The Architectural Barriers Committee
In this image: Letterhead reading “Architectural Barriers Committee of Metropolitan New York. A Joint Committee Of Organizations Working For The Handicapped. 105 West 72nd Street, New York New York 10023.”
The Architectural Barriers Committee (ABC) was the first truly influential activist organization in the New York City Disability Rights Movement. Led by Richard Match, Don Broderick, and Julius and Mollie Shaw, during its peak years of 1966-1972 ABC brought a sustained level of attention to the cause of physical access to the City’s public sphere, for the first time.
An offshoot of Richard Match’s Great Neck pool program, and the immediate successor to the Handicapped Drivers Association, ABC gathered activists together via regular meetings at the Bulova School of Watchmaking in Queens—then one of the only accessible buildings in the Metropolitan area—and engaged in a series of campaigns to bore holes into the walls of inaccessibility. Among its more notable accomplishments, ABC caused a number of retrofits to the initially poorly-executed accessibility features of Lincoln Center, then newly opened; it led the fight for accessibility amendments to the City’s revamped 1968 Building Code; and it made the cause of disability rights a subject of political and electoral significance through a series of public meetings with candidates for office, including Paul O’Dwyer, then running for the U.S. Senate, and Senator Jacob Javits.
At its height ABC’s membership included more than thirty organizations and a large number of individual members. It drew in a considerable array of talent, including Julius Goldberg, Ivan Wyler, Anna Fay, Marilyn Saviola, Walter Kroepke, and Vincent Marchiselli, who went on to distinguished careers as leaders in the New York City Disability Rights Movement and elsewhere.
by Warren Shaw
