Amanda Burden
Encyclopedia
Amanda Jay Mortimer Burden (born 1944) is the director of the New York City Department of City Planning
and chair of the City Planning Commission.
She is a proponent of revitalizing Lower Manhattan
, improving public access to the Brooklyn
waterfronts, improving commuter rail into the city, and reconsidering rezoning plans, and she has a reputation of holding developers to stricter design standards than previous planning directors. As stated in a 2007 profile of Burden in The New York Times
: "Whether walking up and down 368 blocks in Jamaica, Queens
, to see which streets can accommodate 12-story buildings, or grabbing a tape measure from her desk to set the dimensions of seating in public plazas across the city, Ms. Burden is leaving an indelible legacy of how all five boroughs will look and feel for decades to come."
Burden previously worked for the New York State Urban Development Corporation
. She worked on Battery Park City from 1983 to 1990. She is also a member of the International Best Dressed List
since 1996.
(1915–1978) and her first husband, Stanley Grafton Mortimer, Jr. (1913–1999), an heir to the Standard Oil
fortune. She is a descendant of the first chief justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Jay
, and a granddaughter of Dr. Harvey Cushing
, the "Father of American Neurosurgery" and Pulitzer Prize winning author. She has a brother, Stanley Grafton Mortimer III; five half-siblings, William Cushing Paley, Kate Cushing Paley, Averell Mortimer, Jay Mortimer, and David Mortimer; and two stepsiblings, Hilary Paley Califano and Jeffrey Paley. In 1947, her mother married William S. Paley
, the son of a successful immigrant entrepreneur who built a family acquisition into CBS
. Her stepmother, Kathleen Mortimer (born 1917), was a daughter of railroad heir and United States ambassador Averell Harriman.
Burden briefly attended Wellesley College until her marriage in 1964. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College
in 1976, with a concentration on Environmental Science. She later earned a Master of Urban Planning from Columbia University
, writing an award-winning thesis about solid-waste management.
, the urbanologist, with whom she worked on his Project for Public Spaces
.
From 1983 until 1990 Ms. Burden was Vice President for Planning and Design of the Battery Park City Authority
. She was responsible for the development and implementation of design guidelines for the 92 acres (372,311.1 m²) site as well as for overseeing the design of all open spaces and parkland, including the waterfront esplanade. In an interview for New York
magazine, she cited her stepfather's influence on her design sensibilities, noting the Canadian black granite she chose for the esplanade
was the same stone he selected in 1964 for "Black Rock"
, the CBS headquarters. Among her other New York projects are the Midtown Community Court and the Red Hook Community Justice Center, which provides integrated legal, economic and social services.
Burden also worked as a public school teaching aide in Harlem
in the 1960s.
As New York City's Planning Director, she has spearheaded Mayor Bloomberg's economic development agenda with comprehensive urban design master plans and new initiatives to reclaim the waterfront. She emphasizes open space, continuous shop fronts, and the inclusion of trees and other elements that foster lively street life, according to The New York Times. Burden's meticulous approach has been criticized, however, by some real estate developers, who have stated that she is imperious and arbitrary, using her seat in government to dictate the composition of buildings and insist on architectural innovation.
Eliot Brown writes in The New York Observer, "Now nearly eight years into her tenure, and with the possibility of another four seeming rather likely, Ms. Burden is an increasingly powerful and apparently emboldened force in the Bloomberg administration—one whose often forceful views are imprinted and emblazoned on nearly every major skyscraper, mall, public plaza and large development that rises in city limits."
In 2010, the Bloomberg administration unveiled a draft of "a comprehensive waterfront plan, known as Vision 2020, that includes more than 500 prospective projects costing tens of millions of dollars. These range from efforts to increase access to the water for kayakers and canoeists, to measures to protect against rising sea levels resulting from climate change
." Burden, helping present the plan, was quoted as saying the goal of the planning initiative was for the water to become the "sixth borough" of the city. "The water should become a part of our everyday lives," she declared.
, who had graduated to the Best Dressed List's Hall of Fame.
