The administration of Michael R. Bloomberg, New York City's mayor for the last twelve years, acted as a friend to dozens of cultural institutions — a legacy that helped change the face of the city and won't soon be forgotten, the Wall Street Journal reports.

While the most visible manifestation of the Bloomberg administration's support for the arts may be the $2 billion it spent to transform the buildings of arts institutions across the city, its legacy also includes cultural organizations that came into being or were reborn thanks to Bloomberg and his staff. One such organization, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, has received donations totaling at least $15 million from Bloomberg himself, in addition to a $15 million low-interest loan last year to help cover expenses until it opens to the public next spring.

City Hall also took over the stalled Performing Arts Center project at the World Trade Center from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation in 2006 and worked with architect Frank Gehry to develop a design that includes a one-thousand-seat theater for contemporary dance performances. Another institution reborn under the Bloomberg administration is the South Street Seaport Museum, which City Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate Levin twice saved from going under.

The Bloomberg administration also incubated early designs for a number of new cultural amenities, including the Culture Shed, a flexible exhibition space that will anchor the north end of the wildly popular High Line at 34^th Street. The city has committed $75 million to the project, and last year Bloomberg tapped Daniel Doctoroff, a former deputy mayor and now chief executive and president of Bloomberg LP, to chair the nonprofit tasked with bringing the project to fruition.

On a less happy note, the city did not intervene to save the New York City Opera from going bankrupt, the Journal reports, although city officials did work over several years to pull the company through a series of crises. In the administration's defense, Levin noted that, like businesses, cultural organizations experience financial ups and downs. City Opera, she added, “is one of the ones that did on our watch."