Margot Gayle

Margot McCoy Gayle (May 14, 1908 – September 28, 2008) was an American historic preservationist and author who helped save the Victorian cast-iron architecture in New York City's SoHo district.

Life and career

Born in Kansas City, Missouri she earned an undergraduate degree from University of Michigan and a master's degree in bacteriology from Emory University. She met her husband, William T. Gayle, in Atlanta. They moved to New York, where she wrote for CBS Radio, then worked as a freelance writer and public relations executive. Gayle wrote an architecture column for The Daily News for 16 years. In 1957, she made an unsuccessful New York City Council bid and got divorced.

Gayle helped preserve the Jefferson Market Courthouse in the 1960s. In the wake of the destruction of Pennsylvania Station, she helped lobby for passage of a preservation law. She founded Friends of Cast Iron Architecture in 1970, which led to the establishment of the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District. She received the General Tools Award, the highest award of the Society for Industrial Archeology, in 1997. She also received the Historic Districts Council's Landmarks Lion award in 1993.

Selected publications

• Cast Iron Architecture in New York: A Photographic Survey with Edmund V. Gillon (1974)
• Guide to Manhattan’s Outdoor Sculpture with Michele Cohen (1988)
• Cast Iron Architecture in America: The Significance of James Bogardus with Carol Gayle (1998), W W Norton page

External links

• Margot Gayle Fund for Preservation of Victorian Heritage
• The Margot Gayle Papers 1959-2005 at the New York Historical Society