2026 Honorees
Martha Weissberg
At our annual meeting in 2026, we inducted the 48th, 49th, and 50th residents into our Neighborhood Hall of Fame for residents of 50 years or more: Martha Weissberg, Nancy Wight, and Celia Knight.The remarks made by Hedy Campbell at the induction ceremony are transcribed below.
Martha Weissberg
Martha Weissberg qualified for the Hall of Fame two years ago. She grew up on Long Island, and was one of those kids who found every excuse to take the train into the city on weekends. She lived in St. Louis while in college, then gave Stamford, Connecticut, a try after graduating. But you know what they say: You can take a woman out of the city, but it’s hard to take the city out of a woman! She moved back and, as one did at the time, she found a job through The New York Times. In 1974, on her very first day at that very first New York City job, she met a man named Jeffrey. They began dating, they decided to live together, they got married. Among the many virtues he brought to their relationship: a rent-stabilized lease in a doorman building, right in our Block Association territory!
Martha found her life’s work in education and spent many years teaching high school English in New Rochelle. There she also discovered that one of her colleagues lived in the building directly across 102nd St. from her. They opted to commute together and occasionally teamed up to help each other shovel the car out of snowdrifts after overnight storms and clear a parking spot in the evening when they returned home. Both are now retired, but their connection and tenure in the neighborhood endures, as does Martha’s friendship with a colleague whom she used to lunch with at school on a weekly basis. He lives uptown a bit, and they continue to enjoy their weekly lunch, but at various neighborhood restaurants instead.
Martha is an avid reader and news junkie, was an original member of BAiP’s very first book group, and regularly attends meetings of a support group for those with cochlear implants, which she describes as life-changing. She describes herself as the luckiest person in the world.
She wishes that there were as many inexpensive hangouts in the neighborhood as there were 50 years ago, and hopes that the abundance of free or low-priced activities that characterized the city when she was a youngster continues to be available to those just starting out. A change for the better is that the neighborhood is far safer now than it was when she moved in. She misses the abundance of movie theaters nearby, and is excited that the Uptown Film Center is going to replace the old Metro theater. She wonders whether the West Side Highway will close to traffic during the parade of ships this summer, as it did in 1976. The biggest unchanged positive in the area is the quality of the relationships she’s formed with some of the service people in the neighborhood. It is and has always been a huge plus for her.
Martha Weissberg
Martha Weissberg qualified for the Hall of Fame two years ago. She grew up on Long Island, and was one of those kids who found every excuse to take the train into the city on weekends. She lived in St. Louis while in college, then gave Stamford, Connecticut, a try after graduating. But you know what they say: You can take a woman out of the city, but it’s hard to take the city out of a woman! She moved back and, as one did at the time, she found a job through The New York Times. In 1974, on her very first day at that very first New York City job, she met a man named Jeffrey. They began dating, they decided to live together, they got married. Among the many virtues he brought to their relationship: a rent-stabilized lease in a doorman building, right in our Block Association territory!
Martha found her life’s work in education and spent many years teaching high school English in New Rochelle. There she also discovered that one of her colleagues lived in the building directly across 102nd St. from her. They opted to commute together and occasionally teamed up to help each other shovel the car out of snowdrifts after overnight storms and clear a parking spot in the evening when they returned home. Both are now retired, but their connection and tenure in the neighborhood endures, as does Martha’s friendship with a colleague whom she used to lunch with at school on a weekly basis. He lives uptown a bit, and they continue to enjoy their weekly lunch, but at various neighborhood restaurants instead.
Martha is an avid reader and news junkie, was an original member of BAiP’s very first book group, and regularly attends meetings of a support group for those with cochlear implants, which she describes as life-changing. She describes herself as the luckiest person in the world.
