Anthony W. Robins is an historian, writer and lecturer specialising in New York City architecture and development. After earning a Masters Degree in art history, Robins spent 20 years at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Since 1998, he has been in private practice as a consultant architectural historian, preparing nominations to the National Register of Historic Places, as well as building histories for private clients. He has served as Board Member and Vice-President of the Art Deco Society of New York, and is currently a Board member of the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America. In a parallel career, Robins has lectured, taught and published on the city’s architecture and history.

Publications include half a dozen guides to the city’s historic neighborhoods; Classics of American Architecture: The World Trade Center (1987; revised edition, 2011), called the first serious book on the subject; The Text of Subway Style (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2004), The New York Transit Museum’s book on the art and architecture of the subway system; articles in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Preservation, Gourmet, Progressive Architecture and Architectural Record, as well as professional journals; and the text for 45 interpretive Heritage Trails Site Markers placed at historic and architectural sites in Lower Manhattan.

Robins has taught courses on New York City’s architecture and history. The New York Transit Museum is one of only a handful of museums in the world dedicated to urban public transportation. The museum’s collections of objects, documents, photographs, film and historic rolling stock illustrate the story of mass transit’s critical role in the region’s economic and residential development since the nineteenth century.