believed in the “necessity and duty” of volunteering at the most local level.
“For him it was both a civic responsibility and a source of genuine pleasure,” she said. “He inspired those around him to follow in his footsteps. In doing all that, Oliver built, on a daily basis, that most fleeting of things: a sense of community.”
Karie Parker Davidson, a Friends of Duane Park board member, recalled Allen as “funny, curious, insightful and determined to improve his knowledge in any field.”
“On a recent visit,” she recalled, “he was learning about micro-tones, a form of intermediate musical notes as he explained it, and was re-reading classics by Dickens and Dostoyevsky all while keeping up with The New York Times and The New Yorker.”
Working in the Duane Park garden until he was 92, Parker Davidson said, “he also taught youngsters how to pot plants on Earth Day, and slung a 150-foot hose hooked up to the fire hydrant to hand-water the garden in its infancy. For years he trimmed the hedges, met the rodentologists, and kept the Parks Department historians on their toes.” (The full text of Parker Davidson's remembrance is below.)
Jane Freeman, who visited Allen frequently, wrote in an email: “Despite physical confinement in the last years, his scope of intellect and humanity remained unbounded. In the John Adams biography [that he was reading in the last few weeks before he died], there’s a quote by Laurence Sterne that fits Oliver well: ‘What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything.’” (The full text of Freeman's remembrance is below.)
Allen is survived by his children Frederick Allen, Henry Allen, Lili Allen and Jennie Dwight Allen, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Deborah, his wife of 66 years, died in 2014.
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Comments
'Oliver was a local treasure'
Many of us knew Oliver Allen through his historical writing for this paper. Perhaps like many of you I read him before I met him. His writing captured old Tribeca in Tales of Old Tribeca and the later publication Pictorial History of Tribeca. His curiosity led to insightful and interesting tales about the buildings and the figures who once inhabited them. When the Tribeca Trib was a monthly print publication, his article was the first story I read.
But once you met Oliver, you wanted to hold fast; for he was a local treasure. Oliver was well known as the neighborhood’s historian, but he was also a profound lover of 18th Century music, a terrific storyteller and conversationalist. Put simply, he was delightful company. He could tell stories of Tammany Hall politics or of hooligans from the 1890s recalling every date and detail as if it were happening right now. He had the uncanny ability to retain everything he ever read or wrote which included articles written between 1947 and 1960 for Life magazine, and books ranging from an Encyclopedia of Gardening to The Pacific Navigators during the subsequent fifteen years he spent at Time Life Books. Funny, curious, insightful and determined to improve his knowledge in any field, he inspired those who knew him to dig deeper just for the fun of it.
Oliver was also well known as one of the founders of Friends of Duane Park. During his twenty plus years of service on the board Oliver was visible not only as our writer in chief, but he also taught youngsters how to pot plants on Earth Day, and slung a 150-foot hose hooked up to the fire hydrant to hand water the garden in its infancy. For years he trimmed the hedges, met the rodentologists, kept the Parks Department historians on their toes, and kept eye on all the comings and goings in Duane Park. He remained an active board member until at age 92 it became harder for him to get around.
Even as his daily regimen left him less mobile, his intellectual curiosity and nimble mind kept him active at home. On a recent visit, he was learning about micro-tones, a form of intermediate musical notes as he explained it, and was re-reading classics by Dickens and Dostoyevsky all while keeping up with The New York Times and The New Yorker. His intellect would ultimately succumb to a body that could no longer carry its weight. And so it was that this wonderful man of 94 years passed peacefully on Saturday, Anna Karenina in hand.
KARIE PARKER DAVIDSON
'His scope of intellect and humanity remained unbound'
Among other designations, many of us appreciate Oliver Allen as Tribeca’s great biographer. He knew the stories of the many historic buildings in the neighborhood, and for years chronicled them in these pages. Because of frail health in recent years, he never went out, but remained buoyant, his spirit classically invincible and his intellect shiv-sharp.
I often visited Oliver in his loft, at the crest of Duane Park. We started recommending books to each other, and glided into a kind of impromptu, two-person book club. While he was interested in just about everything, Oliver was partial to subjects like history, music and architecture; I preferred literature. We eventually began exchanging books, and enjoyed many a cheery dispute.
On my last visit, a couple of weeks ago, I brought "Persuasion" since Oliver had enjoyed "Pride and Prejudice." He said it would be a while before he could get to another Jane Austen, since he was immersed in "John Adams." “Just listen to the way David McCullough writes,” he said, nodding his disordered silver mane, his handsomely delicate features pink with pleasure as he read about John Adams. I wonder if Oliver was able to finish that prodigious life, before his own closed at age 94. Despite physical confinement in the last years, his scope of intellect and humanity remained unbounded. In the Adams biography there's a quote by Laurence Sterne that fits Oliver well: “What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything.”
JANE FREEMAN