Carnegie Hall ca. 1979

In 1959 the owner of Carnegie Hall announced the decision to demolish the famed concert hall when its major tenant, the New York Philharmonic, moved to its new home at Lincoln Center. A skyscraper clad in bright red porcelain panels was set to rise on the valuable site at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue.

Lovers of architecture, history, and music united in a preservation effort. Demonstrations and petitions demanded that the building be saved. But the hero of this battle was violinist Isaac Stern, who saw Carnegie Hall as "the be-all and end-all of musical life" in the United States. Stern teamed up with Jacob Kaplan, an entrepreneur who created the J.M. Kaplan Fund - a foundation that over the next 20 years supported preservation activism and organizations - to establish the Citizens Committee for Carnegie Hall, with Eleanor Roosevelt as honorary chair. The committee persuaded the city to buy the site, and a non-profit was established to run it. Carnegie Hall remains one of the world's great concert halls.