In 2005, Pratt Institute
awarded Ms. Burden an Honorary Doctorate in Public Administration and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects
presented her with its 2005 Center for Architecture Award. Ms. Burden's dedication to design excellence was recognized by the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, which presented her with its 2004 Design Patron Award. In 2008, Ms. Burden was inducted into the membership of the American Institute of Certified Planners
(AICP) College of Fellows, and was named the 5th most powerful person in New York real estate by The New York Observer.
In 2009, Amanda Burden received ULI's J.C.Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. This prize is the Institute's highest honor and comes with a $100,000 award. Burden announced that she will donate the J.C. Nichols prize money to ULI to create a yearly award honoring transformative and exciting public spaces around the world. In 2011, Amanda Burden received the American Architectural Foundation Keystone Award, which recognizes an individual or organization from outside the architectural discipline for exemplary leadership in design that improves lives and transforms communities. The Award recognizes Commissioner Burden’s legacy as a champion of good design and her continuous efforts to use design excellence to increase quality of life in the five boroughs and promote New York City as a world-class city. Previous recipients include Rick Lowe, Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), The Pritzker Family, Save America’s Treasures, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and former Mayor Manuel A. Diaz.
. An owner of The Village Voice and New York magazine
and later a New York City councilman, he worked as an aide to Sen. Robert Kennedy in the 1960s, sparking his wife's interest in social justice and inspiring her to pursue a teaching career. They had two children, Flobelle Fairbanks Burden and S. Carter Burden 3rd, before divorcing in 1972. Their son, S. Carter Burden 3rd, is the Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of the managed web hosting provider Logicworks.
Her second husband was Steven J. Ross (1927–1992), the head of Warner Communications
; they married in 1979 and divorced in 1981.
Burden has had a continuing relationship with television personality Charlie Rose
since the early 1990s.
New York City Department of City Planning
The Department of City Planning is a governmental agency of New York City responsible for setting the framework of city's physical and socioeconomic planning...
and chair of the City Planning Commission.
She is a proponent of revitalizing Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan is the southernmost part of the island of Manhattan, the main island and center of business and government of the City of New York...
, improving public access to the Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
waterfronts, improving commuter rail into the city, and reconsidering rezoning plans, and she has a reputation of holding developers to stricter design standards than previous planning directors. As stated in a 2007 profile of Burden in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
: "Whether walking up and down 368 blocks in Jamaica, Queens
Jamaica, Queens
Jamaica is a neighborhood in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York, United States. It was settled under Dutch rule in 1656 in New Netherland as Rustdorp. Under British rule, the Village of Jamaica became the center of the "Town of Jamaica"...
, to see which streets can accommodate 12-story buildings, or grabbing a tape measure from her desk to set the dimensions of seating in public plazas across the city, Ms. Burden is leaving an indelible legacy of how all five boroughs will look and feel for decades to come."
Burden previously worked for the New York State Urban Development Corporation
Empire State Development Corporation
The Urban Development Corporation, doing business as Empire State Development Corporation is a public authority of the state of New York in the United States that has financed and operated several ambitious state projects by issuing tax exempt bonds....
. She worked on Battery Park City from 1983 to 1990. She is also a member of the International Best Dressed List
International Best Dressed List
The International Best Dressed List was founded by fashionista Eleanor Lambert in 1940 as an attempt to boost the reputation of American fashion at the time.People who have been on the list include from A to Z:-The International Hall of Fame: Women:...
since 1996.
Early life
Born Amanda Jay Mortimer, she is the daughter of socialite Babe PaleyBabe Paley
Barbara "Babe" Cushing Mortimer Paley was an American socialite and style icon. She was known by the popular nickname "Babe" for most of her life. She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1958....
(1915–1978) and her first husband, Stanley Grafton Mortimer, Jr. (1913–1999), an heir to the Standard Oil
Standard Oil
Standard Oil was a predominant American integrated oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refiner in the world and operated as a major company trust and was one of the world's first and largest multinational...
fortune. She is a descendant of the first chief justice
Chief Justice
The Chief Justice in many countries is the name for the presiding member of a Supreme Court in Commonwealth or other countries with an Anglo-Saxon justice system based on English common law, such as the Supreme Court of Canada, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the Court of Final Appeal of...
of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Jay
John Jay
John Jay was an American politician, statesman, revolutionary, diplomat, a Founding Father of the United States, and the first Chief Justice of the United States ....
