In Memory of Carol Lamberg (1939-2025)
It is with great sadness that we honor the life and legacy of Carol Lamberg, a dear friend, visionary, and longtime collaborator of ESKW/Architects. Carol, the retired Executive Director of Settlement Housing Fund (SHF), passed away peacefully on January 20th, 2025. Carol dedicated her life to advancing equality and transforming communities through affordable housing and reform. Her visionary leadership at SHF from its inception in 1969, and as Executive Director from 1983 to 2014, resulted in countless developments that changed lives and neighborhoods across New York City.
We were privileged to collaborate with Carol on numerous impactful projects, including some of our early NYCHA developments in the Two Bridges area and on the celebrated New Settlement Community Campus. Our continued collaboration with SHF after her retirement has resulted in meaningful projects like 1561 Walton Avenue, Prospect Plaza Homes, Wythe Place, Weeksville Place, Melrose Concourse, and Coney Landing.
Our office has a decades-long history with Settlement Housing Fund and Carol Lamberg. It is a fact that I proudly tell everyone, and something that attracted me to this office in the first place years ago. We care deeply about relationships and working with people that inspire us. My own experience with Carol Lamberg started in 2005 with the crazy idea to build a pool and a public school along Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. Partner Andrew Knox looked at the zoning, and we started drawing masses. I wanted in on that project. It was the culmination of everything I wanted to work on: community facilities and a neighborhood school that was truly connected to honorable affordable housing. And it was Carol’s vision. It was New Settlement Community Campus.
It was a challenging project, but the result is something the entire team treasures. Carol was both our leader and cheerleader. Her reverence for architecture and design was right up there with her dedication to affordable housing. She had a great eye and a way with people that is unsurpassed. Harold and Judy Edelman and then Randy Wood and Andrew Knox worked with Carol and Susan Cole for decades and built many units of affordable housing before my time, but my experience watching Carol truly inspired how I wanted to conduct myself professionally. She connected to a certain human element in everyone she met. By the time I worked with her, there probably wasn’t much she hadn’t seen, but it still amazed me how she simply wasn’t intimidated by anyone. If she knew the deal worked, she made sure it did. She also told me to stop carrying heavy bags and to carry a small purse because it helps with good posture.
Carol, thank you. You have inspired me and many others out here to give back more than we take. Thank you. — Partner Kimberly Murphy
