Carolyn Kent

Early life and family background

"Lyn" was born in Rochester, New York, where her father, Maynard Lamar Cassady, was teaching religion at the University. Maynard was an ordained minister who had obtained his theology degree at Princeton. He met Lyn's mother, Louise Virginia Sale, at William and Mary where she had been one of his students. Louise was the last of seven children of one of Virginia's so called First Families located in Fairfield, Virginia. Instead of leading a conventional existence, she became, with her husband, an active civil rights worker, a tradition which she passed on to her children. Maynard died relatively young while teaching at Crozier Theological Seminary where Martin Luther King, Jr. was at that time a student. His three daughters, Carolyn, Elizabeth, and Anne, of which only Lyn was barely a teen, were left with their mother who moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan as Dean of Women at Kalamazoo College. Louise later married Charles Johnson, pastor of First Presbyterian Church there.

Education

Kent graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1957, where she was editor of the newspaper and president of the student body. After graduation she spent a year at Oxford where she was a recognized student working with Catherine Ing. She then began studies at Columbia University under Marjorie Nicolson in 17th Century English literature and completed her Masters with high honors and doctoral orals with "distinction".

Preamble to activism

While making a home in Morningside Heights and raising three children, Kent began a dissertation on the printing press's impact on English Renaissance Poetry. This called her attention to the decorative printing ornaments embellishing turn-of-century Morningside Heights, and a preservation battle centering on her building, The Paterno, drew her into the New York City historic preservation effort. Through book history and editorial theory she had "explored the implications of authorial intention which then translated to a respect for the architect's intention and a belief that historic preservation based on this is critical to a culture's integrity and strength." C. Kent

Professional life

As founder, in 1990, of Manhattan Community Board 9's Parks and Landmarks Committee and co-founder in 1996 with Assemblyman Daniel O'Donnell of the Morningside Heights Historic District Committee, designations under her watch included Hamilton Heights/ Sugar Hill Historic District, Hamilton Heights Historic District Extension, The Riverside Church, Hamilton Theater and Lobby Building, and the Plant and Scrymser Pavilions of St. Luke's Hospital. Restorations included moving the home of Alexander Hamilton, the Hamilton Grange, to St. Nicholas Park; and the return of windowed walls to the 125th St. elevated subway station. Interventions included winning "disapproval" from the Landmarks Preservation Commission of a Certificate of Appropriateness for exterior changes to the designated Casa Italiana on the Columbia University Campus; and a "disapproval" by the NY City Council of the LPC's Cathedral of St. John the Divine designation because it opened the historic Close to unregulated development. (For more detail about any the above see the sub-titles below)

Attending to preservation duties around town,

"...a looming Mrs. Kent [she stood 6 feet tall] appeared always with an innate regal dignity. She was an amateur in the positive sense ... and a civic activist in the same tradition as Jane Jacobs and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. For all her elite early-American ancestry, enhanced by a first-class education at Sarah Lawrence and Oxford, along with her cultivated patrician-sounding voice, so old-fashioned that it's a type seldom encountered today, not outside of the Broadway stage, Carolyn was, ironically, the very quintessence of nonconformity."
-- Harlem historian, Michael Henry Adams

Collaborators in preservation advance

During her career, Kent worked in close collaboration with: Manhattan Community Board 9, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, Sugar Hill Preservation Committee, 5-Block Protection Association, Upper Manhattan Society for Progress through Preservation, Hamilton Heights/West Harlem Community Preservation Organization, Manhattan-Ville Heritage Society, Morningside Heights Residents Association, and Morningside Heights Historic District Committee.

Designated Landmarks

Restorations

Interventions

Preservation Angel Award

On June 28, 2007, Kent was the first recipient of the Preservation Angel Award presented by the Hamilton Heights/West Harlem Community Preservation Organization for distinguished achievement in the field of Upper Manhattan historical preservation.

Private life

Carolyn and her husband, Edward ("Ed") Miles Allen Kent, met as young teens at a Kent Fellowship conference. Carolyn's father had been one of the first Kent Fellows. The group was founded by Edwards grandfather, Charles Foster Kent, to enable those previously excluded by race, religion or funding needs to undertake graduate studies in religion. Edward and Carolyn married on September 8, 1957 at the First Presbyterian Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Their three children are Cassady, Hannah and Sarah. Until 2007, Ed taught philosophy, social/political/legal, and gave courses in religion and one in psychology primarily at Brooklyn College where he spent most of his teaching career.

Later years and death

Until weeks before her death, Kent was engaged in the fight to keep intact the Cathedral of St. John the Divine's historic Close; to prevent historic building demolition in Manhattanville by Columbia University; and was working toward designation of the Morningside Heights Residential Historic District/Comprehensive MSH District, and the Tiemann Place Residential Historic District in Manhattanville. Carolyn Kent died, in New York City, after a nine-year bout with lung cancer, on August 22, 2009.

"I admire her ability to get major institutions like Columbia University and churches in West Harlem to appreciate their role in this community ... She set the bar pretty high."
-- New York State Senator Bill Perkins