, and a granddaughter of Dr. Harvey Cushing
Harvey Cushing
Harvey Williams Cushing, M.D. , was an American neurosurgeon and a pioneer of brain surgery, and the first to describe Cushing's syndrome...
, the "Father of American Neurosurgery" and Pulitzer Prize winning author. She has a brother, Stanley Grafton Mortimer III; five half-siblings, William Cushing Paley, Kate Cushing Paley, Averell Mortimer, Jay Mortimer, and David Mortimer; and two stepsiblings, Hilary Paley Califano and Jeffrey Paley. In 1947, her mother married William S. Paley
William S. Paley
William S. Paley was the chief executive who built Columbia Broadcasting System from a small radio network into one of the foremost radio and television network operations in the United States.-Early life:...
, the son of a successful immigrant entrepreneur who built a family acquisition into CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
. Her stepmother, Kathleen Mortimer (born 1917), was a daughter of railroad heir and United States ambassador Averell Harriman.
Burden briefly attended Wellesley College until her marriage in 1964. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...
in 1976, with a concentration on Environmental Science. She later earned a Master of Urban Planning from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, writing an award-winning thesis about solid-waste management.
Career
She worked with the architecture firm Gruzen & Partners and one of her mentors was William H. WhyteWilliam H. Whyte
William Hollingsworth "Holly" Whyte was an American urbanist, organizational analyst, journalist and people-watcher.Whyte was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1917 and died in New York City in 1999. An early graduate of St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware, he graduated from Princeton...
, the urbanologist, with whom she worked on his Project for Public Spaces
Project for Public Spaces
Project for Public Spaces is a nonprofit organization based in New York dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities. Planning and design rooted in the community form the cornerstone of PPS’s work. Building on the techniques of William H...
.
From 1983 until 1990 Ms. Burden was Vice President for Planning and Design of the Battery Park City Authority
Battery Park City Authority
The Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority is a Class A New York State public benefit corporation. Its mission is "to plan, create, co-ordinate and maintain a balanced community of commercial, residential, retail, and park space within its designated 92-acre site on the lower west side of...
. She was responsible for the development and implementation of design guidelines for the 92 acres (372,311.1 m²) site as well as for overseeing the design of all open spaces and parkland, including the waterfront esplanade. In an interview for New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
magazine, she cited her stepfather's influence on her design sensibilities, noting the Canadian black granite she chose for the esplanade
Esplanade
An esplanade is a long, open, level area, usually next to a river or large body of water, where people may walk. The original meaning of esplanade was a large, open, level area outside fortress or city walls to provide clear fields of fire for the fortress' guns...
was the same stone he selected in 1964 for "Black Rock"
CBS Building
The CBS Building in New York City, also known as Black Rock, is the headquarters of CBS Corporation. The building, opened in 1965, was designed by Eero Saarinen. It is located at 51 West 52nd Street, at the corner of Sixth Avenue . The 38 story building is tall and measures approximately 872,000...
, the CBS headquarters. Among her other New York projects are the Midtown Community Court and the Red Hook Community Justice Center, which provides integrated legal, economic and social services.
Burden also worked as a public school teaching aide in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
in the 1960s.
As New York City's Planning Director, she has spearheaded Mayor Bloomberg's economic development agenda with comprehensive urban design master plans and new initiatives to reclaim the waterfront. She emphasizes open space, continuous shop fronts, and the inclusion of trees and other elements that foster lively street life, according to The New York Times. Burden's meticulous approach has been criticized, however, by some real estate developers, who have stated that she is imperious and arbitrary, using her seat in government to dictate the composition of buildings and insist on architectural innovation.
Eliot Brown writes in The New York Observer, "Now nearly eight years into her tenure, and with the possibility of another four seeming rather likely, Ms. Burden is an increasingly powerful and apparently emboldened force in the Bloomberg administration—one whose often forceful views are imprinted and emblazoned on nearly every major skyscraper, mall, public plaza and large development that rises in city limits."