She wishes that there were as many inexpensive hangouts in the neighborhood as there were 50 years ago, and hopes that the abundance of free or low-priced activities that characterized the city when she was a youngster continues to be available to those just starting out. A change for the better is that the neighborhood is far safer now than it was when she moved in. She misses the abundance of movie theaters nearby, and is excited that the Uptown Film Center is going to replace the old Metro theater. She wonders whether the West Side Highway will close to traffic during the parade of ships this summer, as it did in 1976. The biggest unchanged positive in the area is the quality of the relationships she’s formed with some of the service people in the neighborhood. It is and has always been a huge plus for her.
Nancy Wight
Nancy Wight
Fifty years ago, Nancy Wight and her new husband, whose last name, if you can believe it, was White, were living on the east side of Broadway, and found themselves in need of a larger space. So they crossed the avenue and took a walk along W. 102nd St. to see if they could find something bigger. The second building they stopped at had two units available. The first one seemed fine, but before signing the lease, they thought to have a peek at the other. There they discovered a sliver of a river view and they opted to rent that one instead, raising their daughter, Rowenna Wight White, there. Tragically, Rowenna died in a plane crash in 1998 en route to a hotel-management and culinary program in Switzerland.
Originally from Maine, Nancy migrated south gradually. Her first stop was Boston, where she embarked on a career as a professional dancer. A few years later, that very same career brought her to New York, where she performed with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, among other companies.
Ultimately a knee injury required Nancy to give up dancing, but she never lost her love for the arts. Many of her jobs were in related industries, such as music publishing, and she devoted herself to becoming proficient playing the prima balalaika, performing Russian folk music in a variety of settings here and abroad. Along the way she earned a master’s degree in applied linguistics and became a teacher of English as a second language, applying those skills at Bronx Community College and during repeated visits to China and Russia.
She participates in BAiP groups whenever she can, and loves to swim, read (mainly nonfiction), and travel. These days, difficulty with her knee presents a challenge, but watching Rick Steves’s show on PBS fills the gap.
Comparing the neighborhood now to when she moved in, she observes that people don’t sit outside their buildings, as residents of her building once did. And although so many of the smaller business have gone, she’s happy that the Hungarian Pastry Shop remains a mainstay. It was one of the places she often frequented while working as a tour guide at St. John the Divine, and she just recently made a connection there with a Barnard student; Nancy, the student, and the student’s sister all attended Easter Sunday services together.
West End Ave. looks pretty much the same now as it did 50 years ago, she reflects, but she finds the towers on Broadway unsightly. She hopes that the neighborhood’s appeal to those with an interest in the arts, as evidenced by streets named for Humphrey Bogart and Norman Rockwell and a building named for the Gershwins, continues, although she fears that the high cost of living is a stumbling block for them.
Originally from Maine, Nancy migrated south gradually. Her first stop was Boston, where she embarked on a career as a professional dancer. A few years later, that very same career brought her to New York, where she performed with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, among other companies.
Ultimately a knee injury required Nancy to give up dancing, but she never lost her love for the arts. Many of her jobs were in related industries, such as music publishing, and she devoted herself to becoming proficient playing the prima balalaika, performing Russian folk music in a variety of settings here and abroad. Along the way she earned a master’s degree in applied linguistics and became a teacher of English as a second language, applying those skills at Bronx Community College and during repeated visits to China and Russia.
She participates in BAiP groups whenever she can, and loves to swim, read (mainly nonfiction), and travel. These days, difficulty with her knee presents a challenge, but watching Rick Steves’s show on PBS fills the gap.
Comparing the neighborhood now to when she moved in, she observes that people don’t sit outside their buildings, as residents of her building once did. And although so many of the smaller business have gone, she’s happy that the Hungarian Pastry Shop remains a mainstay. It was one of the places she often frequented while working as a tour guide at St. John the Divine, and she just recently made a connection there with a Barnard student; Nancy, the student, and the student’s sister all attended Easter Sunday services together.
West End Ave. looks pretty much the same now as it did 50 years ago, she reflects, but she finds the towers on Broadway unsightly. She hopes that the neighborhood’s appeal to those with an interest in the arts, as evidenced by streets named for Humphrey Bogart and Norman Rockwell and a building named for the Gershwins, continues, although she fears that the high cost of living is a stumbling block for them.
