Salvadori Center brings NYC real estate to kids

Real Estate Weekly, March 22, 2000

The children in Lorraine LaSenna's classroom at Booker T. Washington Middle School in Manhattan Valley are learning about math and physics. Yet, if you were to spend some time in their classroom, you wouldn't find a standard textbook or hear a traditional lecture. Instead, what you'd see is kids working together, measuring, cutting, pasting - and talking about real estate. These children are re-creating some of the NYC bridges they learned about in previous classes and on field trips around the city. Moreover, Mrs. LaSenna is not even teaching the class. Instead, today's instructor is Nat Oppenheimer, a partner at Robert. Silman Associates, P.C., who runs a hands-on lesson each week here as a volunteer for the Salvadori Center.

This is a typical day for volunteers for the Salvadori Center, a non-profit organization founded in 1987 by the eminent engineer and university professor Dr. Mario Salvadon (1907-1997). The Salvadori Center is dedicated to expanding students' visions of themselves and the world through the handson study of the built environment - exploring local real estate, architecture and engineering. Its core program, the Salvadori Middle School Program, brings superior educational opportunities to more than 1,200 students every year, clearly improving their academic performance and analytical skills, and raising their confidence levels and interest in learning. Since its inception, over 130,000 NYC youngsters have been reached, forming a cadre of successful students and engaged citizens.

"On any given day, students collaborating in small groups may be learning geometry by designing tongue depressor bridges, or ratio and proportion by building scaled models of their classrooms," explains Dr. Lorraine Whitman, the executive director of the Salvadori Center. "These activities also play an important role in their development of language and communication skills as they present the results of their neighborhood explorations or walk across the Brooklyn Bridge."

Most importantly, these children build structures. Some spectacular examples are the half pipe at Riverside Skate Park in Upper Manhattan; a 40-foot model of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge built in Bryant Park, now on permanent exhibition at the Staten Island Anchorage; and the Model of Manhattan, 265 cardboard buildings built to scale at the Salvadori Mini-School at IS 115 in the Bronx, currently on exhibit at the New York Academy of Sciences.

"We're watching engineers, architects, educators - professionals in the making,' says Dr. Charles H. Thornton, president of the Board of the Salvadoni Center, and chairman of Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers. "The look of excitement on these children's faces as they see a structure coming together through their own doing, and their understanding of the roles math and physics play in the real world is reason enough to expand every effort to extend this program around the globe."

The real estate industry seems to agree. The eminent Young Men's/Women's Real Estate Association of New York has "adopted" the Salvadori Center as the focus of its philanthropic efforts in 2000.

Mark Lauzon of Tishman Speyer Properties is this year's YM/WREA chairman. He explains their decision: "The Salvadori Center is a perfect fit for the YM/WREA. Enhancing education is one of our primary philanthropic goals. Salvadori provides us with an excellent opportunity to combine this cause with real estate and provide our members with easy access to influence the fresh minds of young people."

"We have made a definite difference in the lives of many of New York City's children," said Lorraine Whitman, the Center's executive director. "We can say that loud and clear."

The results have been astounding. Not only have Salvadori kids shown a higher commitment to education, they have also become excited about learning. While some aspire to careers previously beyond their frame of mind; others gain an understanding and appreciation of their neighborhoods and more learn to step outside of the boxes in which society too easily places them.

"The joy of our students as they build a bridge or a model of the city is inspiring, but the excitement, for us, comes from watching. them grow into adults,' putting what they've learned with our help into action. That is the greatest reward," concludes Lorraine Whitman.