Harold Holzer can’t escape the pull of presidents — or of history.
As the Jonathan F. Fanton director of Hunter College’s Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, Holzer has served since 2015 as the chief steward of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s former home, the birthplace of the New Deal.
Holzer also counts as one of the preeminent historians of President Lincoln and 19th century America, having authored, co-authored, or edited 55 books on the Great Emancipator and his milieu.
Now Holzer has been tapped by a newly elected president — Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal — to be the original New York borough’s official historian.
Hoylman-Sigal called the appointment a recognition of a lifetime of scholarship, public service, and cultural leadership.
“Harold Holzer brings an unparalleled depth of knowledge, intellectual rigor, and deep understanding of Manhattan’s place in American history to this role,” Hoylman-Sigal said. “His scholarship reminds us that this borough has long been a stage for national ideas and movements.”
Holzer has written extensively on Manhattan’s place in Civil War-era debates and in the legacy of Lincoln — including on Lincoln’s 1860 Cooper Union speech arguing that Congress could control the spread of slavery, a pivotal moment in the history of the union.
Holzer has helped make New York history, too, with a career bridging journalism, politics, and cultural affairs. Before coming to Roosevelt House in 2015, he served for 23 years as senior vice president for external affairs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
From 2000 to 2010, he was co-chairman of the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, appointed by President Bill Clinton, and later served for six years as chair of the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation. He is also the cofounder and chairman of The Lincoln Forum.
Earlier in his career, Holzer was the editor of The Manhattan Tribune, a weekly, and a press secretary to Congresswoman Bella Abzug of Manhattan and Governor Mario Cuomo, with whom he wrote the 1990 book Lincoln on Democracy.
With the sterling books and career have come many awards — including the National Humanities Medal, which President George W. Bush awarded Holzer in 2008.
Holzer’s book Lincoln and the Power of the Press received the 2015 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, as well as awards from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Harvard University’s Kennedy School. His more recent work, Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French, earned the New England Society Award and the Saint-Gaudens Medal. His latest book, Brought Forth on this Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration (2024), earned awards from the Civil War Round Table and the Lincoln Group of New York. In 2025, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow.
Holzer was the historical adviser to Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln and wrote the companion book for young readers.
Holzer and Hoylman-Sigal will work on projects on Lincoln’s historic presence in Manhattan and on the 400th anniversary of the Dutch settlement of Manhattan, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
“I am honored and delighted that the borough president has asked me to serve in this role,” Holzer said. “He is an outstanding leader I have known and respected since his earliest days in public service. And one of the things that sets him apart is his recognition that lessons from the past can help guide us to a better future. I look forward to working with him to engage our residents in Manhattan’s unique, engrossing, and still-relevant history.”