In 2010, the Bloomberg administration unveiled a draft of "a comprehensive waterfront plan, known as Vision 2020, that includes more than 500 prospective projects costing tens of millions of dollars. These range from efforts to increase access to the water for kayakers and canoeists, to measures to protect against rising sea levels resulting from climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
." Burden, helping present the plan, was quoted as saying the goal of the planning initiative was for the water to become the "sixth borough" of the city. "The water should become a part of our everyday lives," she declared.
Honors
Burden, then 22, was named to the Best Dressed List of the New York Couture Group in 1966, replacing Jacqueline Kennedy OnassisJacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier "Jackie" Kennedy Onassis was the wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, and served as First Lady of the United States during his presidency from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Five years later she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle...
, who had graduated to the Best Dressed List's Hall of Fame.
In 2005, Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
awarded Ms. Burden an Honorary Doctorate in Public Administration and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects
American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
presented her with its 2005 Center for Architecture Award. Ms. Burden's dedication to design excellence was recognized by the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, which presented her with its 2004 Design Patron Award. In 2008, Ms. Burden was inducted into the membership of the American Institute of Certified Planners
American Institute of Certified Planners
The American Institute of Certified Planners is the American Planning Association's professional institute. AICP certifies professionals in the United States in the field of Urban and Regional planning and assists planners in the areas of ethics, professional development, planning education, and...
(AICP) College of Fellows, and was named the 5th most powerful person in New York real estate by The New York Observer.
In 2009, Amanda Burden received ULI's J.C.Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. This prize is the Institute's highest honor and comes with a $100,000 award. Burden announced that she will donate the J.C. Nichols prize money to ULI to create a yearly award honoring transformative and exciting public spaces around the world. In 2011, Amanda Burden received the American Architectural Foundation Keystone Award, which recognizes an individual or organization from outside the architectural discipline for exemplary leadership in design that improves lives and transforms communities. The Award recognizes Commissioner Burden’s legacy as a champion of good design and her continuous efforts to use design excellence to increase quality of life in the five boroughs and promote New York City as a world-class city. Previous recipients include Rick Lowe, Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), The Pritzker Family, Save America’s Treasures, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and former Mayor Manuel A. Diaz.
Personal history
Burden has been married twice. Her first husband was Shirley Carter Burden Jr. (1941–1996), a multimillionaire descendant of Commodore Vanderbilt and a great-nephew of the actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr.. At the time of their marriage on 13 June 1964, Carter Burden was a student at Columbia Law SchoolColumbia Law School
Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, is one of the oldest and most prestigious law schools in the United States. A member of the Ivy League, Columbia Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Columbia University in New York City. It offers the J.D., LL.M., and J.S.D. degrees in...
. An owner of The Village Voice and New York magazine
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
and later a New York City councilman, he worked as an aide to Sen. Robert Kennedy in the 1960s, sparking his wife's interest in social justice and inspiring her to pursue a teaching career. They had two children, Flobelle Fairbanks Burden and S. Carter Burden 3rd, before divorcing in 1972. Their son, S. Carter Burden 3rd, is the Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of the managed web hosting provider Logicworks.
Her second husband was Steven J. Ross (1927–1992), the head of Warner Communications
Warner Communications
Warner Communications or Warner Communications, Inc. was established in 1971 when Kinney National Company spun off its non-entertainment assets, due to a financial scandal over its parking operations and changed its name....
; they married in 1979 and divorced in 1981.
Burden has had a continuing relationship with television personality Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose
Charles Peete "Charlie" Rose, Jr. is an American television talk show host and journalist. Since 1991 he has hosted Charlie Rose, an interview show distributed nationally by PBS since 1993...
since the early 1990s.
Further reading
- "Amanda Burden — Engine Driving Mayor’s Redevelopment Frenzy," by Max Driscoll, e-OCULUS, 04.15.08
- "Social Planner," by Ralph Gardner Jr., New York magazine, May 13, 2002
- "Greetings from the Chair," NYC.gov