A Public Servant Whose Name Is Now on Protesters’ Lips

NYTimes October 5, 2011, 7:15 AM

By SAM ROBERTS

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times John E. Zuccotti

In the 40 years since John E. Zuccotti joined city government as a part-time, $15,000-a-year member of the City Planning Commission, he has been chairman of the commission, first deputy mayor, chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York and the United States chairman of the global real estate giant Brookfield Properties, which owns, among other buildings, the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan.

But none of those titles or positions catapulted him into greater, if unwitting, prominence than the ongoing Occupy Wall Streetdemonstrations staged from the tiny downtown park that Brookfield owns and that bears his name.

Zuccotti Park has become a household name among protesters camped there and among followers of the protest movement that has been gaining steam in other American cities. The block-long, half-acre park has arguably become the most famous patch of greenery in the city. Yet most of the park’s occupants, who are railing against what they deem the inequities of the financial system, probably have no idea who Mr. Zuccotti is.

Certainly, nobody recognized him during several casual sojourns he made to the park from his office at the World Financial Center last month to survey the scene. (He said he did not interact with any of the protesters.)

Mr. Zuccotti did remember getting a call from a relative in Italy: “My cousin called and said everyone in Genoa was saying, ‘Is that your relative? I’ve become famous.’”

The park was created as a public space in return for allowing the original owners to build a larger office tower in 1968. A public plaza typically does not allow overnight camping or serve as a regular staging ground for mass protests, however.

But Mr. Zuccotti, who cuts a judicious, even owlish, figure at 74, is no stranger to gracious hospitality. One of his first jobs was checking hats at the El Morocco night club where his father was the head waiter and later the incontrovertible guardian of the velvet rope as the maitre d’.

As for Brookfield’s continued welcome, Mr. Zuccotti said, “my guess is that we basically look to the police leadership and mayor to decide what to do.”

The protesters are not your typical El Morocco crowd. They are considerably more democratic and, arguably, more diverse in their political agenda.

“According to what I read, the nature of the protest has been a little vague,” said Mr. Zuccotti, who returned to New York on Tuesday after traveling in Europe.

“If you go there, you can’t tell the protesters from the tourists,” he added. “It has a kind of festive atmosphere.”

The park, which was originally known as 1 Liberty Plaza, was renamed Liberty Park after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Neal Boenzi/The New York TimesMayor Abraham D. Beame at City Hall on Nov. 17, 1975, where he announced the appointment of John E. Zuccotti as deputy mayor.

In 2006, after an $8 million renovation to repair damage from the attack on the World Trade Center, the pink granite park was renamed for Mr. Zuccotti. The gesture marked his public service as a savior of the city while deputy mayor under Mayor Abraham D. Beame during the 1970s fiscal crisis, and as a vigorous cheerleader for downtown’s revival after the terrorist attacks. Mr. Zuccotti lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Susan Sessions Zuccotti, a historian and the author of several books about the Holocaust.

The park is adorned with several dozen honey locust trees and a large abstract sculpture called “Joie de Vivre’’ and another of a businessman with a briefcase.

Mr. Zuccotti said he had no idea that the park was to be named for him until he arrived for the rededication ceremony.

“I started to notice there were all these people from various stages in my life, and suddenly it dawned on me they were pulling a fast one,’’ Mr. Zuccotti said. “It was a complete surprise.”

During the ceremony, he recounted what Lyndon B. Johnson said in dedicating a building in Washington when Mr. Zuccotti was a special assistant at the Department of Housing and Urban Development: “My pappy would have enjoyed it and my mammy would have believed it.”

What about his parents? What would they have thought about the park and the protest?

“They would have been proud of the name,” he replied, “and they probably would have said, ‘I hope they’re keeping the park clean.’”