Celia Knight
Celia Knight
Before I tell you about Celia Knight, I must thank her for continuing service as a Block Association board member. She’s been on our board for 14 years, serving as our recording secretary for many of them, and regularly volunteers to work at events, whether our own or representing us at other organizations’ activities.
Celia is a Brooklyn native, but she also lived for a while on Long Island before moving into Manhattan to attend Barnard College. She was living in a residence for women downtown when she wound up in a kerfuffle with another resident about laundry. She consulted an organization that specialized in housing rights to find out whether she had any recourse. The person she spoke to had a business relationship of some sort with the landlord of one of the buildings in our neighborhood, and the advice she was given was to go look at an available apartment there. She did, and has lived on our blocks ever since. Happily, some of her relatives lived nearby, which made it easy to maintain relationships with them until they moved away.
Much of Celia’s professional life was spent in publishing, learning many new skills as computerization changed the industry. She was an excellent typist on a manual typewriter and became an early user of the IBM Selectric typewriter, learned entry-code typesetting, and has been a proofreader and a copy editor of indexes.
In addition to volunteering with the Block Association, Celia sings with the Voices of New York Chorus, and participates in a Zoom discussion group about spiritual, philosophical, metaphysical, and existential topics. Although the Dodgers are long gone from Brooklyn—she remembers going to Ebbets Field as a child—she still has cousins in Brooklyn, and makes regular trips there to see them.
In talking about the neighborhood, Celia says that when she moved in, people were concerned that she was going to live north of 96th St.. At the time, their concerns were well founded; she was told that someone was stabbed on the block the day she moved in! She remembers that there were many more single-room occupancy hotels, and that, of course, not only were the stores all different, but people actually did their shopping in them, rather than ordering on Amazon. She counts the changing coffee landscape as a positive, and the rehabilitation of the Broadmoor solarium as one as well.
The Block Association already existed when she moved in, so that’s a constant. She’d love to see more younger people join and recommends it to all as a means of continuing education in all manner of ways.
Congratulations to Martha, Nancy, and Celia!
Before I tell you about Celia Knight, I must thank her for continuing service as a Block Association board member. She’s been on our board for 14 years, serving as our recording secretary for many of them, and regularly volunteers to work at events, whether our own or representing us at other organizations’ activities.
Celia is a Brooklyn native, but she also lived for a while on Long Island before moving into Manhattan to attend Barnard College. She was living in a residence for women downtown when she wound up in a kerfuffle with another resident about laundry. She consulted an organization that specialized in housing rights to find out whether she had any recourse. The person she spoke to had a business relationship of some sort with the landlord of one of the buildings in our neighborhood, and the advice she was given was to go look at an available apartment there. She did, and has lived on our blocks ever since. Happily, some of her relatives lived nearby, which made it easy to maintain relationships with them until they moved away.
Much of Celia’s professional life was spent in publishing, learning many new skills as computerization changed the industry. She was an excellent typist on a manual typewriter and became an early user of the IBM Selectric typewriter, learned entry-code typesetting, and has been a proofreader and a copy editor of indexes.
In addition to volunteering with the Block Association, Celia sings with the Voices of New York Chorus, and participates in a Zoom discussion group about spiritual, philosophical, metaphysical, and existential topics. Although the Dodgers are long gone from Brooklyn—she remembers going to Ebbets Field as a child—she still has cousins in Brooklyn, and makes regular trips there to see them.
In talking about the neighborhood, Celia says that when she moved in, people were concerned that she was going to live north of 96th St.. At the time, their concerns were well founded; she was told that someone was stabbed on the block the day she moved in! She remembers that there were many more single-room occupancy hotels, and that, of course, not only were the stores all different, but people actually did their shopping in them, rather than ordering on Amazon. She counts the changing coffee landscape as a positive, and the rehabilitation of the Broadmoor solarium as one as well.
The Block Association already existed when she moved in, so that’s a constant. She’d love to see more younger people join and recommends it to all as a means of continuing education in all manner of ways.
Congratulations to Martha, Nancy, and Celia!
