This year the Friends of the Montauk Club, a charitable organization with a mission to maintain the historic exterior of our club house, will honor Everett Ortner. Everett, a long time board member, was President of the Montauk Club from 1991 – 1993 and is an Honorary Member of the Club. Everett and his late wife Evelyn are credited with being primary movers in the creation of the Park Slope Historic District. Please save the date and plan to attend!

ABOUT EVERETT ORTNER:

An editor, writer and photographer who was a leader in the movement to preserve Brooklyn’s 19th-century brownstone communities, Everett Ortner has made a$200,000 planned gift to the School of Architecture. His gift will support education related to historic preservation. “I am deeply indebted to the University of
Arkansas,” he said when reached on the phone, adding that he
hoped the gift would encourage people “to respect and preserve
the history in their communities.”

Born in Lowell, Mass., and raised in New York City, Ortner
came to the University of Arkansas almost on a whim. “A friend
told me that it was a very good school, and very inexpensive,” he
recalled, adding that out-of-state tuition ran $25 a semester when
he enrolled in the height of the Depression. Sustained by cheese
sandwiches, cherry pies and the works of William Shakespeare,
Ortner regularly braved the 42-hour bus ride between New
York and Fayetteville, ultimately earning a bachelor of arts degree
in literature in 1939.

After service as an army infantry officer in World War II, Ortner worked for several publishing houses before
joining the staff at Popular Science magazine, working his way up to editor in a 33-year career with the publication.
With his late wife Evelyn, in 1963 he purchased a beautiful 1886 brownstone rowhouse in Brooklyn’s thendeteriorating
Park Slope neighborhood and embarked on a side career to stimulate interest in preserving old houses and neighborhoods. He organized tours and lectures, and worked with other homeowners to find buyers committed to preserving historic homes (combating a trend to turn brownstones into single-room occupancy tenant houses managed by absentee landlords). He was cofounder and first president of the Brownstone Revival Committee, now the Brownstone Revival Coalition, a citywide organization devoted to the promotion and preservation of New York City’s older communities. He is currently chairman emeritus of the organization, which is less active these days, he says proudly, “Because we’ve done what we had to do.  Brownstones are hot, not only in Brooklyn, but all over
New York.” Indeed, Park Slope now enjoys a national profile, having been designated in 2007 as one of 10 “Great Places in America” by the American Planning Association.
Ortner took his preservation work to a national level by organizing a series of “Back to the City” conferences in a
dozen major cities in the 1980s. Over the years he served as a board member and officer in numerous organizations devoted to preservation and has won many honors, notably the Lifetime Achievement in Excellence in Historic Achievement from the Preservation League of New York State, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York chapter of the Victorian Society of the United States, and jointly with his wife, the New York Landmarks Conservancy’s Lucy G. Moses Preservation Leadership Award. He was one of six recipients of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences in 2006. “Everett Ortner has been a leader in the field of historic
preservation,” said Dean Jeff Shannon. “His generous gift will inspire future generations of our students to
preserve the past.”