America's Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York

This website was created as a companion to the exhibition America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York that was on view at the Museum of the City of New York from May 5 through October 3, 2010, an exhibition about the liberal 103rd mayor of New York City who crafted some of the institutions that Americans now take for granted,  from the 911 emergency telephone number to the Environmental Protection Agency. His administration coincided with, and was influenced by the turbulence and cultural flowering of the 1960's. After extreme fiscal failure during Lindsay's second term, he was blamed for New York's near bankruptcy. John Lindsaywas a glamorous figure with the appeal, intelligence and very mixed reception reminiscent of Barack Obama as president.

On the site you coan read about the Lindsay administration and its contested legacy, watch campaign commercials for New York’s first “television mayor,” view commentary about his life and times, and explore photo essays that help reveal the special character of the era. Ducat Media conceptualized, designed and built the website. We also created  the videos on the site most of which was then used in the galleries of the exhibition. (not the original plan.)

The site aimed to have simple design that could refer to the colors of psychedelic times while best featuring the mostly black and white imagery of the era's photographic legacy. We tried to simplify the navigation to maximize the user's ability to move back and forth across the site to gather the context needed to understand the man. We also created a feature for the user community to share their experiences with the man or about him as mayor. Separate paths were created for the former administration and the general public, a desire of the client which was largely funded by ex-Lindsayites.

We created the site independently of the book and a television program that was made (except for using a few of the television interviews in our videos). One of the biggest challenges was to make the site its own experience, one that would live on after the exhibit closed and the television show was no longer in re-runs. We also wanted to best represent Lindsay to a generation that had never heard of him, while appealing as well to an older generation that knew a lot but wanted to revisit and relive the times--and a generation that wasn't necessarily web savvy).  We aimed to serve these many audiences, in an elegant and efficient way befitting the personality we were profiling and contextualizing. .